Interview with Cole Branca, Harvard University

Interviewer: Okay. Very cool. Well, Cole, I’m super excited. I know I tracked you down over however many weeks to get you to join for this interview, and you’re joining from Harvard of all places—which speaks for itself. We got connected a while ago through my work at Tuck, and we’ve just stayed in touch. I’m really excited to share your story and learn more about you. And so you’re studying bioengineering, and you just got your first full-time job offer. You’ll be graduating this spring, which is amazing—congratulations. The first question is always the same. We’d love to hear about your process for choosing Harvard and how that went in terms of getting accepted.

Cole: Yeah, of course. I think it stems from when I was a little kid. My parents always emphasized academics for me and my siblings. So I’ve always tried to do my best and work really hard in school. I think that led me to want to be at one of the top schools in the country—Harvard. You obviously have to like the academics, but also the school itself. I came up and toured, and I’m from a relatively small town in Connecticut, Darien. The first thing that stuck out to me about Harvard was that it had this small-town feel. While it’s near Boston and in the larger city of Cambridge, being on campus definitely felt like the neighborhood I was used to. I really liked that. And I really liked that, while Harvard isn’t known for athletics, it has over 400 different extracurricular clubs. You can make a club for whatever you want.

Interviewer: That’s awesome.

Cole: I really liked that aspect of it—anything you find interesting, it’s there. My freshman fall, I was on the club hockey team. I tried out for the club soccer team, but I had a knee injury, so I couldn’t play. I was on the club lacrosse team, the club rugby team, the club shooting team—I was doing a little bit of everything. There are also professional clubs. I didn’t really get into those too much, but I still went to a couple meetings. There’s just so much to offer, and that really drew me to the school.

Interviewer: That’s awesome. Did you have something going on every day with all that?

Cole: Yeah. So, Mondays my freshman year, I had rugby practice, then dinner, then hockey practice. That was Mondays and Wednesdays. Tuesdays and Thursdays I had lacrosse, and on the weekends I was just bouncing from game to game. We had shooting practice on Sundays.

Interviewer: So you’re like the decathlete of sports at Harvard. That’s ridiculous.

Cole: That was just freshman year. After that, I had to tone it back. Now I mainly just do club hockey with a little bit of club lacrosse.

Interviewer: Okay, cool. I think you mentioned shooting a couple of years ago, last time we spoke, and that’s just cool. So yeah, 400 is a big number. I think a lot of students I’ve talked to—schools are getting into the 200 to 300 range of interests students can dabble in. So to have access to that and explore is important from an extracurricular standpoint, studies, career—everything we’ll get into. Being from Darien, were a lot of students around you pursuing things like Harvard? Was it pretty accepted as the culture in your high school, or were you kind of an outlier?

Cole: No, I think it was pretty accepted and relatively mainstream to go to Harvard or one of the Ivies. I was definitely around a lot of like-minded students, both academically and athletically. I obviously played sports but wasn’t good enough to go D1, D2, or D3 anywhere. But a lot of the athletes in my town also strived for Ivy Leagues. I think we have one kid from Darien on the varsity lacrosse team here at Harvard. So those athletes were also looking for great academic schools. The top schools in the U.S. were just part of the conversation at my high school all the time.

Interviewer: Yeah, that makes sense. Last question on the process—were you looking Ivy or bust? Obviously Harvard was a top choice, but which schools did you look at?

Cole: No, I mean, I was mainly looking on the East Coast. I’ve really enjoyed growing up here and didn’t want to be too far from home. I was looking at UVA, Michigan, Wake Forest, Richmond, the Ivies, and some of the NESCACs too. Kind of all up and down the East Coast, I’d say.

Interviewer: Yeah, cool. One of the reasons I ask is a lot of students, when they think about where they want to go, it’s location-based, weather-based, school-size-based, and obviously reputation-based. You’re going to have access to great alumni, but also great students on campus, which we’ve talked about a little. So that makes sense—and it sounds like you fell victim to just joining everything, which I think is important freshman year. Then you figure out your favorites. I want to focus on the community theme, which I think is an important place to start. What was the transition to campus like freshman year? You touched on it feeling familiar, but was it easy to meet students, admins, support staff?

Cole: I would say yes and no. Yes, it was pretty easy to meet people. But I didn’t really find my close friends—the people I spend most of my time with now—until maybe November of my freshman fall. So yes, it was super easy to meet people early on. Everyone’s so friendly. You meet your roommates and the people in your building or dorm first, then branch out through clubs and who you eat with in the dining halls. In the beginning, everyone’s in the same boat and goes out of their way to be nice. But it’s also not uncommon to feel alone or a little left out while you’re still finding your group. I built that closer circle later in freshman year.

