Southwestern Advantage Blog

Article seen in Bloomberg, Businessweek, Fortune, and  Money Since 1868, extraordinary college students from around the world have developed people skills, come to understand their strengths and weaknesses, experienced what it means to work without guarantees, and become employable – forever. Many college students look for standard summer jobs and internships to put on their resumes or make a little spending money. But that’s not what they’ll find at Southwestern Advantage®. “We’re looking for young people from all majors who have incredibly high goals. We then give them a track to run on, which—if they apply themselves—will develop in them the skills and character needed to achieve those goals. We give them the opportunity to succeed, usually by first falling at on their faces repeatedly,” says President Dan Moore, who joined Southwestern Advantage as a Harvard freshman in 1974 and has never worked anywhere else. “It’s more than a j-o-b. It’s a y-o-b: Your Own Busi...

One of the things I enjoy about working as a Student Leader in the Southwestern Advantage Program is that I get help college students save more money in a summer than they ever thought was possible. Seriously, how many college students SAVE over $5,000 in a summer?  Even if a student were to make that much in a different internship, it's common to end up spending most of it by the time the fall semester gets rolling. Unfortunately, many students have never been taught how to handle that money in a smart way. Very few high schools teach money management, and a lot of parents never cover these topics with their kids either. So, the celebratory spending begins in August and ends when the money is gone. Granted, it can be fun to spend money this way, but it certainly is ineffective for building any kind of long-term wealth (which, thanks to the rule of 72 , is incredibly easy to do if you start at 19 - 22 years old). Good news: you can start being sm...