From Pommel Horse to Boardroom, Gymnast Brandon Ngai Could Become the Youngest MBA at 21

Three-time National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) gymnastics champion Brandon Ngai could become the youngest MBA at 21 to make the leap from the pommel horse to the boardroom next year.

Ngai from Sacramento, California, is finishing his first year at the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His story would be inspiring for the MBA aspirants who wonder if they are too young or old to enrol for the program.

• At age 21, three-time NCAA champion Brandon Ngai could become the youngest MBA  to graduate from Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• Having majored in aerospace engineering, he decided to enrol in the MBA Class of 2020 thinking that it would help him acquire a business foundation with the quantitative skills learnt through engineering
• Being almost too late to enrol in the Fall 2018 cohort and with only two weeks to study for the GMAT, he still scored 740 putting him among the top 3% in the nation.
• 91% of the MBA graduates at Gies got a job within three months of graduation, the averaging starting salary for the Class of 2018 totalled $91,500

Even as a 14-year-old, in his junior year of high school, he had joined part-time classes at the community college with students who were 21-22 years old. It didn’t take long before it becomes normal and people started viewing him based on the quality of his work and performance instead of his age, Ngai was quoted as saying in an article published in Forbes.

Having decided that engineering was not the career he wanted and being attracted to certain aspects of business, Ngai felt that an MBA would help him acquire a business foundation with the quantitative skills he learnt through engineering.

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Being almost too late to enrol in the Fall 2018 cohort and with only two weeks to study for the GMAT, he still scored 740 putting him among the top 3% in the nation.

At age 16, as a freshman majoring in aerospace engineering, he joined the University of Illinois men’s gymnastics team to become the youngest NCAA champion on record bagging the national pommel horse title at age 17.  

Ngai says he would like to pursue a career in the insurance or asset management industry. He is currently a catastrophe modelling intern at AXIS Capital inside the University of Illinois Research Park and he will intern this summer with USAA at their corporate office in San Antonio, Texas.

He finds the B-school to be extremely career-driven with career outcome as the number one priority. The cohort of about 50 students has a dedicated career advisor, who works directly with the students. While 91% of the MBA graduates got a job within three months of graduation, the averaging starting salary for the Class of 2018 totalled $91,500. On graduation, Ngai will be joining more than 62,000 Gies Business alumni worldwide.

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