Tariq Ali, MBA MD’15
My grandmother was paralyzed about a decade ago, and my parents brought her into our house and I helped take care of her and really began to value being someone else’s source of support and having that trust that they place in you to take care of them.
Everyone thinks that there’s one standard way to do medicine, but how it’s really taught and what things you can do with it really depends on the philosophy of the institution. Brown has the stereotype of being liberal—if you have an idea that you want to go with and it doesn’t fit within a conformed way that the school thinks you should do it Brown will let you go and run with it. When I told Brown that I’m going to take two years off to go and get my MBA, Brown said, “Go for it. We’ll do anything you need to support it.” That’s something that drew me to Brown—they lived up to that philosophy. They’re really open to letting students pursue any path that they want and to create any path they want.
Editor’s Note – Correction: The print and online versions of this article erroneously reported that Tariq Ali took his first two years off from medical school to pursue an MBA. Mr. Ali pursued his business degree having completed three years of medical study. The corrected version of the piece appears above.
