Summer Stress Test

It was a stress-inducing summer for Mia Fan (MSIT ‘23), but not in the way you might imagine for most students.  

Rather than experiencing it herself, Fan, a student in Northwestern Engineering's Master of Science in Information Technology (MSIT), was the one doing the stressing, giving banks stress tests to ensure they wouldn’t fail and threaten the stability of the U.S. economy.  

The task was part of her summer internship at the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP).  

“It was my first job conducting an independent analysis,” she said. “There’s a lot of ambiguity I faced, and there were great opportunities for me to learn and explore at the same time.”  

GARP was formed in 1996 by two risk managers who had been meeting once a week in a New York pub to talk about their profession. The two decided a more formal organization would benefit not only them but other risk managers.   

Six months later, the newly formed GARP had 250 members in 23 countries. Today, the non-profit organization boasts nearly 280,000 members in 195 countries and regions.  

The importance of risk management at banks came under the microscope this spring, when Santa Clara, Calif.,-based Silicon Valley Bank went from solvent to failed in 48 hours. It ultimately closed on March 10. Its collapse marked the second largest bank failure in U.S. history, after the 2008 implosion of Washington Mutual.  

Fan’s internship work was designed to help ensure other banks don’t suffer the same fate. She conducted an independent analysis of a variety of banks using more than 100,000 data points spanning five years to search for areas of vulnerability.  

She said landing an internship at GARP matched well with her interests and skills.  

“The organization focuses on risk management, which is a combination of finance and data,” she said. “It matches my background in the financial industry and the courses I took in MSIT well.”  

Fan started the MSIT program in June 2022 and is on target to graduate this winter. She said she chose the program because of its ability to develop technology leaders and the availability of a wide variety of classes that have allowed her to explore various interests in information technology.  

The internship requirement that brought her to GARP was another important selling feature for the MSIT program, she said.  

“After a whole year of studying, we all have different understanding and objectives for our career life,” she said. “The internship is more like an experiment to check if the new career is for us or not.”  

Because of how the MSIT program has broadened her own horizons, Fan strongly recommends it to prospective students.  

She said students shouldn’t narrow their focus too much when choosing an internship.  

“When screening for an internship, don’t limit yourself,” she said. “MSIT will expose you to a lot of tech functionalities you were not interested in at the beginning.”