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mbaMission’s Insider’s Guide Yale School of Management Yale University New Haven, CT

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mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Introduction

After more than a decade helping MBA applicants get Over the past eight years, Poets&Quants has be- into top business schools, we have learned what can come the foremost authority on the top business compel an admissions committee to send that cov- schools. Our mission has always been to help young eted letter of acceptance. Selecting the right MBA professionals with one of the most important—and program for your needs and developing a true un- potentially most expensive—decisions of their lives: derstanding of and familiarity with that program are whether to pursue an MBA. crucial in crafting a successful application. We have therefore invested hundreds of hours into research- This Insider’s Guide is part of a new editorial part- ing and examining the leading business schools—in- nership between Poets&Quants and mbaMission, cluding speaking with students, alumni, and other the world’s leading MBA admissions consulting frm. representatives—to construct these guides, with the We closely evaluated all such guides currently on the express goal of helping applicants like you make in- market, and I am confdent that you will not fnd a formed decisions about this important step in your more thorough analysis of an MBA program than education and career. mbaMission’s. These in-depth reports are well re-

searched and well written, offering the detail and

We hope you enjoy this guide and encourage you to examination applicants need to really understand visit us at www.mbamission.com for complete and de- a school’s culture, offerings, and outcomes. We are tailed analysis of the leading schools’ essay questions, thrilled to offer these guides to our readers for free, weekly essay-writing tips, MBA news and trends, and thanks to our new partnership. other valuable free information and resources. And for any advice you may need on applying to business Moreover, the guides are a great complement to the school, please contact us for a free 30-minute consul- daily coverage of MBA news, students, programs, tation. Our consultants are extensively trained to help and admissions practices on PoetsandQuants.com. applicants present themselves in the most interesting We hope you will visit our site often to stay informed and compelling way and take advantage of every op- about the programs that interest you and the one you portunity that might increase their chances of being ultimately attend. We will continue to provide the admitted to their target MBA program. most relevant and current resources on the MBA world

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mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Table of Contents

9 Te MBA Program in Context: Choosing the Yale SOM 10 Location: Urban Campus Versus College Town 13 Class Size: Smaller Versus Larger 16 Curriculum: Flexible Versus Mandatory Core 19 Pedagogy: Lecture Versus Case Method 21 Academic Specializations/Recruitment Focus: Resources and Employers 24 Alumni Base: Opportunities to Engage 26 Facilities: Shaping the Academic/Social Experience 28 Rankings and Reputation: Important Metrics or Arbitrary Measures?

34 Te Yale School of Management 34 Summary 35 Te Dean 37 Professional Specializations 37 Consulting 38 Entrepreneurship, Private Equity, and Venture Capital 41 Finance 43 General Management 44 Health Care and Biotechnology 46 International Business 48 Marketing 49 Nonproft/Social Entrepreneurship 53 Real Estate 54 Notable Professors and Unsung Heroes 57 Social/Community Life 58 Academic Summary 60 Admissions Basics 63 Yale School of Management Essay Analysis, 2018–2019 65 mbaMission’s Exclusive Interview with Yale School of Management’s Admissions Director Bruce DelMonico

73 Appendix: Yale SOM Facts and Figures 73 Basics 73 Class Profle (Class of 2019) 74 Employment Statistics (Class of 2017)

76 Bibliography Te MBA Program in Context: Choosing the Yale SOM

Over the years, we have met many aspiring MBA students who have tried to You may not fnd a identify their target schools and quickly become overwhelmed, wondering, single program that “How are the top MBA programs really different?” and “How do I choose the meets all your needs one that is right for me?” and preferences, but you should be able to Frustrated, some applicants ultimately choose schools based simply on identify ones that fulfll rankings or the opinions of friends or alumni. Although these inputs have a the factors that are place in your evaluative process, you should also do the necessary research most important to you. to fnd the program that is truly best for your personality and professional needs. In doing so, you will fnd signifcant differences between, for example, programs that have a class size in the low 200s and those that have classes of more than 900 students. As you are undoubtedly already aware, an MBA is a signifcant investment in the short term and a lifetime connection to an institution in the long term. We therefore strongly encourage you to take time now to think long and hard about this decision and thoroughly consider your options. We hope this guide will prove helpful to you in doing just that.

At mbaMission, we advise candidates evaluating their potential target schools to consider the following eight specifc characteristics (in no particular order) that shape MBA programs:

1. Location: Urban Campus Versus College Town

2. Class Size: Smaller Versus Larger

3. Curriculum: Flexible Versus Mandatory Core

4. Pedagogy: Lecture Versus Case Method

5. Academic Specializations/Recruitment Focus: Resources and Employers

6. Alumni Base: Opportunities to Engage

7. Facilities: Shaping the Academic/Social Experience

8. Rankings and Reputation: Important Metrics or Arbitrary Measures?

You will not likely fnd a single MBA program that meets all your needs and preferences across these eight criteria, but you should be able to identify schools that fulfll the factors that are most important to you. Although this guide is intended to familiarize you on a deeper level with this particular school, nothing will prove more valuable in your decision making than visiting the programs that appeal to you and experiencing them frsthand. Inevitably, no matter what your research may reveal, some schools will simply “click” with you, and others will not.

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Note: The authors and editors at mbaMission have made every effort to ensure the accuracy and timeliness of the information included in this guide. However, some discrepancies may exist or develop over time between what is presented here and what appears in the school’s offcial materials, as well as what may be offered by other content providers in print or online. For the most up-to-date information, always check with your target school directly. The opinions expressed by the people interviewed are those of the attributed individuals only and may not necessarily represent the opinion of mbaMission or any of its affliates.

We also wish to thank the students, alumni, faculty members, and administrators who gave generously of their time to provide valuable input for this guide.

1. Location: Urban Campus Versus College Town

Pursuing an MBA can be quite intense, and the environment and community Te environment surrounding the campus can profoundly affect and even shape your MBA and community experience. For example, imagine stepping out of a class at New York Univer- surrounding your sity’s (NYU’s) Stern School of Business and into the energetic bustle of New chosen school can York City’s West Village. Now imagine walking outside after a course at the profoundly afect and Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and being surrounded by the tranquil- shape your MBA ity and natural beauty of New Hampshire’s Upper Valley. Neither scenario is experience. necessarily “better” than the other, but one might appeal to you more.

An urban campus can undoubtedly offer social and cultural opportunities that a college town simply cannot match.

This is not to suggest, however, that college towns are devoid of culture—indeed, intense intellectual and cultural programs exist in college towns precisely because the academic institution is at the core of the community.

While schools in college towns tout their close-knit atmosphere and the tight bonds classmates form in such a setting, this environment can be welcoming for some students and overwhelming for others. In contrast, urban campuses are more decentralized, with students often living in various parts of a city and even in the surrounding suburbs. Someone who has a greater need for privacy or personal space might therefore prefer an urban environment. In addition, in major urban centers, some students—particularly those who lived in the city before enrolling

Urban Campus Schools Urban/College Hybrid Schools College Town Schools

Chicago Booth Northwestern Kellogg Cornell Johnson Columbia Business School Stanford GSB Dartmouth Tuck Harvard Business School UC Berkeley Haas Duke Fuqua MIT Sloan UCLA Anderson Michigan Ross NYU Stern Yale SOM UVA Darden UPenn Wharton

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 in business school—may already have well-developed social groups, and this scenario may again be better for those who fnd an academically and socially all-encompassing environment less attractive.

One aspect of the MBA experience that candidates often fail to consider when evaluating their school options is weather. Although factoring climate into your school choice may initially seem superfcial, if you know you cannot comfortably manage frigid conditions or soaring temperatures, certain programs should be stricken from your list. We encounter many applicants each year who wisely stave off a potentially miserable experience by choosing to not apply to certain schools in locations they just do not feel are “livable” for them.

In addition, housing costs are one expense that many applicants do not stop to consider before choosing a school to target. By researching real estate prices at the top programs, we found that the cost differential between renting a one-bedroom apartment in a Midwestern college town and renting one in New York City, for example, can be quite signifcant—adding up to tens of thousands of dollars on a cumulative basis across two years. This is an important factor to include as you weigh your options and calculate your projected budget.

In summary, a college town can be appealing for some candidates because its smaller size tends to create strong bonds within the business school’s community, though for others, the lack of privacy could be undesired or overwhelming. Furthermore, some fnd a slower pace of life calming and comfortable, whereas others crave the energy and bustle of a city. If you strongly prefer one or the other, you should be able to quickly eliminate certain schools from your list.

Average Monthly Rent for a One-Bedroom Apartment

NYU Stern New York, NY $3,157 within .20 mile radius of campus

MIT Sloan Cambridge, MA $3,041 within .75 mile radius of campus

Harvard Business School Cambridge, MA $2,777 within .33 mile radius of campus

UCLA Anderson Los Angeles, CA $2,684 within .50 mile radius of campus

Stanford GSB Stanford, CA $2,577 within 1.50 mile radius of campus

UC Berkeley Haas Berkeley, CA $2,349 within .75 mile radius of campus

Columbia Business School New York, NY $2,134 within .50 mile radius of campus

UPenn Wharton Philadelphia, PA $1,396 within .75 mile radius of campus

Michigan Ross Ann Arbor, MI $1,292 within .50 mile radius of campus

Northwestern Kellogg Evanston, IL $1,291 within .75 mile radius of campus

Chicago Booth Chicago, IL $1,270 within 1.0 mile radius of campus

Yale SOM New Haven, CT $1,240 within .50 mile radius of campus

Dartmouth Tuck Hanover, NH $1,186 within 3.0 mile radius of campus

Duke Fuqua Durham, NC $1,140 within 1.5 mile radius of campus

Cornell Johnson Ithaca, NY $992 within .75 mile radius of campus

UVA Darden Charlottesville, VA $826 within 1.50 mile radius of campus

According to Rentometer.com, accessed May 2018.

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 The city of New Haven, Connecticut, is home to Yale University, which is both the city’s largest employer

(nearly 14,000 people) and biggest tourist attraction, reportedly drawing more than 550,000 visitors a year.

Located approximately 80 miles from New York City (a trip of approximately an hour and 45 minutes to two hours via the Metropolitan Transportation Authority) and 135 miles from Boston (an approximately two and a half hour trip on Acela Express), New Haven is well situated for accessing the attractions of either vibrant urban environment.

This city of roughly 130,000 residents can be considered dynamic in its own right, however, offering both natural and cultural diversions. The Yale University Art Gallery features masterpieces from artists such as

Van Gogh and Rubens, and regional theater is prominent in New Haven. The Chapel Street Historic District, a bustling area several blocks south of the Yale School of Management (SOM), is home to shops and restaurants and adjacent to the New Haven Green. Outdoor enthusiasts have many opportunities to enjoy nature in and around New Haven: picnic in New Haven Green, hike the summit in East Rock Park for views of Long

Island Sound, or travel further afeld to the White Mountains of New Hampshire to mountain bike or hike in summer or ski in winter. The beach is only 15 minutes away, perfect for a clambake on a sunny day.

New Haven has an active nightlife, with SOM students frequenting bars and restaurants along Chapel Street or meeting up at Gryphon’s Pub, a social club where a small annual fee can eliminate the nightly cover charge. (See more about Gryphon’s in the Social/Community Life section.) Yale students also have many ethnic varieties of food from which to choose in New Haven, from French to Indian, Korean, and Cuban. How- ever, “Yalies” appear to take pizza most seriously. Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana, known simply as Pepe’s and located in New Haven, has earned a reputation as one of the country’s top pizzerias, and, in 2013, was recognized by Zagat for having Connecticut’s best pizza. Still, other options are also available throughout

New Haven, including Pepe’s longtime rival Sally’s, as well as Est, Est, Est and Modern Apizza, all close to the SOM.

“New Haven gets a bad rap,” said a frst-year student with whom mbaMission spoke, “but I love it! It’s a great college town with plenty going on. It’s close-knit; you see your classmates on the street. You can get to the beach or hiking. It’s my favorite place I’ve ever lived.”

Although graduate student housing is available, the majority of SOM students (an estimated 95%, according to a frst year we interviewed) live off campus in the neighborhoods surrounding the university. The East

Rock area, also known as “graduate student ghetto” or “Grad Haven,” is on the Yale Shuttle line and has rents averaging approximately $1,500 per month for a two-bedroom apartment. A frst-year student told mbaMission that one housing complex popular with SOM students is Mansfeld, which constitutes of fve buildings a block from campus and less than fve minutes from the school. The Yale graduate housing website highlights the residences as particularly suitable for roommates, couples, and families. Some students do have cars, and others walk, but New Haven is generally not considered bike-friendly, in part because of its harsh winters.

