Class Profile
Getting into the Yale School of Management is no easy task—the school accepts just 14% of applicants for a student body of 382 full-time MBA students, making it one of the most selective schools in the BusinessWeek ranking. About one-third of those students are women and 28% are from foreign countries; about a fourth of Yale's U.S. students are minorities. The average GMAT score for SOM students is 718.
"Raw" Case Studies
Yale MBA candidates study "raw" cases, as opposed to the more traditional and simplified "cooked" cases at other schools. These raw cases are open-ended and draw from hundreds of pages of documents, including 10-Ks and analyst reports. Solving a complex case using many documents mimics the challenges they'll confront in the real world in a way that traditional cases do not, and allows students to analyze business problems from various viewpoints.
The school often brings in key players featured in the cases, such as Herb Allison, (pictured), former TIAA-CREF chairman and former CEO of Fannie Mae.
An Interdisciplinary Core
The Yale School of Management introduced its new curriculum in 2006, emphasizing interdisciplinary coursework and classes designed specifically for today's business world. Traditional single-subject core courses, such as marketing and financing, have been replaced with nine interdisciplinary courses, taught by teams of senior faculty, called Organizational Perspectives. The first-year core now includes classes such as "The Investor," "The Competitor," and "Sourcing & Managing Funds." The goal: to give students the tools they need to analyze business problems from multiple angles.
The School of Management
Yale University was chartered in 1701 as the Collegiate School to prepare students for "Publick employment in both Church & Civil State." Elihu Yale later donated money, 417 books, and a portrait of King George I to the school, which was named after him in 1718. Yale claims well-known grads from its earliest days—Nathan Hale and Noah Webster, for instance, graduated in the 18th century. The 19th century brought the founding of schools within the university: The 1800s are bookended by the founding of the Yale School of Medicine, in 1810, and the School of Music, in 1894. Women were admitted as graduate students starting in the mid 1800s, and in 1969, they were allowed to enroll in the undergraduate program. Today the school has 5,247 undergraduate and 6,169 graduate students.
The Yale School of Management was founded in 1974, offering a management degree only. In 1976, it introduced a PhD program, and the executive MBA program began in 2005. The MBA curriculum was overhauled in 2006 to bring a more interdisciplinary approach to the school's business education. The first-year core curriculum begins with "Orientation to Management" and is topped off with "Integrated Leadership Perspectives." Classes emphasize the school's multiperspective approach.
In the summer of 2009, the top-ranked business school will hold its first Pre-MBA Leadership Program for recent college grads and undergraduate juniors and seniors. Students in the program will learn business and leadership basics, the benefits of an MBA, and how the degree can be used for good.
Photos provided by Yale University and specified photographers. Caption information provided by the school and BusinessWeek research.