Interviewer: Yeah, it’s going to take time no matter what. Sounds like you met a ton of people right away, but you want those three or four really close connections. That hits home with me because it was exactly my experience, too. So, the experience of living at Harvard—on campus or off as an upperclassman—what’s it like living in the community?

Cole: So, Harvard—I want to say it’s unique based on what I hear from friends. Most people live in a Harvard dorm all four years.

Interviewer: Oh, interesting!

Cole: What’s really cool is your freshman year, you’re randomly assigned a room and roommates in the freshman yard. That’s in the middle of Harvard’s campus. Only freshmen live there—it’s within the gates of Harvard Yard. It’s a really cool community. When you walk around, it’s mainly just freshmen. Then sophomore, junior, and senior year, you get placed in one of the 12 Harvard houses, and you stay in that same house for all three years. What’s really nice is you build a community—each house has its own dining hall, so you get to know the dining staff, security people, resident deans. Each house has its own character, too. I do ceramics on Monday nights in the basement of our house, and there’s a little community of us that go down there for that. There are also intramural sports people can join. It’s just cool being around the same people—you see familiar faces in the dining hall, and that really helps make it feel like home.

Interviewer: Yes, that aligns directly with what you said—having a small family within the bigger campus, which is nice. Are all of those halls located in the same area of campus, or is it spread out?

Cole: Funny you ask, because this is a big Harvard joke or story. Nine of the houses are on the river—it’s beautiful, close to nice restaurants, and more in the heart of campus. Then three of them are about a mile to a mile and a half away in their own little quadrangle. Freshman year, you’re kind of hoping you don’t get “quadded,” as we call it—being in that quad far away. You want to be by the river. But people who get quadded love it up there. It’s a really nice area, and they build their own community because they all have to take the shuttle or use bikes or scooters to get to class. They get to know each other really well. What’s cool is those three houses in the quad kind of combine into one community. Down by the river, it’s more your individual house.

Interviewer: I got quadded for the version of my school—and that happened freshman year. I quickly moved out of that when I could. But totally understand. Some schools are just spread out. Positive spin—you have a whole section where you can really connect, which is great. Let’s shift into curriculum. I forget how much time we took in the beginning, but it’s fun. I want to keep moving with questions. Bioengineering—when I met you, maybe you hadn’t declared yet, or I just didn’t remember. That definitely stands out. How did you land on bioengineering?

Cole: In high school, I was an EMT and ambulance driver. My town is one of the only towns to have high schoolers run the ambulance service, but we do a phenomenal job. There’s a lot of training and experience involved. That got me interested in medicine and wanting to help people. But I never really wanted to become a doctor. It felt like too much schooling, and I wanted to have a broader impact. You can do that by creating medical devices or medicines that can help millions, rather than just your own patients.I also loved physics and building things in high school, so bioengineering was a great way to combine those interests into one degree.

Interviewer: Nice. Really random—maybe on the spot—do you have a favorite class you’ve taken, either in the major or outside?

Cole: Yeah, I’ll give you one of both. In the major, I took a medical device design class. It was essentially a full-time job—I think I worked 30 to 40 hours a week on it. We were innovating on a medical device and doing the whole research project. We started with background research—who needs it, what type of need they have, are there existing patents, is this a space we can penetrate—and then we prototyped it, talked with investors, and did the whole thing. It was a lot of work but super engaging and interesting to be part of.

Interviewer: It’s kind of that building component—understanding how something works—and then you layer in this investor mindset. For you and me, that feels normal; we talk about this stuff all the time. But for students from, say, a liberal arts background—or just anyone reading this—does that business side tie into your broader interests? Science and business can feel like totally different worlds. Do you think it’s necessary to understand both to succeed in this space, or is that an oversimplification?

Cole: No, that’s a great question. I think my personal interests actually lean more toward the business side. Being around my peers, I’ve realized there are a lot of people out there who are way better engineers than I am. But I still want to be in the field. I’ve found that my strengths are more aligned with interpersonal skills—communicating, researching, understanding the bigger picture. I love being part of the design process, but I’m more drawn to the side that brings a product to market. That’s where the business component comes in, and that’s what excites me.

Interviewer: Totally makes sense. I’ve had similar experiences—whether it’s chemistry class or working alongside engineers—where I think, “You’ve clearly got this, I’ll stay in my lane.” And I love that idea of finding where your interests and strengths can intersect. You’ve done a great job of exploring that through clubs, classes, and more. Let’s shift to internships. You obviously have a job lined up—congrats again—but did your business interest steer the internships you chose in undergrad? How many did you do, and what were they like?