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 2. Class Size: Smaller Versus Larger Refect on your past academic and work Another element that affects the character of a school’s MBA experience is environments to class size. You might want to refect on your high school, college, and work determine whether environments to help you determine whether you would be more comfort- you would be more able in a larger class or a smaller one—or whether this is even a consider- comfortable in a larger ation for you at all. or smaller class%or whether this is a Students at smaller schools (which we defne as having approximately 350 consideration for you students or fewer per class) tend to interact with most of their peers and at all. professors at some point during the typical two-year MBA period. Thus, the smaller schools are generally considered more “knowable,” and their communities tend to be quite closely knit. Also, consider that assuming a leadership position is easier in a smaller environment, because, for example, the Finance Club may have only one president at both a small school and a large school, but competition for such a position would obviously be greater in the larger program.

Some individuals might prefer to be at a larger school where they can better maintain their anonymity if they so choose. A student at a school with close to 900 people or more in each class will not likely get to know each and every one of his/her classmates by the end of the program, and some people might prefer this. Further, advocates of larger classes tout the advantage of being able to interact with more people during one’s MBA experience—

and to thereby develop a broader and more robust

Class Size network of peers. Note that many schools divide stu-

900 to 1,000 Harvard Business School dents into smaller groups—called “sections,” “clus-

800 to 900 UPenn Wharton ters,” “cohorts,” or even “oceans”—in which approxi-

700 to 800 Columbia Business School1 mately 60–90 students take certain classes together,

500 to 600 Chicago Booth and this approach can help foster a stronger sense of

400 to 500 Northwestern Kellogg community within the larger programs. Duke Fuqua Michigan Ross The Yale SOM is on the smaller side for a business Stanford GSB MIT Sloan school, admitting only 348 students in its Class of

300 to 400 NYU Stern 2019. However, this number has been rising over UCLA Anderson the past few years from a historical fgure of ap- Yale SOM UVA Darden proximately 230, with 323 for the Class of 2016, 326

200 to 300 Dartmouth Tuck for the Class of 2017, and 334 for the Class of 2018. UC Berkeley Haas “While other business schools have been stagnant or Cornell Johnson declining in applications, SOM has enjoyed a steady

Schools are listed in order from largest class to smallest within growth over recent years,” remarked an associate each category. dean of the school in a January 2014 Yale Daily News

1 Includes J-Term students. article. Despite its comparatively smaller size, the

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 School (Class of 2019) Women International Minorities

Chicago Booth 40% 36% 27%1

Columbia Business School 41% 43% 34%1

Cornell Johnson 31% 33% 31%1

Dartmouth Tuck 44% 29% 23%1

Duke Fuqua2 35% 39% 20%

Harvard Business School 42% 35%3 25%1,3

Michigan Ross 43% 34% 23%

MIT Sloan 42% 33% NA

Northwestern Kellogg 42% 35% 25%1

NYU Stern 38% 37%4 29%

Stanford GSB 40% 41%3,4 29%1

UC Berkeley Haas 40% 39% 29%1

UCLA Anderson 38% 30% 28%

UPenn Wharton 44% 33% 33%1

UVA Darden 39% 34% 20%1

Yale SOM 43% 45%3,4 27%1,3

1 Specifed as U.S. minorities.

2 Fuqua offers statistics on its website to represent a “typical” class.

3 Includes permanent U.S. residents.

4 Includes dual citizens.

SOM boasts a diverse student body, which for the Class of 2019 includes 43% women, 45% international

students, and 27% U.S. minority students (12% U.S. underrepresented minorities).

At orientation, the incoming frst-year class is divided into cohorts of approximately 70 students each

(named after colors: blue, green, silver, and gold), and the multiday event allows incoming students bond

with the other students in their cohort via a number of social events, which in recent years have included

a Chili Cookoff competition and the Cohort Cup competition. During the Cohort Cup, students compete in

such events as tug-of-war and a dizzy bat race to “determine which cohort reigns supreme,” wrote a frst-

year student on the SOM community blog. The Cohort Cup culminates in the Cohort Olympics, where the

winning cohort of the year is announced. “The cohort experience at SOM reaches far beyond the classroom

in its ability to shape the larger Yale SOM experience,” commented another frst year on the school’s web-

site.

Students take all core courses with their cohort throughout the frst year, and each student is assigned to a

seven- or eight-person learning team. Learning teams are designed to be diverse, both professionally and

personally. “On my own learning team, there are students from Brazil, China, Turkey, and the West and East

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Most Common Undergraduate Major for Incoming Students (Class of 2019)

Chicago Booth Business 27%

Columbia Business School Tied: Business, Social Science 32%

Cornell Johnson Business 34%

Dartmouth Tuck Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences 55%

Duke Fuqua NA NA

Harvard Business School Economics/Business 45%

Michigan Ross Economics/Business 36%

MIT Sloan Engineering 32%

Northwestern Kellogg Economics/Business 49%

NYU Stern Business 36%

Stanford GSB Humanities/Social Sciences 44%

UC Berkeley Haas Business 21%

UCLA Anderson Business 27%

UPenn Wharton Humanities 41%

UVA Darden NA NA

Yale SOM Humanities and Social Sciences 30%

Coasts of the [United States] with backgrounds in consulting, nonproft, engineering, education, fnance,

and government,” noted a frst-year student on the school’s website, adding, “We spend time together

outside of class working on assignments, but every now and then we get together for dinner to relax and

learn more about one another outside the classroom.”

From what we learned in our research for this guide, the environment at the Yale SOM is intimate and

close-knit. Many students seem to choose the school for just this reason, citing the smaller community and

welcoming environment. A frst-year student told mbaMission that the “advantages of the small class, the

brand name, and how close it [the school] is to New York City” numbered among his top reasons for choos-

ing the SOM. Students generally get to know everyone on campus. Small class size does not necessarily

translate into limited opportunities, however. With more than 50 clubs available, prospects for leadership

are numerous.

In addition, smaller class size typically translates to professor availability. The Yale SOM has more than 160

faculty members, and such a low student-to-teacher ratio typically means that professors are readily ac-

cessible. A second-year student we interviewed described the school’s professors as “very approachable.”

Coinciding with the 2014 inauguration of a larger building (see the Facilities section for details on this

development), the SOM announced plans to increase its class size to approximately 300 students by 2017.

With the most recent incoming class (the Class of 2019) numbering 348, the program has clearly attained

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Year-Over-Year Class Class Class Class Class Class Class Class Class Profle Data: Yale SOM of of of of of of of of 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012

Class Size 348 334 326 323 291 249 228 231

Median GMAT 730 730 720 720 714 717 719 722

GMAT Range (Middle 80%) 690– 690– 690– 680– 690– 660– 680– 680– 760 760 760 760 740 760 770 770

Median GPA 3.69 3.65 3.63 3.56 3.57 3.55 3.51 3.52

GPA Range (Middle 80%) 3.38– 3.31– 3.28– 3.17– 3.36– 3.18– 3.08– 3.12– 3.94 3.91 3.88 3.87 3.80 3.87 3.87 3.95

Female Students 43% 43% 40% 37% 39% 35% 36% 37%

U.S. Minorities 27% 28% 22% 25% 22% 25% 25% 20%

U.S. Underrepresented 12% 13% 10% 10% 11% NA NA NA Minorities

International Students 45% 46% 40% 32% 27% 32% 26% 26%

this goal. SOM Dean Edward “Ted” Snyder described the intended changes to the class size in a March

2012 Yale Daily News article, noting that the SOM planned to preserve the intimate feel it is known for by

increasing faculty size along with the class size. Moreover, the experience of the frst-year core curriculum

would not change, because the school planned to simply add a section rather than adding more students

to existing sections. Assistant Dean and Director of Admissions Bruce DelMonico explained in a February

2012 SOM News article, “This increase will help in a number of areas, such as making the school even more

attractive to recruiters and expanding [students’] future network, but it is small enough to preserve the

culture and connectivity that make the Yale MBA experience distinctive.”

3. Curriculum: Flexible Versus Mandatory Core

Many business schools have a “core” curriculum—a standard series of cours- Te rigidity or es that all students must take. However, these core requirements can vary fexibility of a school’s tremendously from one program to the next. For example, one school may frst-year curriculum teach its required curriculum for the entire frst year, meaning that students afects students’ will not take any elective courses until their second year, whereas another education and MBA program may stipulate only one or two required courses. socialization.

The rigidity or fexibility of a school’s required curriculum affects students’ education and socialization. Regardless of their professional experience, students at a school with a rigid core curriculum must all take the same classes. At some schools, for example, even CPAs must take the required foundational accounting course, whereas at others, students can waive selected classes if they can prove a certain level of profciency. Again, both approaches have pros and cons, and what those are depends on your perspective.

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Proponents of a rigid core curriculum would argue that academics Average GMAT of Incoming Students understand what skills students need to become true managers (Class of 2019) and that when students “overspecialize” in one area, their over- Chicago Booth 730 all business education can ultimately suffer. A signifcant body of Columbia Business School 724 academic writing has been devoted to critiquing programs that Cornell Johnson 700 give students a narrow view of business, notably Henry Mintz- Dartmouth Tuck 722 berg’s Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Duke Fuqua NA Managing and Management Development (Berrett-Koehler, 2004) Harvard Business School1 730 and Rakesh Khurana’s From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The So- Michigan Ross 716 cial Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unful- MIT Sloan 722 flled Promise of Management as a Profession (Princeton Univer- Northwestern Kellogg 732 sity Press, 2007). NYU Stern 714

Stanford GSB 737 Advocates of the core curriculum approach would also argue UC Berkeley Haas 725 that having all students take the same classes creates a common UCLA Anderson 716 language and discussion among the classmates because of the UPenn Wharton 730 shared experience. In addition, proponents contend that a rigid core curriculum facilitates learning, because students who have UVA Darden 713 1 applicable direct experience bring that knowledge and insight Yale SOM 730 into the classroom and can thereby help teach others. Finally, 1 Represents median rather than average. schools with mandatory cores generally keep students together in their sections for several months, if not an entire academic year, and students who interact every day in this way ultimately forge strong bonds. This sustained contact and connection can create a deep sense of community among the students.

In contrast, those who would argue in favor of a more fexible curriculum feel that students beneft from the opportunity to specialize immediately—that time is short, and students need power and choice in preparing for their desired careers. So if, for example, a student intended to enter the world of fnance, an advocate of fexibility would

argue that the student should

Can Waive/ Cannot Waive/ be able to study fnance in depth Test Out of Classes Test Out of Classes throughout the MBA program, pos- Chicago Booth Harvard Business School sibly even from day one, so as to Cornell Johnson MIT Sloan Columbia Business School Stanford GSB gain as much experience as possi- Dartmouth Tuck UVA Darden ble in this area—especially before Duke Fuqua Yale SOM Michigan Ross interviewing for a summer intern- Northwestern Kellogg ship. Furthermore, proponents for NYU Stern fexible curricula caution that ex- UC Berkeley Haas UCLA Anderson perienced students could end up UPenn Wharton “wasting” hours taking courses in

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 subjects in which they already have expertise. Finally, they would assert that a fexible schedule allows students the opportunity to meet a greater number and wider variety of their classmates.

In 2006, the Yale SOM completely revamped its MBA curriculum. The revised curriculum, as Assistant Dean

and Director of Admissions Bruce DelMonico stated in a 2009 Bloomberg Businessweek online interview,

“reimagined what an MBA education is all about. We replaced the traditional functionally discrete silo

courses with a more multidisciplinary integrated MBA program.” And in a 2011 article on the Yale SOM News

web page (“Ten Questions from Prospective Students”), DelMonico further describes the SOM’s integrated

curriculum as “designed to help [students] see whole problems and draw on all the resources necessary to

solve them. The perspectives-based approach prepares Yale SOM students to look across functions within

a particular organization, as well as across organizations, industries, and sectors, when making strategic

decisions.”

First-year students at the Yale SOM take a series of core courses over four seven-week quarters, which

are designated as Fall 1 and 2 and Spring 1 and 2. The frst years gain a common framework and language

for their MBA experience in the Orientation to Management series during the Fall 1 quarter. Among the

seven total courses in this series are “Basics of Economics,” “Introduction to Negotiation,” and “Managing

Groups and Teams.” Orientation to Management introduces concepts that will be broadly explored in sub-

sequent courses. In addition, students begin to explore their career goals during this time.

