MIT Sloan School of Management

History

MIT Sloan began in 1914 as the engineering administration curriculum (or "Course XV" in the MIT parlance) in the MIT Department of Economics and Statistics. The scope and depth of this educational focus have grown steadily in response to advances in the theory and practice of management to today's broad-based management school. A program offering a master's degree in management was established in 1925. The world's first university-based executive education program - the Sloan Fellows - was created in 1931 under the sponsorship of Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., himself an 1895 MIT graduate, who was chairman of General Motors and has since been credited with creating the modern corporation. A Sloan Foundation grant established the MIT School of Industrial Management in 1952 with the charge of educating the "ideal manager", and the school was renamed in Sloan's honor as the Alfred P. Sloan School of Management.

In the 1960s, the school played a leading role in founding the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. In 1990, the MIT Entrepreneurship Center was founded at MIT Sloan, one of the few business school entrepreneurship centers in the world focused on high tech. It sponsors both the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition as well as the popular and unique Entrepreneurship Lab and Global Entrepreneurship Lab courses, which sponsor MBA students to work on-site with start-ups throughout the world. The school has grown to the point where management has become the second largest undergraduate major at MIT, and in 2005, an undergraduate minor in management was opened to 100 students each year. The Sloan Undergraduate Management Association [1] is the official representing student group for Sloan's undergraduate management program.

MBA

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The Tang Center, the principal teaching facility of MIT Sloan

The main professional degree awarded at MIT Sloan, prior to 1995, was the SM in Management – an advanced professional degree combining the course requirements of the more widely-known MBA degree with a formal Master of Science dissertation. The completion of a dissertation was previously an Institute-wide requirement for all master's students. An exception was made for MIT Sloan students starting in 1995, and the school began awarding the MBA degree entirely on the basis of coursework. While some members of the MIT community felt that removing the dissertation requirement would reduce the educational merit of the degree [2], it was accepted since this was the practice at all other major business schools. MIT Sloan continues to offer the SM degree for students who choose to complete master's dissertations, but the vast majority of students now receive an MBA degree and do not write a dissertation. In practice, MIT Sloan's SM and MBA have always been viewed as equivalent in industry, although the SM is preferred as preparation for doctoral work.

In 2006, MIT Sloan launched a new program for entrepreneurs within the MBA degree called the Entrepreneurship & Innovation (E&I) Program. The E&I program centers on starting and evolving emerging technology enterprises. The program seeks to formalize MIT's long-standing and leading entrepreneurship offerings. The 50-60 (per class) E&I students benefit from a specialized weekly seminar for entrepreneurs. In addition, a one-week trip to Silicon Valley is coordinated in conjunction with the MIT Sloan MediaTech club.

Of the approximately 2,600 applications received last year for the MBA and Leaders for Manufacturing programs, about 500 were admitted and 372 matriculated [3].

Ph.D.

Since 1960, MIT Sloan has offered a research-oriented Ph.D. program devoted to educating management scholars.[4] The Ph.D. program is organized into three broad areas – Management Science, Behavioral and Policy Sciences, and Economics, Finance, and Accounting – each of which has further areas of specialization. [5] It takes an average of five years to complete the program, and a typical schedule includes at least two years of coursework leading up to the general exam, and about three years of research leading up to the dissertation. Ph.D. students are also active in faculty-sponsored research and teaching. The program typically enrolls about 80 students, and many graduates take faculty positions at the world's most prestigious business schools. [6]

Of the 564 applicants from 54 countries for the 2006-2007 academic year, 25 were admitted (about 4%) and 16 matriculated. [7]

Academics and student life

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Foyer of the Alfred P. Sloan building, with a series of paintings depicting the onset of the industrial revolution

The MIT Sloan culture is similar to, but also distinct from, overall MIT culture, and is influenced most strongly by its MBA program. Most classes are taught in the Tang Center, although the school's live trading room is located in the basement of the original Alfred P. Sloan building. Courses are taught using both the case method as well as through lectures and team projects. The academic level of coursework is considered extremely rigorous by business school standards, with a greater emphasis on analytical reasoning and quantitative analysis than most top programs.

