Leveraging Global Experiences in the Job Market

When Cooper Nelson decided to enroll in a joint-degree program between the College of William & Mary and the University of St Andrews in Scotland, his ability to get a job after graduation was foremost on his mind. “I accepted my offer into the program as a senior in high school believing that having the joint program on my résumé would make me stand out when I applied for jobs,” says Nelson, who completed his bachelor’s degree in economics in May 2016.

Looking back four years later, he says that while his participation in an international degree program didn’t lead to active recruitment by firms, it has provided a major talking point during his job interviews. “I found I could leverage my myriad of experiences in the joint program in order to stand out. Employers seemed genuinely interested in the program because it’s so unique. This allowed me to showcase whichever aspects of myself were more appropriate for the given interview question,” he explains.

As part of the joint-degree program, which was created in 2011, students spend two years at St Andrews and two years at William & Mary, which recently won the 2016 Simon Award for Campus Internationalization. Nelson was able to use examples from his time in Scotland during the hiring process: “For example, when faced with the classic ‘what was your biggest challenge and how did you overcome it?’ question, I could easily respond by discussing how my second-year transition to life at a new school in a