In Fall 2, students reach what the SOM refers to in its published materials as “the heart of the frst-year

curriculum” with the Organizational Perspectives series. This series of ten multidisciplinary courses is

designed to explore internal and external managerial roles as they interact rather than as discrete func-

tions, such as fnance or strategy. Among the courses offered during Organizational Perspectives is “Inves-

tor,” in which students explore the impact of behavioral research on the general comprehension of mar-

ket dynamics. Within the series, students examine the inner workings and external aspects of businesses

through courses such as “Innovator,” “The Global Macroeconomy,” “Competitor,” and “State and Society.”

(See the Academic Summary section for a full listing of all core courses.)

The Leadership Development Program, which all students are required to take part in, runs through the

length of the entire program, beginning at orientation. The program features classes and guest speakers

and “[gives students] a maximum opportunity to build the knowledge and experience [they] need to lead

teams and organizations,” according to the school’s website.

With the implementation of the SOM’s integrated curriculum in 2006, students were no longer permitted

to waive core courses. DelMonico explained this decision to mbaMission, saying, “We want everyone to go

through the same shared experience here at Yale SOM. If people are able to pick and choose which courses

they take from the outset—as they can at other schools—then that detracts from the community-building

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 nature of the experience; it just devolves into a bunch of people on their own tracks doing their own things.

And that’s not what we’re about.”

In addition, DelMonico pointed out that given that the Organizational Perspectives series is built on the

common knowledge students gain in Orientation to Management, “having everyone take all the core class-

es ensures that everyone is on the same page as we go into the Organizational Perspectives classes, which

rely on common understanding and shared knowledge to be effective. It really amplifes the learning.” The

added beneft, DelMonico noted, is that the required core “sets the tone for the peer-to-peer learning that

we expect will take place throughout people’s time here at Yale and beyond as they move through their

post-MBA careers.”

Students begin taking electives in Spring 1 of the frst year and can either choose exclusively from SOM

course offerings or look further afeld to the university’s law, architecture, environmental studies, and oth-

er departments to expand their knowledge base. A second-year student stressed to mbaMission that the

value of these opportunities could not be overstated, noting, “almost everybody takes advantage of the

large resource available in Yale University.” In the second half of the frst year (Spring 1 and Spring 2), stu-

dents take four units of electives, and the second year of the MBA program is made up entirely of electives.

The 2006 curriculum restructuring also added an international component, so the school now specifes

international travel as a requirement of graduation—and was the frst MBA program in the United States to

do so. Called the Global Studies Requirement, this facet of the school’s integrated curriculum is intended,

explains the SOM’s site, to help students “gain a meaningful exposure to complex issues facing business

and society in different regions of the world.” (Learn more about this component of the integrated curricu-

lum in the International Business section under Professional Specializations.)

4. Pedagogy: Lecture Versus Case Method

Students will likely encounter multiple styles of learning while in business Students will school—including participating in simulations, listening to guest speakers, encounter many and partaking in hands-on projects—but the two most common MBA learn- diferent styles of ing styles are case method and lecture. learning during their time at business Pioneered by HBS, the case method, or case-based learning, requires stu- school, but the two dents to read the story (called a “case”) of either a hypothetical or a real most common are case protagonist who is facing a managerial dilemma. As the student reads, he/ method and lecture. she explores the protagonist’s dilemma and has access to various quantitative and qualitative data points meant to facilitate further analysis. (Cas-

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 es can vary in length but are typically 10–20 pages long.) After Average GPA of Incoming Students reading and studying the entire case, the student generally un- (Class of 2019) derstands the profundity of the problem and is typically asked Chicago Booth 3.6 a simple question: “What would you do?” In other words, how Columbia Business School 3.5 would the student act or react if he/she were in the protagonist’s Cornell Johnson 3.36 place? What decision(s) would the student make? Dartmouth Tuck 3.51

Duke Fuqua NA After completing his/her independent analysis of the case, the Harvard Business School 3.71 student typically meets with the members of his/her study group Michigan Ross NA or learning team (if the school in question assigns such teams) MIT Sloan 3.49 for further evaluation. Together, the group/team members ex- Northwestern Kellogg 3.6 plore and critique one another’s ideas and help those students NYU Stern 3.48 who may have had diffculty understanding particular aspects Stanford GSB1 3.74 of the issue or progressing as far on their own. Often, though UC Berkeley Haas 3.71 not always, the team will establish a consensus regarding the UCLA Anderson NA actions they would take in the protagonist’s place. Then, in class, UPenn Wharton 3.6 the professor acts as facilitator and manages a discussion of the case. Class discussions can often become quite lively, and the UVA Darden 3.5 2 professor will guide students toward resolving the dilemma. Yale SOM 3.69

Sometimes, the professor will ultimately reveal the protagonist’s 1 U.S. schools, 4.0 scale only. decision and the subsequent results—or even bring the actual 2 Median GPA listed. protagonist into the classroom to share and discuss the case’s progression and outcomes in person.

In short, the case method focuses primarily on the analytical process and illustrates that the problems presented have no clear-cut right or wrong responses. For a student to disagree with the protagonist’s chosen path—even after it has proved to be successful—is not unusual. After all, another approach (or even inaction) may have pro- duced an even better result.

Note that case-based learning is not specifc to one academic discipline. Cases are available in fnance, strategy, operations, accounting, marketing, and still other areas. Further, many cases are interdisciplinary, meaning that they address more than one area at a time, such as requiring students to think about how a fnancial decision might affect the operations of a manufacturing company or the ways in which a marketing decision might involve signifcant fnancial considerations. Importantly, students in case environments are often graded on their “con- tribution” to the class discussion (measured by the level of one’s participation in discussions and analysis, not on the frequency with which one offers “correct” answers), so the case method is not for those who are uncom- fortable speaking in class. However, it can be incredibly helpful for those who want or need to practice and build confdence speaking publicly.

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Lecture is the method of learning that is familiar to most people—the professor stands in front of the class and explores a theory or event, facilitating discussion and emphasizing and explaining key learning points. Often, students have read chapters of a textbook beforehand and have come to class with a foundation in the specifc area to be examined that day. Although the case method gives students a context for a problem, those who favor lecture tend to believe that the case method is too situation specifc and therefore prefer a methodical exploration of theory that they feel can be broadly applied across situations. In lecture classes, the professor and his/her research or theory are technically paramount, though students still participate, challenge ideas, and debate issues.

Note that at some schools, professors may alternate between cases and lectures within a single semester of classes.

Yale SOM uses a variety of teaching methods, including case study, lecture, and experiential methods.

The school makes much on its website of its development of the “raw” case method—versus traditional

“cooked” cases. Cooked cases are “short documents that present a business problem in a neatly pack-

aged, single point of view narrative with a sure answer,” explained a 2008 Yale Daily News article. In con-

trast, the SOM’s raw cases are delivered via the Internet, using such sources as media reports, 10-K flings,

expert analysis, and faculty notes.

The school further differentiates its raw case format from cooked cases by noting on its website that while

the latter involves “boiling a complex situation down to a ten-page narrative and a single decision point,

raw cases present you with extensive data about a real situation, often including video interviews with

some of the key actors.” The school’s raw format culls from original documents to look at multiple points

of view. Notes are available alongside—rather than separate from—the data. In addition, instead of the ap-

proximately six-month lag that is typically required to bring a cooked case from event to production, the

Yale SOM’s cases are presented in real time.

In looking at SEC documents and interviews with company principles, with information sometimes reach-

ing into the thousands of pages of raw data, students must not only work through complicated organi-

zational perspectives but also develop the time management skills to do so effectively and effciently. A

second-year student we interviewed felt that the raw format worked especially well with the integrated

curriculum at the SOM, stating, “Done in isolation, it may not work as well.” This student went on to say that

despite the downsides of working in the raw format (“It takes lots of time, and you can’t do it alone”), he

felt that this approach better prepared him to face real-life business issues.

5. Academic Specializations/Recruitment Focus: Resources and Employers

Schools’ brands and reputations develop over time and tend to endure, even when the programs make efforts to change them. For example, many applicants still feel that Kellogg is only a marketing school and that Chi-

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 cago Booth is only for people interested in fnance, even though both pro- Do not merely accept grams boast strengths in many other areas. Indeed, this is the exact reason stereotypes but truly mbaMission started producing these guides in 2008—we wanted applicants consider the breadth to see beyond these superfcial “market” perceptions. Make sure you are and depth of resources not merely accepting stereotypes but are truly considering the breadth and available at each depth of resources available at each school. school.

We have dedicated the majority of this guide to exploring the principal professional specializations for which resources are available at this particular school, and we encourage you to fully consider whether the MBA program meets your personal academic needs by supplementing the information here with additional context from the school’s career services offce, by connecting with the heads of relevant clubs on campus, and perhaps even by reaching out to alumni in your target industry.

Top Industries: Yale SOM 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010

Consulting 35.9% 30.8% 29.3% 26.0% 22.0% 25.6% 23.0% 16.0%

Finance 21.8% 19.6% 24.5% 25.5% 25.4% 25.0% 39.0% 30.0%

Consumer Packaged Goods/Retail1 8.8% 12.1% 8.9% 9.4% 8.7% 11.3% 6.0% 7.0%

Technology 14.1% 11.7% 14.2% 10.4% 16.8% 8.9% 7.0% 9.0%

Nonproft 5.2% 4.6% 4.4% 5.7% 7.5% 5.4% 9.0% 11.0%

Energy 2.0% 4.2% 3.1% 6.3% 1.7% 3.6% 2.0% 8.0%

1 In 2015 the SOM began reporting Consumer Packaged Goods and Retail (previously listed as “Consumer Products/Retail”) separately. We combine data from 2015 onward in order to allow for year-to-year comparison.

The school’s innovative, integrated curriculum is “carefully planned to build [students’] understanding of

the whole organization, eventually building to big questions of business’s impact on society,” claims the

SOM website. Rather than focusing on a particular set of skills, this comprehensive approach to studying

business is meant to fulfll the school’s founding mission of “educating leaders for business and society.”

A large percentage of 2017 SOM graduates entered positions in the fnance industry (21.8%), and 26.6%

entered jobs with a fnance/accounting function. A signifcant portion of the graduating class entered con-

sulting (48.0% by function, 35.9% by industry), and the technology industry claimed 14.1% of the school’s

2017 MBAs. Applicants in business school discussion boards still seem to consider the Yale SOM primarily

a “fnance” school, though, and the employment statistics typically appear to support this perception de-

spite the consulting reign within the Class of 2017. Overall, the median starting salary for SOM graduates in

2017 was $125,000 domestically, $104,000 abroad.

The school’s mission—“Educating leaders for business and society”—seems to hint that ethics is a sig-

nifcant area of focus at the SOM. The 2019 and 2018 U.S. News & World Report specialty rankings of the

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 School Top Industry for 2017 Graduates % Entering the Industry

Chicago Booth Consulting 32.6%

Columbia Business School Financial Services 34.4%

Cornell Johnson Financial Services 33.0%

Dartmouth Tuck Consulting 33.0%

Duke Fuqua Consulting 33.0%

Harvard Business School Financial Services 31.0%

Michigan Ross Consulting 32.7%

MIT Sloan Consulting 32.1%

Northwestern Kellogg Consulting 32.9%

NYU Stern Financial Services 32.4%

Stanford GSB Finance 32.0%

UC Berkeley Haas Technology 36.9%

UCLA Anderson Technology 30.1%

UPenn Wharton Financial Services 32.7%

UVA Darden Consulting 34.0%

Yale SOM Consulting 35.9%

Most Common Pre-MBA Industry (Class of 2019)

Chicago Booth Consulting 21%

Columbia Business School Financial Services 29%

Cornell Johnson Financial Services 26%

Dartmouth Tuck Consulting 21%

Duke Fuqua Tied: Consulting, Financial Services 19%

Harvard Business School Consulting 16%

Michigan Ross Finance 19%

MIT Sloan Financial Services 21%

Northwestern Kellogg Consulting 27%

NYU Stern Financial Services 29%

Stanford GSB Investment Management/Private Equity/Venture Capital 21%

UC Berkeley Haas Consulting 25%

UCLA Anderson Finance 25%

UPenn Wharton Consulting 26%

UVA Darden NA NA

Yale SOM NA NA

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 country’s MBA programs place the SOM number one in the nation for nonproft. In addition, a frst-year stu-

dent told mbaMission, “Ethics [is] integrated into every class” and claimed that many Yale SOM students

consider nonproft when deciding on their career goals.