Academic rigor has a strong influence on the school's culture. The first semester, also known as the core, is the hardest of all semesters by design. Students are required to take the following courses: Economic Analysis for Business Decisions, Financial Accounting, DMD (Data, Models and Decisions), Organizational Processes, and Communication for Managers. In addition, they must choose to take either Finance Theory or Introduction to Marketing. In 2005, the students and faculty expressed solidarity against the core by wearing t-shirts that said "think outside the core." In 2006, the students placed their name-cards upside-down during the weeks where the workload was particularly demanding.

A staple of MIT Sloan life is the weekly C-Function, which stands alternately for "cultural function" or "consumption function". The school sponsors food and drink for all members of the MIT Sloan graduate community to enjoy entertainment organized by a specific campus cultural groups as well as parties with non-cultural themes. These functions are held on most Thursdays, often in the Walker Memorial building near the school. MIT Sloan students and alumni are informally nicknamed Sloanies.

MIT Sloan benefits from its proximity to the world's best engineering and science programs as well as from integration with MIT's world-renowned Economics and Finance programs, all of which are often ranked #1 in world rankings. Many of the world's most influential thought-leaders in finance and economics (including Black, Scholes, Merton, Samuelson, Myers and many more) and many of the most famous theories applied in business and on Wall Street (including Black-Scholes, System Dynamics, Operations Research, Quantitative Strategies, and many others) had their origins at MIT.

Students from both MIT and Harvard University frequently pursue simultaneous graduate degrees at the other respective institution, and many MIT Sloan students simultaneously complete degrees from Harvard Law School and the John F. Kennedy School of Government in particular. In addition, MIT Sloan offers its students the ability to freely cross-register for courses at Harvard Business School, one of the few pairs of leading business schools to have such an agreement.

Programs and centers

MIT Sloan is home to a number of research centers, including the MIT Entrepreneurship Center, the Financial Engineering Lab, the MIT Center for Digital Business, the System Dynamics Group, the Operations Management Group, and the Center for Innovation in Product Development. It also publishes the peer-reviewed management journal MIT Sloan Management Review.

Unlike many business schools, MIT Sloan does not offer an Executive MBA program or a part-time MBA program. It does offer a number of other specialized degree programs, including:

Leaders for Manufacturing (LFM) program is a dual-degree partnership program run by both MIT Sloan and the MIT School of Engineering that caters to students who are interested in manufacturing and operations careers. LFM students earn both an MBA (or SM in Management) from MIT Sloan as well as an SM in any participating engineering department at MIT, all within a 24 month timeframe. Currently, every engineering department except the Nuclear Engineering department participates in the LFM program.
MIT Sloan Fellows Program in Innovation and Global Leadership is a management program that caters to students with significant managerial experience. Depending on the curricula they choose, students can earn either an MBA, an SM in Management, or a Master's degree in the Management of Technology (MOT) in either 1 or 2 years of full-time study. Over the years, as MIT Sloan Fellows wanted more entrepreneurship courses, and MOT students sought general management courses, the traditional MIT Sloan Fellows program was merged with the innovation-focused Management of Technology (MOT) program in 2004 to create its newly named larger program, the MIT Sloan Fellows Program in Innovation and Global Leadership.
System Design and Management program is a joint program run by both MIT Sloan and the Engineering Systems Division of MIT, in which students are awarded a joint SM degree in Engineering and Management. Note that this is a single degree as opposed to the dual-degree that can be obtained through LFM. The SDM program can be completed either on a 13-month full-time basis, or through a 24-month part-time distance learning option.
Biomedical Enterprise Program or BEP is a joint partnership program run by MIT Sloan and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. Students can either complete the BEP program in conjunction with the regular MIT Sloan program or the MIT Sloan Fellows program and earn an SM degree in Health Sciences and Technology in addition to an MBA or SM in Management Science. The BEP also offers those who already hold a graduate degree in management the option of earning a 1-year SM degree in Health Sciences and Technology.