Cole: Thanks! I had two internships over the summer and also did the Tuck Business Bridge Program at Dartmouth. So in total, three experiences, all of which leaned more toward business. Since I was already getting the science and technical side through my bioengineering degree at Harvard, I wanted to use my summers to build out the business skill set—especially in fields like finance. My end goal was always to work at a company in biotech, healthcare, or medical devices. My thinking was, if I could understand the science from my degree and combine that with business knowledge, I’d be well-positioned to communicate across teams and have a bigger impact. Harvard doesn’t offer a formal business degree—just economics—so I tried to balance it out that way.

Interviewer: Got it. And how did you find those internships? Was it a lot of cold applications, networking, a mix of both?

Cole: Definitely a mix. I applied to a ton of programs across the U.S.—some even internationally—but I think what really helped was networking, especially with students a year or two ahead of me. You meet people through clubs or classes, and they’ll share tips or insights on how to navigate recruiting. That peer-to-peer networking helped a lot—especially hearing about their experiences and learning how they approached things.

Interviewer: That’s huge. And were any of those internships offered a full year in advance, or was the timeline quicker?

Cole: My sophomore summer internship was more of a standard timeline—I applied and got it pretty quickly. But for my junior summer, the process started earlier. I think I got the offer around September or October of junior year.

Interviewer: That sounds right. Recruiting timelines can feel wild, especially when you’re applying in the fall for something that won’t happen until the following summer. Let’s talk about your full-time offer—huge congrats again. Was that connected to your junior summer internship?

Cole: Yeah, my full-time role is with Barclays, where I interned junior summer. I’m joining their Distressed Credit Research team, which I’m really excited about. At first, that group didn’t have a formal intern role when I joined, so I wasn’t on their desk initially. But halfway through the summer, they created a role, and I got to work on a project for them. I never officially rotated through their team, but I did the project, they liked what I produced, and they offered me the full-time job based on that.

Interviewer: That’s awesome. Out of curiosity—what was the project about? I’m not familiar with distressed credit research.

Cole: Sure! Distressed credit involves bonds issued by companies at high risk of bankruptcy. These bonds trade in the secondary market, and the job is to assess their value and risk. For my project, I analyzed a media company—dug into their historical financials and built out projections. Then I created a debt waterfall, which maps out what would happen to each bond if the company went bankrupt—basically, how much each bondholder would recover. I had to decide if it was worth investing in those bonds based on the risk and potential return. I’d done DCF models before, which helped with the structure, but this was more detailed. The team was super helpful, especially on the waterfall analysis. It was a deep dive into the media industry, too, which was fascinating. I had no idea how much goes into bringing a TV show to your screen—from production to licensing to distribution.

Interviewer: That’s so cool. There’s a whole invisible infrastructure behind every industry, and once you start pulling back the curtain, it’s fascinating. Alright, just two final questions—both more big picture. First: If there’s one thing people don’t usually know about Harvard that you wish they did, what would it be?

Cole: Hmm, that’s a great question. One fun fact I love is that if you want to learn any language at Harvard, they’ll find a teacher for you—even if no class currently exists.

Interviewer: Wait, really? Like an actual class?

Cole: Yeah! You get credit for it, and they’ll either create a course or connect you with a professor or instructor. I think that just shows how committed Harvard is to academic flexibility and excellence. They’ll make it happen.

Interviewer: That’s incredible. Did you take a language?

Cole: I did Spanish for a year. My brother, who’s also a student here, did this program where you go to Spain to complete your language requirement. He lived with a host family and took classes all in Spanish. He loved it.

Interviewer: I didn’t realize your brother was at Harvard too—very cool. Any other siblings?

Cole: Yeah, it’s the two of us here, and we’ve got three more siblings at home.

Interviewer: Love that. Okay, final question: If you had one piece of advice for making the most of the college experience, what would it be?

Cole: I’d say yes to as many things as you can realistically make time for. Classroom learning is huge, of course—but you learn just as much outside of class. Whether it’s joining clubs, meeting new people, or just trying something new like ceramics—those experiences shape you. For example, I’d never done ceramics before, but I picked it up in the basement of my dorm. It taught me how much I enjoy building things with my hands—and that I’ll need creative hobbies in my life, especially once I’m working full time. Sports don’t last forever, so it’s important to have outlets that bring you peace and joy. So yeah—try things, meet people from different backgrounds, mess up, learn from it. There’s a lot of growth that happens when you step outside your comfort zone.

Interviewer: That’s fantastic advice—and it loops back to what you said earlier about trying everything your first year, then figuring out what sticks. You’ve clearly made the most of it. Thank you again, Cole. This was such a fun and thoughtful conversation. Huge congrats, and we’ll pause it here.

Cole: Of course—thank you! I really appreciate your time.