In fact, 5.2% of the SOM’s Class of 2017 joined a nonproft after graduation (4.6% in 2016, 4.4% in 2015,

5.7% in 2014, and 7.5% in 2013), and 6.1% of the Class of 2018 chose to join a nonproft organization for

their summer internship. The SOM’s Internship Fund is designed to encourage students to consider low- or

non-paying internships (such as those with nonprofts) during the summer between their frst and second

years. (Learn more about the Internship Fund in the Nonproft/Social Entrepreneurship section under Pro-

fessional Specializations.)

The school’s Career Development Offce (CDO) works closely with SOM students to help them defne and

meet their career goals. Partnership Managers within the offce assist students in navigating the job and

internship placement process. For four recent years (2015, 2014, 2013, 2012), The Economist ranked the SOM

number one in the world for “diversity of recruiters.”

Part of the SOM’s placement success can likely be attributed to the broader alumni base of Yale University.

A frst-year student reported to mbaMission that SOM graduates often leverage Yale University alumni for

positions, especially those in fnance frms, noting, for example, that through alumni connections, “anyone

who wants IB [investment banking] will pretty much get IB.” SOM alumni seeking a new job can also take

advantage of CDO resources to assist them in their search.

In 2017, the SOM hired a new assistant dean for career development for its CDO, with an emphasis on

strengthening the school’s international career connections. In a news article on the school’s website

about the new appointment, the new assistant dean commented: “We have a very unique opportunity here

to further develop the Global Network for Advanced Management on the career front. Through its member

schools, the network has already built out a very solid foundation academically. The question now is ‘How

can we create a career component?’”

6. Alumni Base: Opportunities to Engage

The size and depth of a school’s alumni base may be important to you as you Some schools boast seek to break into a specifc feld or region/country. Some MBA programs sizeable alumni have had large classes for many years and can therefore boast sizeable networks, while alumni networks, whereas other schools may have pockets of strength in others have pockets of particular parts of the world or in certain industries—or can claim a smaller strength in particular but tighter-knit and more dedicated alumni network overall. For example, regions or industries. Dartmouth Tuck has a smaller absolute number of alumni than most top U.S.

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Alumni Base

Schools are listed in order from largest alumni base to smallest within each category.

NYU Stern, UPenn Wharton, Harvard Business School 75,000 to 100,000

Northwestern Kellogg, Chicago Booth 50,000 to 75,000

Michigan Ross, Columbia, UC Berkeley Haas 25,000 to 50,000 UCLA Anderson, Stanford GSB

MIT Sloan, Duke Fuqua 10,000 to 25,000 UVA Darden, Cornell Johnson

Tuck 10,000 Yale SOM or fewer

0 25,000 50,000 75,000 100,000

Note: Some schools include MBA program graduates only in their alumni total; other schools may also include alumni from their part-time, executive, doctoral, and/or other programs, so totals may not be directly comparable.

schools but has repeatedly been touted as having the highest rate of annual alumni giving, thanks to its very dedicated graduates.

Although acquiring detailed breakdowns of a school’s alumni base is sometimes diffcult, you may want to consider whether the school you are targeting has alumni clubs in your chosen professional area (i.e., some schools have industry-specifc alumni groups) or preferred post-MBA location. Furthermore, if you are determined to live in a particular city/country/region after graduating, then earning your MBA in or near that area, if possible, may be a good idea, so that you can more easily connect with local alumni while you are in school—particularly if you want to pursue a niche professional area and do not expect to participate in on-grounds recruiting. Of course, technological developments have greatly facilitated outreach, meaning that alumni are no longer a fight or long drive away, but are now just a phone call, email, text, or even Skype session away.

Considering that the SOM is just over 40 years old and that for many years, the school’s average class size

hovered in the 200s, the school’s alumni base is understandably small. At just over 8,000, the living alumni

base for the school should not be compared with that of much larger schools.

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 The SOM alumni pool has regional chapters in 16 cities in the United States (plus state clubs in Colorado,

Connecticut, and Minnesota) and more than 30 international chapter locations, including Beijing, Hong

Kong, Shanghai, Mexico, Israel, Japan, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom. Graduates are automat-

ically enrolled in a chapter if one is located near their place of work. Regional chapters are both social

and professional outlets and may feature a happy hour meet-up one week and a book discussion the next.

Alumni events can focus on careers and networking, such as a conversation with the Surgeon General of

the United States, an alumnae breakfast in New York City, an evening with Dean Snyder in Mexico City, and

a happy hour in DC; or on sports, with events ranging from a Harvard versus Yale hockey game at Madison

Square Garden to an alumni ski day. A list of upcoming SOMAA events can be found on the alumni website at

http://alumni.som.yale.edu/events.

Yale Insights (formerly known as Qn) is an offcial Yale SOM web publication that poses questions explor-

ing signifcant business and societal issues. In addition, the Yale Insights website features webinars with

SOM alumni and faculty. Webinars have covered such topics as “What’s at Stake in the Healthcare Debate?,”

“When Should CEOs Take a Political Stand?,” and “How Do You Spot a Financial Bubble?”

Another factor to consider is the much larger and broader Yale University alumni network. Students with

whom mbaMission spoke felt that the “Yale brand” alone will open doors with regard to recruiting (both

nationally and internationally) as well as personal and professional networking. A frst year we interviewed

remarked, “Many of my classmates have reached out to Yale College alumni.”

7. Facilities: Shaping the Academic/Social Experience

When contemplating an MBA program, do not overlook the school’s facili- If a school has not ties. Renovations, upgrades, and new construction are all regular occurrenc- updated its facilities in es on school campuses these days, as some programs increase their square recent years, perhaps footage while others unify disparate areas or refresh existing spaces. Some none were needed or schools boast on-campus housing or elite athletic facilities, others have es- the school has invested tablished new green spaces and meeting rooms, and still others have refur- in other aspects of its bished or added classrooms, theaters, libraries, and other such resources. program instead.

Keep in mind, though, that just because a school has not updated or added to its facilities in recent years, this does not mean that its offerings are outdated or subpar; the lack of updates may simply be because none have been needed or the school has invested in other aspects of its program instead.

A campus visit is always the best way to evaluate frsthand what a school has to offer, but we nonetheless dedicate this space to a discussion of the facilities available at this particular program.

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 After two years of construction and several years of planning, the SOM opened the doors to its brand new, glass-clad facility—Edward P. Evans Hall—in January 2014. The need for a new building appears to have been among the school’s top priorities over the past several years, as Dean Snyder suggested to the Yale

Daily News in January 2010: “SOM is competing against the world’s best business schools. And all of the world’s best business schools have great facilities.” Previously housed in a complex consisting of both modern buildings and 19th century Gothic mansions at the center of the Yale University campus, the SOM’s inside spaces did not, as former Yale University President Richard Levin noted in an August 2010 Bloom- berg Businessweek article, “look and feel like a business school.” The decision to build the new facility was also informed by pedagogical needs. Former Yale University Provost (and current university President)

Peter Salovey stated in a September 2010 Yale Daily News article, “The future of our School of Management really depends on the fact that that building will allow us to teach the curriculum.”

Despite what turned out to be the poor timing of the SOM’s original proposal to construct a new facility— which took shape in 2006, just two years before the economic downturn—the school managed to raise an initial $110M from various alumni and donors. These fundraising efforts were followed by a series of record contributions, including $8,888,888 from Lei Zhang (MBA ’02) in January 2010 (its largest gift ever from an

SOM alumnus), $10M from Wilbur Ross (YC ’59) in November 2010, and $50M from the facility’s eponymous donor, the late Edward “Ned” P. Evans (YC ’64), in December 2010. The total cost of the new campus—which had originally been estimated at $190M—ultimately rose to $243M, affording the addition of such technological amenities as cutting-edge classroom computers and high-defnition video conferencing.

Designed by Lord Norman Foster, a 1962 graduate of Yale’s School of Architecture and a Pritzker Architec- ture Prize Laureate, the 242,000-square-foot Evans Hall is intended to be a physical manifestation of the school’s integrated curriculum. Foster + Partners developed four main functions for the complex: classroom interaction, teamwork, fexible study environments, and community events. From the open layout to the lounge areas outside classrooms to collaborative “Huddle” study rooms, specifc features of the planned space are designed to encourage interaction among students and faculty and to optimize spon- taneous social encounters between classes. Evans Hall also incorporates sustainable materials and construction practices, making use of water-effcient plumbing, repurposed steel and concrete, high-performance windows, and native vegetation. The overall design is intended to place the SOM campus on a level with that of other top business schools while preserving the university’s architectural history.

Evans Hall’s design is perhaps most notable, however, for its glass façade, which wraps around a sprawling central courtyard and lends transparency to the entire layout. “One of the things that Dean Snyder talks about is that managers need an extended line of sight,” remarked SOM Senior Associate Dean (now Deputy

Dean) David Bach in a 2014 Yale Daily News article, adding, “The building actually has an extended line of sight. You can actually see [in] the building through glass.” While the transparent layout creates “a unifying effect, a sense that activities throughout the building are interconnected,” the campus courtyard “acts as the heart of the school, providing outdoor space to study and socialize,” explains the SOM site.

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 The new campus also features 16 classrooms, a student gym, a library, a 350-seat auditorium, an out-

door terrace lecture hall/entertainment space, a coffee shop, a landscaped garden, and a dining commons

where professors and students can share meals together. In July 2014, Architectural Digest chose Evans

Hall as one of the nine best university buildings in the world. That same year, the building received the

Connecticut AIA Design Award, the New York Design Award for Digital Signage and Data Visualization, and

the Global Design Award.

“I think of this as a high point event in the school’s history,” said Dean Snyder in the aforementioned Yale

Daily News article, referring to the construction of the new facility. “High point events give an institution a

sense of what it is and what it can be.”

8. Rankings and Reputation: Important Metrics or Arbitrary Measures?

MBA rankings should always be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism, given that they can fuctuate dramati- cally from year to year and from publication to publication. For example, if you had relied on the Financial Times’ rankings to choose the Yale School of Management as your business school in 2011 because of the program’s position at number seven, you probably would have been disappointed to see the school then slide down to number 12 just one year later before rebounding to number nine the following year. Similarly, if you had selected UC Berkeley

Haas in 2004, when it was number 17 in Bloomberg Businessweek’s ranking, you would have been delighted to see the program rise to number eight in 2010 before it slipped out of the top ten again to number 13 in 2012.

Can an MBA program—which is made up of so many moving parts—really Te various surveys change so much in just one or two years? Furthermore, how can one recon- should and will cile that UVA Darden is in the tenth position (among U.S. programs) in The provide some context Economist’s rankings but is listed at 17th by Bloomberg Businessweek and for your decision, but by the Financial Times? Or that Stanford GSB holds the ffth position in The resist the temptation to Economist and Bloomberg Businessweek surveys, but is ranked frst by the choose a school based Financial Times? Or that Northwestern Kellogg is ranked number eight on the on rankings alone. Financial Times and Bloomberg Businessweek lists but holds the number one slot in The Economist’s survey?

An MBA ranking that appears to be gaining in popularity, according to feedback we have received from candidates in recent years, is from Poets&Quants, which aggregates what it considers the top fve MBA surveys—Bloomberg

Businessweek, The Economist, the Financial Times, U.S. News & World Report, and Forbes—to create a composite ranking.

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Of course, the various surveys should and likely will provide some context for your decision, but resist the temptation to choose a school based on rankings alone, because rankings may ultimately betray you—possibly even before you graduate.

One thing to keep in mind, particularly for international students, is that a school’s reputation domestically can be quite different from its reputation abroad. Years ago, mbaMission worked with an international candidate who was accepted into the MBA programs at Cornell Johnson and Dartmouth Tuck. When this individual shared the good news with his manager, his manager said, “I thought you would have gone to an Ivy League school like Princ- eton!” Of course, Dartmouth and Cornell are in fact Ivy League institutions, and Princeton does not even have an

MBA program—the manager’s reaction illustrates how possible misconceptions can arise. So, after considering an

MBA program’s strengths, you might factor in that some schools have greater brand power in certain parts of the world, especially if you plan to live and work abroad after you complete your studies.

