Student Spotlight: Soumaya and Jacob talk Financial Math internships
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (2/27/2026) – For many students, internships serve as valuable pre-professional opportunities to gain hands-on, field-specific training and experience. We recently caught up with two Mathematics majors who participated in actuarial science internships in the past year. Check out what Soumaya and Jacob have to say below!
Soumaya Drover
Senior, CSE
Mathematics major with Financial and Actuarial Mathematics sub-plan
Statistics and Music Minors
Q: Where did you intern, and what was your role? What kinds of projects or responsibilities did you work on during your internship?
A: In summer 2025, I was an Actuarial Intern at Wakely Consulting Group in their Minneapolis office. For the first few weeks of the internship, the other interns and I assisted senior analysts and consulting actuaries in preparing Medicare bids to be submitted to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services for approval. These bids outline proposed insurance plans, benefits, premiums, etc. for the company's clients, health insurance providers. Other projects I worked on include conducting a high-cost profitability summary for ACA (Affordable Care Act) claimants, enhancing a client’s financial risk model using tools like SQL, VBA, and PowerPivot, and studying past trends in Part D benefits.
Q: What new technical or professional skills did you develop during your internship?
A: Every company has a set of technical tools they prefer to use to help with their daily operations and analyses; the ones I primarily practiced over the course of my internship were SQL and VBA. I also learned how to use PowerPivot, an extension of Microsoft Excel (which was also utilized quite frequently). Additionally, at a consulting company, interns typically work on multiple projects at once, all with different timelines or levels of urgency. Time management is something we all worked on every day, learning how to manage a very diverse workload and knowing what to prioritize and when. A less technical skill I learned through an in-person internship was the value of networking. Unfortunately, it’s true: networking does work, and having connections at a company you are working at, or in your industry/city in general, can go a long way if you put in the time and effort! Building relationships with analysts who had recently graduated from college, as well as senior consultants with 10+ years of experience under their belt, gave me lots of insight on the industry and career advice I might rely on in the future.
Q: How did working in an industry setting shape your understanding of the field?
A: In your classes, it’s not too difficult in theory to understand how the course subject can be applied to your desired field of work, or why what you are learning is relevant to your industry. Having a hands-on internship and doing work that actually contributes to the company allowed me to experience exactly how those subjects were being applied, and how they work in different contexts. Of course, when I decided to be an actuarial science major, I had a general idea of what actuaries do and their role in the insurance industry, but it wasn’t until interning that I had a clearer picture of what is actually involved in the career I want to pursue.
Q: What was the most valuable takeaway from your internship experience?
A: My first internship was at a company whose products were more on the life insurance/retirement and wealth benefits side of actuarial science, and while I learned great technical skills there that are applicable to any actuarial job, it taught me that that particular area of actuarial science was not something I was super interested in. Interning at Wakely solidified my preference to work primarily in health, either for health insurance companies or for a consulting firm whose clients are health providers. My point is, being able to actually do the work you are learning about, in an environment where your work has a real impact, can help you figure out pretty quickly if it is actually what you want to pursue in the future – or if you need to find something else that speaks to you.
Q: What advice would you give to other financial math students who are considering
internships?
A: Doing the work now to get connected, educate yourself, and gain experience in the industry is sooo worth it down the line! When it comes to finding a job for after you graduate, any way you can show you were involved in something you care about – whether that being a campus organization or a professional internship – shows that you are a dedicated, hardworking student. If you are considering joining the Actuary Club or Math Club, preparing for a career fair, or attending an event an employer is hosting on campus, putting yourself out there – while scary and often very nerve-wracking the first time you do it – is only setting yourself up for success for the experiences you want to have in the future.
Jacob Sharma
Junior, CSE
Mathematics major with Financial and Actuarial Mathematics sub-plan
Q: Where did you intern, and what was your role? What kinds of projects or responsibilities did you work on during your internship?
A: This past summer, I interned at UnitedHealth Group, more specifically OptumRx, on an actuarial services team. OptumRx is UnitedHealth Group’s pharmacy benefit manager. I worked with Excel mainly on projects about prescription drug rebate forecasts and I helped revamp a rebate pricing tool Excel model.
Q: Can you share an example of a time when something you learned in one of our college classes directly helped you solve a problem on the job?
A: One of my projects needed me to code in Visual Basic for Applications, or VBA, in Excel and although I did not learn how to use it specifically here at UMN, I did take CSCI 1133, intro to Python. My experience with Python allowed me to quickly learn how to use VBA. I was able to understand what the code was trying to do by just looking at it and I was able to quickly complete the task.
Q: Did the internship change the way you think about any topics you studied in your courses?
A: This whole experience did make me realize more that the classes I take in college are harder than most of the work you do on the job. These classes are really just introductions to topics so that when you are on the job you can relearn it/pick it up very quickly. Additionally, there will always be people who have more seniority or who’ve done the exact same thing you’re doing and are willing to help you so you should not be too pressured to know everything to a tee so you can do everything on your own and not bother anyone.
Q: What new technical or professional skills did you develop during your internship?
A: One technical skill that I developed was my Excel skills and presentation skills. A few of my projects were excel based and at the end of the summer I did an intern presentation highlighting what I did over the summer.
Q: How did working in an industry setting shape your understanding of the field?
A: This whole experience made me realize the importance of actually learning material and focusing less on memorization for exams. Being able to relearn a concept and knowing how and when to apply it while working is much more important than remembering a formula.
Learn more about the Financial and Actuarial Mathematics Sub-plan
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