Nicole Karp

Unsure of what she wanted to do after high school, Nicole Karp took a gap year before earning an associate degree from Quinsigamond Community College in Worcester, Massachusetts. When it came time to transfer to a four-year college, Karp found that not every school would accept her two years’ worth of credits. She also wanted a school where she would have the opportunity to travel. 

At an open house at UMass Lowell’s Manning School of Business, she heard from students who had just returned from a conference in Maryland. She also learned that the school would accept all of her credits.

“This is perfect,” thought Karp, who chose UML — and ended up traveling to Orlando, Florida, during her junior year for the same Society for Advancement of Management conference.

An Honors College student with concentrations in international business and management, Karp took advantage of the Transfer Alliance Program (TAP), which paired her with a transfer student who had already successfully transitioned to UML.

“It was amazing to have someone who could guide me and help with small things. Even just being in a room full of people who were also lost was nice,” says Karp, who returned the favor by becoming a TAP ally as a senior and helping 30 new transfer students.

Originally from Dudley, Massachusetts, Karp chose to live on campus to fully immerse herself in the college experience. 

“I can walk to class, go see my friends, go to the gym — anything. The number of opportunities and just the environment itself is so nice,” she says. “It makes the busy schedule a little more manageable.”

And Karp is certainly busy. As president of the Joy Tong Women in Business student organization, she helps connect members with paid internships. She also got one of her own, working as a marketing communications intern for Habitat for Humanity of Greater Lowell.

Karp also landed a distribution operations internship with TJX for the summer before her senior year, supervising a team at a distribution center in Worcester.

“I took an operations class while I did the internship, so I applied what I was learning in real time,” she says.

Karp plans to gain some work experience in the area before pursuing a graduate degree overseas. She has dual citizenship in Sweden, where her mother is from, but Karp would prefer someplace warmer, like Spain.

Wherever she ends up, Karp is proud of how much she’s been able to accomplish in her two years at UML.

“Everything is an investment,” she says. “The more you push yourself, the more you’ll get from it.”