We advise you to consider your MBA a long-term investment that will pay dividends throughout your life, and such an investment should be based on more than a one-time ranking. In fact, most MBAs who are fve to ten years out of school are not even aware of what their school is now ranked. Perhaps more importantly, if you were to ask one whether the school’s position in the rankings has any effect on his/her career, the response would certainly be an impassioned “No!”

U.S. Ranking: Yale SOM 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009

Poets&Quants NA NA 10 10 10 12 17 15 14 14 NA

U.S. News & 11 9 8 13 13 13 10 10 11 10 NA World Report

Bloomberg NA NA 16 14 11 6 [21] 21 [21] 21 NA Businessweek1

Financial Times NA 9 9 9 9 7 9 12 7 9 9

The Economist NA NA 11 11 13 14 17 17 16 14 NA

1 Until 2015, Bloomberg Businessweek released rankings every two years (in November), so numbers in brackets represent carryover from the previous year’s ranking.

Given Dean Snyder’s success in terms of both fundraising and rankings when he was dean of Chicago Booth

(the school was number ten in the Bloomberg Businessweek rankings when Snyder frst took over the dean-

ship in 2001; the school subsequently rose in 2002 to the number two spot, and then in 2006 to the number

one position, where it stood throughout his deanship), his hiring as the SOM’s dean seems to suggest that

this small and relatively young business school takes its challenges in both areas seriously. Though the

SOM has traditionally found the top ten a tough nut to crack in many of the more popular MBA rankings, a

2012 article in the Yale Daily News reported that a goal of Snyder’s is “to have SOM rank consistently in the

top ten business schools within the next four years, and in the top fve within the next decade.”

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 The SOM went down two spots to 16th in the 2017 Bloomberg Businessweek. The program stood unchanged at number nine domestically and 15th internationally in the Financial Times’ 2018 survey. The school came in at tenth in the 2017 Poets&Quants ranking, unchanged from its position in 2016 and 2015.

The school also stood steady at the 11th spot within the United States in The Economist’s 2017 rankings, where it rose to the 11th place internationally from the previous year’s 15th place. And in U.S. News &

World Report’s 2019 rankings, the school declined slightly from 9th to 11th in the country, sharing the spot with Duke Fuqua. The SOM also appears on several of U.S. News’ specialty rankings lists, where it is ranked number one in the Nonproft category. In addition, the Princeton Review’s 2018 evaluation of MBA programs named the SOM second (out of 267 schools) for Best Green MBA, number six for nonproft and

Toughest to Get Into, and number seven for consulting and management.

Snyder, who assumed his responsibilities as dean in the summer of 2011, told the Wall Street Journal in

2010 that he wants the business school to be perceived as “rigorous, well-regarded, and highly ranked.”

Later, in July 2011, he expressed his general opinion of rankings on his personal website, saying, “The question of business school rankings often yields long and tortured answers from business school Deans. The short answer from me is (a) rankings are an important part of the competitive landscape, and (b) moving up is more fun than moving down.”

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Poets&Quants (2017)

1 UPenn Wharton

2 Harvard Business School

3 Stanford GSB

4 Chicago Booth

5 Northwestern Kellogg

6 MIT Sloan

7 Dartmouth Tuck

8 Columbia Business School

9 UC Berkeley Haas

10 Yale SOM

11 Michigan Ross

12 Duke Fuqua

13 UVA Darden

14 Cornell Johnson

15 UCLA Anderson

16 NYU Stern

17 Carnegie Mellon Tepper

18 UT Austin McCombs

18 UNC-Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler

20 Emory Goizueta

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 U.S. News & World Report (2019) Bloomberg Businessweek (2017)

1 Harvard Business School 1 Harvard Business School

1 Chicago Booth 2 UPenn Wharton

3 UPenn Wharton 3 MIT Sloan

4 Stanford GSB 4 Chicago Booth

5 MIT Sloan 5 Stanford GSB

6 Northwestern Kellogg 6 Duke Fuqua

7 UC Berkeley Haas 7 Dartmouth Tuck

7 Michigan Ross 8 Northwestern Kellogg

9 Columbia Business School 9 Columbia Business School

10 Dartmouth Tuck 10 Rice Jones

11 Duke Fuqua 11 UC Berkeley Haas

11 Yale SOM 12 Michigan Ross

13 NYU Stern 13 Cornell Johnson

13 UVA Darden 14 Carnegie Mellon Tepper

15 Cornell Johnson 15 Washington Foster

16 UCLA Anderson 16 Yale SOM

17 Carnegie Mellon Tepper 17 UVA Darden

17 UT Austin McCombs 18 NYU Stern

19 UNC-Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler 19 UCLA Anderson

20 Emory Goizueta 20 UTA McCombs

20 USC Marshall

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Financial Times (2018)1,2 The Economist (2017)1,3

1 Stanford GSB 1 Northwestern Kellogg

2 UPenn Wharton 2 Chicago Booth

3 Harvard Business School 3 Harvard Business School

4 Chicago Booth 4 UPenn Wharton

5 Columbia Business School 5 Stanford GSB

6 MIT Sloan 6 UCLA Anderson

7 UC Berkeley Haas 7 UC Berkeley Haas

8 Northwestern Kellogg 8 Dartmouth Tuck

9 Yale SOM 9 Columbia Business School

10 Dartmouth Tuck 10 UVA Darden

11 Cornell Johnson 11 Yale SOM

12 Duke Fuqua 12 Michigan Ross

13 NYU Stern 13 Duke Fuqua

14 UCLA Anderson 14 NYU Stern

15 Michigan Ross 15 MIT Sloan

16 Georgetown McDonough 16 UF Hough

17 UVA Darden 17 IU Kelley

18 UNC-Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler 18 Vanderbilt Owen

19 Carnegie Mellon Tepper 19 UNC-Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler

20 UTA McCombs 20 Cornell Johnson

1 Reranks U.S. schools from international ranking.

2 The Financial Times ranks Yale SOM 15 internationally.

3 The Economist ranks Yale SOM 11 internationally.

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Yale University Te Yale School of Management

Summary

Founded in 1974, with its frst students entering in 1976, the Yale SOM is not only the youngest of Yale University’s ten professional schools but also the youngest business school among the Ivies. The MBA school has an intimate, collegial, and family-like atmosphere, and although the class size has been growing in recent years, classmates seem able to easily get to know one another in addition to many people across campus. Like all Yale University students, SOM students are called “Yalies” or “Elis” (after Elihu Yale), and given that they are permitted to take electives from throughout Yale University, the two-year experience at this school appears to be as much about being part of Yale University as about being simply an MBA candidate at the SOM. A second-year student told mbaMission that the opportunity for his spouse to also take courses at the university or to drop by a [College]

Tea on campus “turned Yale [SOM] into a college environment” (offered by Yale College, College Teas are intimate gatherings with notable men and women, such as politicians and journalists).

With the unveiling of the Yale SOM’s revised curriculum in 2006, the school seemed to completely change the way it approached its MBA program. Wanting to move away from the “silo effect” of having students study marketing, strategy, or fnance as standalone concepts or functions, the SOM created an innovative integrated curriculum.

The frst year of the MBA program at the school concentrates on students’ required core courses (described in more detail in the Curriculum: Flexible Versus Mandatory Core section). This cohesive approach, which views management issues from both internal and external perspectives, “is unique in how it ties together the pieces of a business school education into a meaningful whole,” asserts the school’s website.

The school’s use of the “raw” case format (discussed more fully in the Pedagogy: Lecture Versus Case Format section) appears to be at the heart of the Yale SOM experience. By having students use original materials, source information on cases, and real-time data, the SOM faculty feel that their aspiring MBAs learn to effectively process

“messy” information in the way they will need to as future managers.

With its stated mission of “Educating leaders for business and society,” the Yale SOM seeks to expose students to leadership models and experiences both inside and outside the classroom. One way it works to accomplish this goal is through its Leaders Forum Lecture Series, which brings industry experts to campus to discuss topics of global importance. In 2017–2018, the series invited such speakers as a former president of Pakistan and the former

CEO of Ford Motor Company. Speakers in 2016–2017 included a member of the board of governors at the Federal

Reserve System and the chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, Inc.

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 The Yale SOM was the frst business school in the United States to require an international component for graduation, and many frst-year students travel abroad between Spring 1 and Spring 2 on an International Experience course to fulfll the school’s Global Studies Requirement (see the International Business section). In addition to completing their regular course work, students prepare intensely for this trip in the preceding fall by researching their destinations and learning from experts on the region. After returning, the students make a presentation about their travels. Among the International Experiences destinations offered in 2018 were such countries as

India, Japan, Israel, South Africa, and China. The 2017 Experiences included a trip to Serbia and Croatia, where students visited such companies as Gazprom, Nordeus, and Fiat. In 2016, one of the destinations offered was China, where students toured the offces of the New Development Bank and had a One on One chat with the founder and

CEO of Green Apple Health. One group of students visited Japan in 2015 to visit such companies as Panasonic Cor- poration and Nissan Motor Company. Other past trips have involved visits to Chile, Brazil, Ireland, the United Arab

Emirates, South Africa, South Korea, Indonesia, Bangladesh/Vietnam, and Hungary/Russia.

Te Dean

When Edward “Ted” Snyder was appointed dean of the SOM in July 2011, he faced both great challenges and great expectations. Transforming a school to contend with the nation’s most rigorous and highly ranked institutions is not an unfamiliar goal for Snyder. He is often considered, as a 2012 Poets&Quants article states, “something of a business school physician” for having “worked magic” in his previous appointments. After successful tenures at both the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and the University of Virginia’s Darden School of

Business Administration, in addition to serving as an associate dean at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, Snyder has earned an incontestable reputation for his leadership skills. Under Snyder’s guidance,

Chicago Booth received a $300M gift—the largest in business school history—and saw its position in the Bloom- berg Businessweek rankings jump from tenth to frst in just fve years. Richard C. Levin, who was president of Yale

University at the time, stated in a 2010 Yale news article, “Ted Snyder is widely regarded as the most successful business school dean in the nation.”

Upon replacing Sharon M. Oster as the SOM’s dean, Snyder made a statement highlighting the school’s potential going forward, saying, “I frst became interested in coming to the Yale School of Management because I think this school is phenomenally well positioned to train the kinds of leaders the world needs for the balance of this century.” Snyder also identifed what he saw as some of the defning characteristics of this potential, adding that the integrated curriculum, introduced in 2006, “has been refned and made more robust. … The sense of community has never been stronger.”

Snyder has also expressed interest in highlighting the global aspects of the SOM’s program. In a 2014 Fortune article, he described the SOM as “the most distinctively global U.S. business school” and expressed a hope that prospective students would be drawn to the program for that reason. In a 2011 interview with the Financial Times conducted shortly after his appointment, Snyder described his overall vision for the school, saying, “We want Yale

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 SOM to be the most connected, the most involved with the university [of any business school]. I think it’s important who you attract. If we get the positioning right, we’ll get these extraordinarily bright people who are slightly different from the usual draw. … There are a lot of enterprises who will look and say ‘this is exactly the kind of

[MBA] profle that I want’.” While Snyder’s ambitions are not without obstacles—Poets&Quants reports Snyder as saying the school is “under-funded and under-marketed”—he reportedly hopes to enhance the school’s brand and the scale of its educational experience by improving the SOM’s global outreach, drawing on the larger university network, and slightly increasing the student-to-faculty ratio while maintaining the school’s intimate culture.

After Poets&Quants chose Snyder as Dean of the Year in late 2015, the publication highlighted the recent notable boost in the school’s application volume—nearly 25% in 2014 and 29% in 2015—as one of his biggest accomplishments. “What’s driving the increase is the clarity of our strategy, the new building, better rankings and job placement, but also the activation of the global network,” Snyder commented in the article.

Although changes were anticipated at the SOM under his deanship, the school assured incoming students on its website, “Dean Snyder is arguably the most experienced and successful business school dean in the world, and he will no doubt put his stamp on the school. … But there are some key ways in which Dean Snyder’s arrival will not change the school. Yale SOM’s mission has always been to educate leaders for business and society, and it has drawn a community of people who take this mission very seriously.” In the comments section of the 2012

Poets&Quants article, a student in the Class of 2014 stated, “I can say that there is a real sense that the school is on the up-and-up. … There is a palpable sense of this on campus,” and another from the same class wrote, “Aside from just moving up the rankings, I really believe that Yale is on the verge of revolutionizing the MBA experience.”

In the 2015 Poets&Quants article highlighting Snyder as dean of the year, one comment read: “I am a proud [member of the Class of] 2015. Can't fnd words to thank Mr. Snyder's and David Bach's hard work and commitment, building one of the strongest [business schools] in the world. A strong mission, a clear strategy and a true passion for excellence are paying off.”

