Person-First: The X Factor

Three years ago, deep in the thick of my college search, I toured schools with a notebook. My family would pack up on a Thursday, and, if I was lucky, I’d get to skip school on Friday, too. 

We'd drive up and down the eastern seaboard like we were on tour. A different campus every day or two. You know the routine. Sit in on an info session. Walk the tour. Listen to some kid who looks like you did four years ago stand up and tell you why this place changed his life. 

Well, I’m Andrew Haas. Nice to meet you. Turns out, I'm that kid now. 

After every stop, I'd sit in the back seat with my notebook and make two columns. Pros and cons. Rankings, class sizes, business school placement. The stuff every family member tells you to track. But I had a third column, too. I labeled it "X-Factor." 

An X-factor is hard to define. It's a quality that makes something remarkably special, and you usually can't explain it until you've already felt it. I didn't know exactly what I was looking for. I just knew that pros and cons lists tell you what a school has. It’s inputs. The list doesn’t tell you what a school will let you become. 

When I got to my X-Factor column for St. Joe’s, here's what I wrote:  

“This place doesn't just teach you. It lets you build stuff.” 

I want to tell you what that turned into because it's the reason I'm standing here. 

When I got here, SJU had a small student investing club. It was green. Good people, good intentions, but no real capital, limited curriculum, no real stakes. I didn't want to join a club. I wanted to build a fund. So, I asked. And the Haub School said, “show us the plan.” And let me be candid about what that looked like at the start, because it wasn't glamorous. Our first meeting, it was me and our executive board in a room built for group projects. A few weeks later, I stood up in a classroom that seats ninety and pitched what we were building. Twelve people showed up. 

Here's the thing. Nobody in that room of twelve had proof this would work yet. What we had was belief, and a culture this school hands you before you've earned it. St. Joe’s doesn't just tell you to “go set the world on fire.” It backs you while you're still figuring out how to strike the match. 

So we kept going. We rewrote the constitution. Built a real curriculum, sector by sector, with the same rigor you'd find inside an actual investment bank. With faculty and administration standing behind it instead of in front of it, that room of twelve became something else entirely. Today we are the Saint Joseph's University Investing Club. Real capital. Real students making real decisions. And here's where it led. 

Members of this fund have gone on to internships in rooms at top Fortune 500 companies and private equity firms across this city. Not because SJU inflated anyone's resume, but because alumni at those firms recognize something specific when they see it on a Haub student. They see the same builder mentality that got 12 people in a 90-seat classroom to keep showing up anyway. They've seen that bet pay off before, so they place it again. 

That's what I mean by X-factor. It's not a ranking. It's not a building. It's whether an institution will hand you the keys before you feel ready, and then help you make sure you don't wreck the car. 

This fall, you're going to hear a lot of schools claim they believe in their students. I know I did. The real test isn't what they say. It's whether they’ll create an environment that allows a 19-year-old to build, and whether they stand close enough to catch them if they wobble. 

The beauty of it all is how I've watched this same thing happen to classmates. People chairing real University budget committees; people starting their own consulting practices while still full-time students; people walking into rooms most sophomores never get invited into. 

SJU is an incubator and vehicle for success. Because this place puts students in the room early and lets the work speak. 

So, here's what I'd ask you to do this morning: wherever your path leads you, keep your pros and cons list. Rankings and placements matter, and you should track them. But add a third column. Ask what happens after you knock on the door and say, “I want to do something real.” Ask what a school will do for you. 

Some schools will say check back later. SJU didn't. It said show us the plan, and then it stood behind us while we figured out the rest. For me, that column had one answer, and I've spent three years proving it right.  

Welcome to Saint Joseph's University where the Hawk Will Never Die.  

Now, go find your X-factor.