Jaden Wang (McIntire ’26) submitted his McIntire application at the last possible moment. Already pursuing a Computer Science major, he was convinced Commerce did not have much to add. Building with code satisfied a part of him. Working with people satisfied another. He had yet to find a place where his interests could come together.
During his time at the University of Virginia, he worked as a gallery educator at UVA’s Fralin Museum of Art, leading tours for K-12 students and chairing Writer’s Eye, a competition where participants respond to paintings in poetry and prose. At the same time, he worked for UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center developing tools to help Virginia localities navigate their transition to clean energy. As an Associate Software Engineer, the real work was transforming data into useful tools for solar developers’ decision-making. His boss wanted to communicate something complicated, and it fell to him to figure out how.
That instinct for translation was exactly what McIntire asked of him. A Strategy and Systems course with Professor Peter Gray pushed him to think about how data becomes comprehensible. A Communication course extended that thinking. “Especially during my internship,” he says, “I saw how being able to craft a compelling narrative became a valuable skill that made ideas worth getting behind. I always kind of underestimated it, but I learned how challenging it is and how much it matters.” He will return to Capital One full time in August as a Business Analyst, doing exactly that kind of work: turning data and operational complexity into insights that drive business decisions.
Block 6 of the Integrated Core was a different kind of lesson. His cohort worked through the fall semester on a project for Allianz, and the friendships built under that pressure lasted well past the final presentation. In Computer Science, lectures were large, and learning was largely independent. McIntire made collaboration the whole point. “I think what I really wanted from McIntire, and what I found, was that I really liked working with other people,” he says. “The McIntire experience has really given me that, being able to lean on people and see things from their perspective.”
The negotiation exercises in his Organizational Behavior course are a particular memory that stands out. The simulations brought out something in his classmates that ordinary class discussion never did, and he watched personalities surface in real time. The lessons proved practical. Months later, a friend was haggling over the price for taking graduation photos, and Wang found himself walking her through the logic: anchor high, know your floor. The course had given him a framework he did not expect to use outside of class.
Ultimately, the choice to come to the Comm School enhanced his skills and supported his wide range of interests, allowing him to explore poetry workshops alongside his Comm coursework. “My friends had no idea what I would major in,” he says about his early days on Grounds, “because I was switching so much. Religious Studies, English, Sociology.” The late McIntire application fit that pattern perfectly.
The application that Wang almost did not submit did not resolve the tension between code and art and people. It gave him a place to put all of it to work as he continues to pour his passion into writing and begins his professional life translating data into actionable business strategy.