In March 2018, Yale University President Peter Salovey announced that Snyder would step down from his role as dean at the end of the 2018–2019 academic year and return to teaching at the school. Salovey praised Snyder’s time as the dean in the announcement and emphasized his accomplishments in the international side of the

SOM. “Under [Snyder’s] leadership, the School of Management has reached and exceeded several signifcant mile- stones, emerging as one of the country’s most forward-looking business schools,” Salovey said. “Because of Ted’s vision and initiative, SOM is the most international of all American business schools, preparing our students for the challenges and opportunities of a complex global world.” Snyder had previously taken a sabbatical during the

2017–2018 academic year while Anjani Jain, the senior associate dean for the MBA program, served as the acting dean. As of the updating of the guide in spring 2018, no new dean has been appointed.

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Professional Specializations

Consulting

Drawing on the broad professional skills taught in the school’s integrated curriculum, along with career support offered by the Consulting Club, many SOM graduates choose to enter the feld of consulting. In fact, consulting services was the most common industry that SOM graduates entered in 2017, 2016, and 2015, with 35.9%, 30.8%, and 29.3% of the school’s MBAs accepting positions in the feld, respectively.

Given that consulting typically involves an emphasis on strategy and management, those aspiring to this profession might be drawn to such SOM courses as “Strategic Market Measurement” and “Problem Framing.” In “Strate- gic Market Measurement,” students gain a better understanding of strategy consulting via a hands-on approach in which students use a statistical analysis program throughout the course. In “Problem Framing,” students explore the importance of anticipating and properly approaching management problems.

The Consulting Club organizes events throughout the year that focus on students interested in this industry and their unique needs. According to our research for this guide, the high point for frst years looking toward a career in consulting has traditionally been the annual Yale SOM Net Impact Case Competition. Jointly sponsored by the

Consulting Club, the Human Capital Club, and the school’s Net Impact chapter, this event is an opportunity for frst years to gain experience both in a consulting case competition and with business problems related to social responsibility. A frst year involved in planning the competition told mbaMission that the clubs’ goal is to create an inclusive competition that’s easy for everyone to be part of. “It’s a fun night,” he said. “We want to make it part of SOM culture.”

Deloitte Human Capital Consulting Services has sponsored the event in recent years, while The Boston Consult- ing Group has sponsored previous events. Teams compete in a case concerning human capital and social impact, while Deloitte representatives acted as judges, and the winners received cash prizes. Participating teams are given a case, which they work on for a set period of time, then submit a PowerPoint presentation of their initial recommendations to a panel of judges. The case used in the competition always involves a social element, and frst prize is awarded based on both the content and the quality of a team’s PowerPoint presentation. Because the competition is geared toward frst years and takes place relatively early in the academic year, the frst-year student with whom we spoke noted that everyone who participates in it has a chance to “meet new people and work with people you may not have worked with before.”

In 2013, the SOM launched the frst annual Integrated Leadership Case Competition, another opportunity that might interest prospective consultants. According to a school press release, the student-run competition is “in- spired by Yale SOM’s integrated curriculum and Leadership Development Program” and requires student teams with members from various disciplines and backgrounds to collaborate on an interactive “raw” case, which for the inaugural event involved business ethics. Teams from the SOM, NYU’s Stern School of Business, Penn State’s

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Smeal College of Business, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania presented their case strategies to a panel of expert judges, and the team from Wharton ultimately claimed frst place. The SOM’s 2012–2013

Student Government president is quoted in the press release as saying, “This competition encompasses many of the key components we love about Yale SOM: small group work, data-rich raw cases, and complex problems that require comprehensive, creative solutions.”

The 5th annual competition was held in April 2017 with 12 fnalist teams hailing from ten countries. The team from

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology was chosen as the winner, while the National University of Sin- gapore came in second and INCAE Business School fnished third. In 2016, teams from 15 schools came to campus from around the world to compete, with the team from the Asian Institute of Management claiming the $3,000 frst-place prize, while the USC Marshall School of Business took second-place and $1,000. The 2015 competition featured 15 participating business schools from nine countries. Hong Kong University of Science and Technology received the frst-place $3,000 prize, and a group from South Korea’s Yonsei University School of Business was runner up. “Business is no longer U.S.-only,” remarked a second-year student and organizer of the event in a 2014

Yale SOM news article. “You have to interact with different players. Competitors come from around the world, and just having different teams with different ideas and approaches helps us to realize that we live in a more competitive world.”

Accenture; A.T. Kearney, Inc.; McKinsey & Company; Bain & Company, Inc.; L.E.K. Consulting; the Boston Consulting

Group; PriceWaterhouseCoopers; Strategy&; Parthenon-EY; and Deloitte LLP number among the frms that hired

Yale SOM students for internships and full-time consulting positions in recent years.

Entrepreneurship, Private Equity, and Venture Capital

Within the Yale SOM core, frst years all take the “Innovator” course, which builds students’ skills as creative managers while teaching them to work in innovative environments. According to the description on the school’s website, the course “studies issues of idea generation, idea evaluation and development, creative projects, and fostering and sustaining innovation in organizations.” Electives that center on entrepreneurship include “Inter- national Entrepreneurship,” “Entrepreneurial and New Ventures,” “Apps, Software, and Entrepreneurship,” and

“Entrepreneurial Finance.”

The importance of innovation to the entrepreneurial spirit is a concept seen in many of the SOM’s entrepreneurship electives. Jonathan Feinstein, the John G. Searle Professor of Economics and Management who teaches such courses as “Statistical Modeling” and “Creativity and Innovation,” notes on the SOM website that innovation involves a process. “Most people think of an idea as a light bulb moment,” he says, “but that moment of insight is just the beginning. An idea has to work in the marketplace—otherwise, even the best idea will fall fat. So it’s crucial to learn to play around.”

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Many resources outside the classroom are also available for SOM students interested in entrepreneurship. The school’s Entrepreneurship Club is grounded in the belief that all MBA students, even those who do not intend to be entrepreneurs, can beneft from the skills they learn from entrepreneurial thinkers, and the club has student and alumni leaders as well as faculty advisors. The club describes its mission on its website as four-fold: “[to] create opportunities for SOM to interact with entrepreneurs; uncover professional opportunities for SOM students; work closely with Yale Entrepreneurial Society (YES); and integrate with related [clubs].” Members of the Entrepreneur- ship Club participate in several business plan competitions each year.

Offered by the Center for Business and the Environment at Yale is the Sabin Sustainable Venture Prize (formerly the Sabin Environmental Venture Prize), which has been awarded since 2009 and “supports student and faculty efforts to start an environmentally oriented for-proft business through annual cash prizes of $25,000,” states the center’s website. Competition for the Sabin Prize is open to any Yale student or faculty member, as an individual or as part of a team. No restriction is placed on the number of members a team may have, so long as at least one person on the team is affliated with Yale University (not just the SOM).

Competition for the Sabin Sustainable Venture Prize begins in January, when participants have the option of sub- mitting a mentorship application to the center that includes, in addition to the name of the proposed venture, a description of the environmental problem to be addressed, a description of the submitted idea, and an overview of the market. In March, teams/individuals submit an application and an entry agreement outlining the status and stage of the venture, another assessment of the market, next steps to be taken in the venture, and a budget for one year. In addition, participants are required to submit a canvas describing the business model, and a link to a three-minute YouTube or Vimeo video of the pitch. The judging panel—known as “The Bulldog’s Den,” after the Yale mascot—evaluates the submitted ventures based on criteria such as market assessment, environmental beneft, fnancials, and feasibility. Finalists are revealed later in the spring, and winners are announced at an awards cer- emony in April. The Sabin Prize competition also includes workshops throughout to assist contestants, covering such topics as “Market Research,” “Accounting and Financial Modeling,” and “Business Writing and Presentations.”

A speaker series is offered in conjunction with the competition, and in 2016, the series was themed “Bright Lights,

Green Sights,” featuring such speakers as the founder of an artisanal tofu supplier, the founder of an environmentally conscious fashion brand, and the founder of a beauty product company selling homemade products. In 2015, speakers included the co-founder and CEO of Green Coast Enterprises, who discussed establishing a sustainable real estate company in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Four teams competed for the 2017 Sabin Prize. Powerhouse, a startup that creates electricity measurement software for households, took home the $25,000 frst prize. Plant-based frozen meal provider Kitchen Table received the Audience’s Choice award, while the other fnalists included Turboarcjet, an electric jet engine developer, and

Alectro LLC, which creates solar projects. The April 2016 Sabin Prize involved four teams in the fnals. The winner was Renewal Mill, a sustainable food system that utilizes food materials that would otherwise be discarded. The other fnalists were Hugo & Hoby, a sustainably sourced furniture ecommerce company; Appalachian Roots –

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Hemp 2.0, which aims to reintroduce historically signifcant crops to Eastern Kentucky; and Smart Air Filters, which makes air-purifying HEPA flters for household fans. Of the four teams that competed in the 2015 Sabin Prize fnals,

Poda Foods, which offers a perhaps surprising source of protein in bar form: crickets, ultimately claimed the top spot. Other fnalist ventures that year were Grovio, a crop surveillance drone intended to reduce fertilizer use;

Tuckerman & Co, which produces organic and sustainable clothing; and homE, which created a sustainable battery backup alternative to diesel generators.

According to a program coordinator with whom we spoke, the Offce of Cooperative Research (Yale’s technology transfer offce) originally formed the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute (YEI) in 2007 as a ten-week summer program in response to demands for such an offering from students interested in entrepreneurial endeavors. YEI has since expanded into a year-round university department focused on student business ventures. Projects can be “in the works,” meaning the ventures are in the initial phases of investment conversations, or “in business,” meaning they have already raised initial capital or drawn customers. An administrator mbaMission interviewed noted that SOM students typically participate via a summer fellowship program or as academic-year associates.

Offering such resources as a summer fellowship, a mentor program, and affordable offce space for qualifed student start-ups (through its incubator program), the YEI works to foster innovation and encourage entrepreneur- ship among Yale SOM students. Live ventures that have received assistance through the YEI include Prep- work, a personal research assistant for meetings founded by a member of the Class of 2013 (and later acquired by

HubSpot); Ancera, a technology venture for pathogen diagnosis co-founded by a Class of 2012 graduate; Checked

Twice, an online gift exchange organizer founded by a Class of 2011 MBA; and The Green Bride Guide, a premier directory for eco-conscious weddings, co-founded by a SOM graduate from the Class of 2008.

Of the 21.8% of 2017 SOM graduates who accepted roles in the fnance industry after graduation, 2.4% went into private equity and venture capital (1.7% in 2016, 2.2% in 2015, and 3.1% in 2014). Students can choose electives specifc to careers in these areas, such as “Venture Capital and Private Equity Investments,” which is open to second years only. Incorporating a variety of teaching methods, the four-unit (i.e., four-credit) course spans the Fall 2 and

Spring 1 quarters and relies heavily on case analysis, teamwork, presentations, lectures, and role-playing.

The Private Equity & Venture Capital Club at the SOM claims the dual mission of gaining exposure for the school within the private equity feld and offering students opportunities to interact with professionals. In April 2018, the club sponsored the 18th Annual Private Equity and Venture Capital Symposium, which welcomed as keynote speakers a managing director of The Carlyle Group, a vice chairman of WL Ross & Co., and a general partner at

New Enterprise Associates. Nine discussion panels were offered, covering topics ranging from “Venture Investing in Emerging Platforms” and “State of Growth Equity Investing” to “Value Creation in PE” and “ESG Factors in PE

Portfolio Management.”

The March 2017 Symposium featured keynotes from a co-chairman of Bain Capital, the president and chief operat- ing offcer of Blackstone, and the chairman of the board of Shared-X. The event’s six panel discussions covered

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 such topics as “Geopolitical Trends in the Business Environment,” “Search Funds,” “Private Equity Real Estate,” and “Emerging Markets Private Equity: Latin America.”

The 2016 Symposium keynotes were delivered by the founder and managing partner of Greycoft Partners and a managing partner of Leonard Green & Partners. Four discussion panels explored “Debt in Private Equity,” “Future of FINTECH,” “Impact Venture Investing,” and “Emerging Markets: Private Equity.” In addition, a Venture Capi- tal Pitch Competition, based on the television show Shark Tank, allowed participants to present venture ideas to practicing entrepreneurs and professionals in the venture capital space. The 2015 event featured as keynote speakers the chairman of Aurora Capital Group and the former CEO of AlliedSignal (now Honeywell). Panel discussions explored such themes as “Private Equity: The Dealmaking Environment,” “Venture Capital: Are VCs Investing in the Wrong Stuff?,” and “Treatment of Carried Interest: A VC, PE, and Hedge Fund Debate.” The event concluded with a pitch competition and a networking reception.

The Yale SOM has roughly 20 electives devoted to entrepreneurship, private equity, and venture capital and the school’s website lists approximately ten faculty members who have expertise in these areas. Firms that hired 2017

SOM students for internships and full-time positions in the areas of private equity, entrepreneurship, and venture capital include DBL Investors: Double Bottom Line Venture Capital, Encourage Capital LLC, Legend Capital, and

Inspiring Capital. In addition, the school’s 2017 employment report notes that 19 graduates (5.9% of the graduating class) started their own businesses rather than joining an outside frm.

Finance

In an interview with mbaMission, Director of Admissions Bruce DelMonico identifed the caliber of the school’s faculty as a reason for the SOM’s strong reputation in fnance, saying, “Pound for pound, I think we have among the top fnance faculty anywhere in the United States.” The school has approximately 20 faculty members associated with its fnance department, including Nicholas Barberis (specialist in behavioral fnance), Gary B. Gorton (banking), and Andrew Metrick (regulation of the fnancial system).

The Yale SOM offers more than 40 fnance-related electives, including “Corporate Finance,” “Behavioral Finance,”

“Investment Management,” and “Speculation and Hedging in Financial Markets.” The “World Financial History” elective, taught by William Goetzmann—the Edwin J. Beinecke Professor of Finance and Management Studies and director of the International Center for Finance at the Yale SOM (described later in this section)—examines fnance and capitalism from antiquity to modern times. The course initially focuses on fnance in Babylon, Athens, Egypt,

China, and Rome and the origins of money before shifting to early European banking, modern corporations, and globalization. Robert Shiller (see the Notable Professors and Unsung Heroes section) teaches “Behavioral and

Institutional Economics,” which explores such topics as herd behavior, poverty, involuntary unemployment, attitudes toward risk, and risk management.

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Students can get an early overview of the world of fnance through “Accounting and Finance Boot Camp,” which frst launched in 2008 and is sponsored in part by the school’s Finance Club. This 80-minute lecture reportedly draws both frst- and second-year students. According to a 2010 Yale SOM News article, the boot camp is a fast- paced “tour of the world of fnance,” and Frank Fabozzi, a former Yale SOM professor who originally developed the boot camp, notes, “Even for students who may have worked in one layer of the industry, this [lecture] gives them a broad perspective and a sense of where the opportunities are and how to match skill sets, course work, and personalities with those areas.”

Also central to the study of fnance at the Yale SOM is the International Center for Finance, which was established in 1999 to support research in the area of fnance. In 2017, the center presented its twelfth annual Behavioral Sci- ence Conference. In the past, the conference has featured professors from the University of London, Union Col- lege, Harvard University, and the University of California, San Diego. “While there are other academic conferences that focus only on behavioral decision-making, or only on behavioral fnance, or only on behavioral economics,” the center’s website notes, “the unique feature of this conference is that it brings together researchers from all three felds.”

The Behavioral Science Conference is held in conjunction with the annual Whitebox Advisors Graduate Student

Conference, at which doctoral students in the felds of behavioral economics, behavioral fnance, and behavioral marketing present research on a variety of topics. The 2016 event offered 16 research paper presentations, among them “Falling Behind: Time and Expectations-Based Reference Dependence,” “The Dynamic Effect of Incentives on Post-Reward Task Engagement,” “Duration and Key Moments,” and “In the Red: How Color Affects Investors and Financial Markets.” In 2015, the 13 research topics explored via the conference included “Reference Points,

Subjective Impact, and the Dynamic Effects of Goal Specifcity,” “Cognitive Refection and (the Limits of) Strategic

Thinking in a Market Choice Game,” and “Excusing Selfshness in Charitable Giving: The Role of Risk.”

In addition, weekly center-sponsored seminars have hosted speakers such as business professors from Colum- bia Business School, economics professors from Harvard University, and professors of fnance from the Chicago

Booth School of Business, the Kellogg School of Management, and the UC-Berkeley Haas School of Business.

The virtual Museum of Money and Financial Institutions is an offshoot of the center. The museum states on its site that its primary goal is “to increase economic literacy for people of all ages,” and it offers virtual exhibits such as

“Silver Slippers on a Golden Road,” “A Brief History of Money and Religion,” and “The IFC Collection of Historical

Securities.”

However, DelMonico emphasized in his interview with mbaMission that fnance is just one of the school’s strengths, saying, “Our fnance expertise is one piece in a larger educational puzzle at SOM.” Similarly, when we asked a second-year student we interviewed what had drawn him to the Yale SOM, he explained, “I was looking for a school that was strong in fnance and strong in leadership. At HBS, with 900 grads, you can’t all be leaders. I want to go to business school where I learn leadership and fnance. At Yale, I get that.”

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 As noted, in 2017, 21.8% of the Yale SOM’s graduates entered positions in the fnancial services industry, similar to the 19.6% and 24.5% who did so in 2016 and 2015, respectively. Firms in this industry that hired SOM students for internships and full-time positions in recent years include Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citi, Morgan Stanley,

Barclays PLC, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Credit Suisse Group, UBS AG, Wells Fargo, Vanguard, and the Goldman Sachs

Group, Inc.

General Management

Through the foundational management courses of its integrated curriculum, the Yale SOM “teaches you the skills and language you will need in any career in business and management,” asserts the school’s website. Beginning with the integrated core curriculum, which is designed to develop leadership skills as they relate to various organizational roles rather than to discrete disciplinary topics, the SOM provides an overall general management education. Indeed, 7.7% of the school’s graduates entered positions with a general management function in 2017;

10.4% and 8.0% did so in 2016 and 2015, respectively, though these recent fgures represent a signifcant drop from previous years, such as in 2011 and 2010, when the numbers were 22.0% and 27.0%, respectively. Still, consulting and fnance/accounting were the only functional areas to claim higher percentages of the class (48.0% and 26.6%, respectively).

With courses such as “Modeling Managerial Decisions” and “Managing Groups and Teams,” the initial seven-week core series Orientation to Management provides a foundation of concepts and problem-solving skills as well as interpersonal communication strategies within groups that will prove necessary for students not only throughout the rest of the SOM curriculum but also as they move into their post-MBA careers. General management skills are further honed in the core during the ten-course Organizational Perspectives series. Each of the Organizational

Perspectives courses, which all begin in Fall 2, “look at how organizations really work with their many constituen- cies. Drawing on expertise from all the traditional business school disciplines, these courses teach you what you need to know to lead a thriving organization,” explains the school’s site.

Beyond the core, approximately 20 electives with a general management focus are available. Examples include

“Strategic Communication: Delivering Effective Presentations,” where students work on their presentation skills both in teams and individually, and “Business Ethics” (formerly “Leading Business and Society”), a half-term course that examines common leadership issues.

The school has more than 20 faculty members focused on management who draw from such disciplines as operations, organizational behavior, strategy, fnance, and consulting to provide students with a broad grounding in the various aspects involved in management. “Yale SOM graduates take on management challenges with a nuanced understanding of how markets, organizations, and the global economy work,” says Dean Snyder on the school’s website. “With this elevated understanding of leadership, they anticipate change and drive innovation, make decisions empirically, and constantly seek opportunity. In short, they lead and manage people to create value for their organizations and for society.” And DelMonico described the Yale SOM to mbaMission as “very much a general

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 management school,” adding, “All our students have broad interests and take classes in a range of areas—not just a single discipline.”

Companies known to hire for general management positions that employed SOM students and graduates in recent years include Liberty Mutual, Sears Holding Corporation, and General Motors Company.

Health Care and Biotechnology

Eight faculty members with specifc expertise in health care are listed on the SOM website, and even though the school offers just six elective courses in this study area per academic year, the SOM’s fexible elective policy allows students to pursue their health care interests at other schools within the university system as well, such as the School of Public Health.

Health care electives at the SOM include “Healthcare Operations,” “Health Care Strategy,” and “Healthcare Policy,

Finance, and Economics.” In addition, a “Healthcare Management Colloquium” is offered to joint degree candidates, physicians, and other interested students, with the consent of the course director. “Healthcare Opera- tions,” which focuses on ways to improve implementation, involves a group project as well as a visit to a New

Haven emergency room. In “Healthcare Strategy,” students approach the health care feld from a strategic stand- point, focusing on such issues as the medical device market, competition in health care, and effciency of the U.S. health care system within a global context.

In 2010, the school’s Healthcare Club and the Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Society merged to form the greater university’s interdisciplinary Yale Healthcare and Life Sciences Club (YHLC), which boasts more than 1,200 members. The YHLC works to increase students’ exposure to the felds of health care and life sciences while also assisting with job searches in these areas. Benefts of club membership include opportunities to attend conferences, programs, and job treks to such cities as San Francisco, Boston, and New York. In addition, the club hosts an annual health care conference, a pharmaceutical case competition, a health care networking night, health care panels, and other networking events.

Inaugurated in 2001 and hosted by the YHLC, the Yale Healthcare Conference is held each spring. This combined venture between the SOM and the university’s health-related professional schools (such as the School of Public

Health and the School of Medicine) reportedly draws more than 450 participants, including academics, students, and members of the health care profession.

The 2018 Yale Healthcare Conference, which was held in April, was titled “Improving Healthcare Access: Benefts and Solutions for Business and Society” and featured the CEO of the Yale New Haven Hospital and the Yale New

Haven Health System and the executive director of Covered California as the keynote speakers. Two breakout panel sessions covered a range of discussion topics, including “Healthcare Policy and the Employee: The Future of

Employer-Sponsored Healthcare Coverage,” “When Access Should be Limited: Combating Waste and Overutiliza-

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 tion in US Healthcare,” and “Frontiers of Healthcare Technology: The Role of Telemedicine and Patient-Centered

Innovation.” The event concluded with a networking cocktail reception.

The 2017 event was themed “Improving Health and Healthcare: Bridging Society and Industry Interests.” Keynote speeches were delivered by the founder and CEO of PureTech Health and the chief medical offcer, deputy administrator, and director of the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The event’s two breakout panel sessions explored several topics, including “Educating and Employing the Next Generation of Healthcare Leaders,” “Health

Policy and the Trump Administration,” “The Promise and Challenges of Remote Patient Monitoring,” and “What VCs are Funding: The Next Big Thing in Healthcare.” Two networking opportunities were also offered.

The April 2016 conference was themed “Creating Value and Sustaining Gains: The Next Decade in Healthcare” and welcomed as keynote speakers the president and CEO of Cleveland Clinic and the president and CEO of the Leap- frog Group. Two breakout panel sessions covered such topics as “Predictive Analytics in Population Health,” “Spe- cialty Pharmaceuticals and Biosimilars,” “The Comprehensive Care Riddle: Knitting Together Social Services With

Acute Patient Care,” and “Evolving Scope of Practice: Nurse Practitioners, Physician Assistants, Pharmacists.” Two networking opportunities were also offered.

In 2015 the event was themed “Optimizing Healthcare Outcomes” and featured the CEO and president of Cigna and a cardiologist and health care researcher as keynotes. The conference offered breakout sessions on such topics as “Building on Bedrock or Quicksand? How Payment Models Are Shifting Post ACA,” “From Palm Reading to

Watson: How Big Data Is Enabling Predictive Medicine,” “Innovation Through Collaboration: The Next 100 Years in

Public Health,” and “Can You Hear Me Now? Giving Power to the Voices of Patients.” A networking cocktail session concluded the day’s activities.

A course that stood out to us at mbaMission as possibly having particular appeal for students with both an interest in health care and an entrepreneurial drive is a three-day, noncredit seminar offered through the YHLC called

“Business of Biotech.” Taught by Yale MBA Constance McKee (’86), this program covers the key components of starting a biotech company, from developing business plans to identifying fnancing strategies.

In addition, the Yale SOM offers both a joint MBA/MPH (Master’s of Public Health) degree with the Yale School of

Public Health and a joint MBA/MD with the Yale School of Medicine. Students in the three-year MBA/MPH program must complete the entire set of core graduation requirements for both schools. After spending the frst two years of the program within either the SOM or the School of Public Health (frst one, then the other, in either order), students use the third year to complete a mix of electives from both schools. The joint MBA/MD program spans fve years—three and a half are spent in the School of Medicine, and a full year plus one semester are spent at the SOM.

At the culmination of the fve years, students receive both an MBA and a Doctor of Medicine degree.

In 2017, 1.6% of the SOM’s graduates accepted jobs in the health care/pharmaceuticals industry areas (down from

5.0% in 2016, 4.9% in 2015, and 3.6% in 2014). Johnson & Johnson, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Pfzer Inc., Kaiser Per-

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 manente, CIGNA Corp., Medtronic, and Perkin Elmer are listed as having hired SOM students for internships and full-time positions in this feld in recent years.

International Business

“Yale’s MBA program requires students to gain a meaningful exposure to complex issues facing business and society in different regions of the world,” declares the SOM on its site. Seven professors in the SOM faculty directory are identifed as having expertise in some form of international business (including globalization and international trade), and the school offers approximately ten electives in this study area. When the school’s revised integrated curriculum launched in 2006, the SOM became the frst U.S. business school to stipulate an international element as a requirement for graduation, called the Global Studies Requirement. All students must therefore participate in one of the following international opportunities during their two years in the program:

• Global Network Courses

• Global Network Weeks

• Global Social Entrepreneurship courses

• International Experience

• Semester-long international exchange with a partner school

In the International Experience, frst-year SOM students take a ten-day trip to an international location—such as

Chile, India, Israel, or Japan—to visit corporations, business leaders, nongovernmental organizations, and politicians while experiencing the area’s culture. The trips are led by faculty members and typically involve groups of

20 students.

In the fall of their frst year, students prepare for their International Experience trip by studying area industries, attending lectures given by experts on the regions the students will visit, and preparing presentations on their destination. Students rank their destination preferences from one to ten, and according to a frst year we interviewed, “You should get one of your top three.” Trips in 2017–2018 involved such destinations as South Africa,

China, India, Croatia, and Serbia. In 2016–2017, students traveled to such countries as Indonesia, Japan, and Israel.

Students on the Indonesia trip visited non-proft and for-proft companies, governmental institutions, and NGOs, all the while learning about the local culture. Those who traveled to Japan concentrated on the sustainability in the country and were able to meet with local political leaders, in addition to visiting company offces.

Trip destinations in 2015 included Serbia and Croatia, while 2014 trips included Switzerland, Brazil, and Japan. In

2013, students traveled to Japan, South Africa, Indonesia, Brazil, South Korea, Myanmar, and South Africa. A frst year who went on a Japan trip—led by Professor Arthur Swersey—described his tour of the JFE Steel plant on the school’s website by saying, “It was one of the coolest experience I’ve ever had … [it] helped me reframe my world view to see supply chain and manufacturing in a new light.”

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Upon their return, participating students write and present a research paper about the experience as part of the spring core course “State and Society.” Each trip “serves as a case study in learning about the complexities of a business environment from a leader’s point of view,” asserts the school’s site, adding, “The course gives you an enhanced ability to think globally that will be valuable for the rest of your time at Yale and beyond.” The cost of students’ International Experience trips is included in tuition.

The SOM is a founding member of the Global Network for Advanced Management, a worldwide educational consortium of 32 business schools in 28 countries. Member institutions include Fudan University School of Management in China, the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore in India, the National University of Singapore Business

School, INSEAD in both France and Singapore, HEC Paris in France, and Renmin University of China School of Busi- ness. Students have the option of fulflling the Global Studies Requirement by participating in one of the school’s

Global Network Weeks, which take place in the fall, spring, and summer. In its sixth year in 2017–2018, this program places SOM students in weeklong mini courses hosted by other network schools, thereby giving the students the opportunity to “attend classes, tour local businesses, and meet with experts focused on current business problems,” explains the network’s website. In 2018, host schools included IE Business School in Madrid, Spain; the

Pontifcia Universidad Católica in Santiago, Chile; and Lagos Business School in Lagos, Nigeria.

In addition, several SOM electives focus on international business, such as “The Future of Global Finance,” “Inter- national Entrepreneurship,” “The Global Corporation,” “Managing Global Catastrophes,” and “Global Social Entre- preneurship: India.”

The class “Managing Global Catastrophes” examines such crises as Hurricane Katrina, the 2011 Japanese nuclear disaster, and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami to help students develop an understanding of crisis management in diffcult and intense circumstances. Class speakers include representatives from the Federal Emergency Manage- ment Agency, the U.S. Coast Guard, and World Bank.

Through the SOM’s International Exchange Program, students can spend the fall of their second year at one of fve partner schools outside the United States:

• HEC Paris, France

• IESE Business School, Barcelona, Spain

• London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom

• National University of Singapore Business School, Singapore

• Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management, Beijing, China

By doing so, these students can fulfll their Global Studies Requirement, but for students who want to meet this requirement without venturing abroad, the school offers Global Network Courses. These small, virtual courses connect student teams from across seven Global Network member institutions to “take advantage of the global nature of the student body to enhance lessons and deepen cross-cultural understanding, a key to succeeding in

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 21st century business,” explains the school’s site. Global Network Courses offered in recent years include “In- ternational Management and Organizational Structures,” “Analysis of Competition Law and Enforcement Across

Countries,” “Natural Capital: Risks and Opportunities in Global Resource Systems,” and “Mobile Banking Opportu- nities Across Countries.” These online courses are designed to provide students the experience of working across time zones and cultural barriers.

In addition, students can choose from among several clubs that focus on international business and the cultures of other countries, such as the Greater China Club, the Japan Club, the Korea Club, the Association of Hispanic and

Latin American Students, the South Asia Club, and the Southeast Asia Club.

In 2017, 19.0% of the SOM’s graduates accepted international positions (up from 15.4% in 2016, 14.2% in 2015, 8.9% in 2014, and 13.4% in 2013). SOM graduates in recent years have accepted international positions with such frms and organizations as BNP Baripas, China International Capital Corporation Limited, Ministry of Production of Peru,

Instituto Mexicano para la Competitividad A.C., and Minsait.

Marketing

Marketing education at the SOM begins in the core with a course called “Customer,” one of the nine Organizational

Perspective classes. Approximately 20 SOM electives emphasize marketing, including “Customer Insights and Ap- plications,” “Mastering Infuence and Persuasion,” “Strategic Communication; Delivering Effective Presentations,”

“Listening to the Customer,” “Digital Strategy,” “Strategic Market Measurement,” and “Marketing Strategy.” In the project-based “Customer Insights and Applications,” taught by Ravi Dhar, the George Rogers Clark Professor of Management and Marketing, students work in teams to solve real marketing challenges that affliates of the school’s Center for Customer Insights (described later in this section) face. Dhar, who is one of 13 marketing professors at the SOM, is director of the center and a professor of psychology at Yale University, as well as an expert in consumer behavior. The fall course “Mastering Infuence and Persuasion” is described on the SOM website as teaching students “what makes other people want to say yes.”

The mission of the Marketing Club at the SOM is both internal and external. Internally, the club encourages marketing as an educational option to students and seeks to offer professional development opportunities to those interested in pursuing a career in the feld. The club’s mission, as stated on the school’s website, is to “encourage marketing as an educational focus, assist students with their professional development … [to] enhance the overall reputation of SOM marketing students, and to provide a forum for interaction between marketing students, faculty, alumni, and marketing professionals.” Resources offered by the club include resume reviews, talks and panels by second years on their internship experiences in the feld of marketing, and treks to companies within the industry.

The Yale Center for Customer Insights (YCCI), founded in 2005, works closely with the Marketing Club and explores consumer behavior and marketing in depth, focusing primarily on research designed to provide insight into cus-

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 tomers’ mind-sets. Through academic research, programs with corporations, conferences, and other events, the center targets the three main areas of behavioral economics, predictive analytics, and social media. The center organizes various conferences and seminars throughout the academic year.

As part of its Colloquium Speaker Series, the YCCI hosts presentations by top executives across a variety of industries. Seminar speakers the center has brought to the SOM in recent years include the president of Hasbro Brands, who spoke about transforming his company into a global “Branded Play” organization; a partner and managing director with the Boston Consulting Group, who discussed marketing leadership; and the retired chairman and

CEO of the Procter and Gamble Company, who reviewed his 40-year career with the company.

The center’s May 2018 Customer Insights Conference featured such keynote speakers as the chief consumer offcer of L'Oréal, the chief marketing offcer of Keds, the president of customer development at Unilever, and the head of data science at Warby Parker. Keynote speakers at the May 2017 conference included chief marketing offcer of the Boston Red Sox, a former CEO of Chanel, and the head of global integrated marketing at Hershey Company.

Academic speakers represented such schools as Columbia Business School, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and the Harvard Business School.

The center’s May 2016 Customer Insights Conference offered panel sessions with such topics as “Millenials Grow- ing Up, Gen Z Coming Up,” “Experience, Not Things,” and “Harnessing the Power of Story.” Speakers included the chief marketing offcer of Johnson & Johnson, the chief creative offcer of REI, and the director of global brand strategy at Spotify. The 2015 conference involved such speakers as the chief marketing offcer of Istation, the senior director of Visa Inc., and the director of global agency development at Facebook. Panel sessions covered themes such as “Sustaining Relevance in Physical + Virtual Worlds,” “Advertising & Promotions,” “Marketing Strat- egy,” and “Driving Growth Through Customer Understanding.” The conference also featured a number of networking events, including a cocktail reception.

The SOM’s employment statistics show that 10.1% of the school’s 2017 graduates chose to enter positions with a marketing/sales function (7.9% in 2016, 13.4% in 2015, and 11.4% in 2014). Students accepted internships or full- time positions in recent years with companies such as Amazon.com, PepsiCo, Philips, the Coca-Cola Company, and

Mattel.

Nonproft/Social Entrepreneurship

The Yale SOM’s nonproft management program was ranked number one among business schools in the U.S. News

& World Report survey each year from 2011 to 2015. In 2017, 5.2% of the school’s graduates began their post-MBA careers in the nonproft industry (4.6% in 2016, 4.4% in 2015, and 10.3% in 2014).

Yale SOM students interested in nonproft have roughly 12 electives in this study area from which to choose.

Through a combination of lecture and team projects, “Global Social Entrepreneurship,” for example, introduces

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 students to the complexities facing socially driven entrepreneurs. The course combines academic content with practical application and connects Yale SOM students, working in teams, with social enterprises in such countries as Indonesia and India. At the culmination of the course, students issue recommendations to their assigned social enterprise based on a set of challenges identifed during the class. Other elective opportunities for students interested in nonproft include “Strategic Management of Nonproft Organizations,” “Managing Social Enterprises,” and “Financial Distress: Restructuring Troubled Entities.”

The Program on Social Enterprise (PSE) at Yale, under the direction of Fredric D. Wolfe Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship (and former SOM dean) Sharon Oster and Executive Director Tony Sheldon, combines courses, conferences, and research to explore what the program’s website claims are “the ways in which business skills and market disciplines can be harnessed to most effectively and effciently achieve social objectives.” Electives offered through the program include the aforementioned “Global Social Entrepreneurship” and “Strategic Man- agement of Nonproft Organizations,” in addition to “Introduction to Responsible Business” and “Urban Poverty and Economic Development.”

In addition, the PSE manages the Program on NonProft Organizations. Known as PONPO, this program has been part of the school for more than 25 years and aims to “bring researchers and practitioners in the non-governmental section together to explore areas of shared concern,” asserts the program’s site.

The Net Impact Club at the SOM states on its site that its mission is to foster a “community of like-minded students, faculty, and alumni, educating that community on current topics related to social impact, and advocating for curriculum, admissions, and career development support.” By meeting certain criteria—such as holding a minimum number of events a year and maintaining a certain number of dues-paying members—the SOM Chapter of Net

Impact has achieved Gold Chapter status. Benefts of Gold Chapter status include special logos and conference discounts. Working with other clubs that share its mission, such as the Social Impact Consulting Club and the Busi- ness and the Environment Club, Net Impact focuses on seven specifc issue areas: Corporate Social Responsibility,

Philanthropy and Social Investing, Public Sector, Social Enterprise/Nonproft Management, Economic Develop- ment, Financial Services, and Agriculture/Food Systems.

Two years in a row (2009 and 2010), the SOM Chapter of Net Impact won an award for sending the largest delega- tion of club members to the annual Net Impact National Conference, and in 2011, the club was nominated for

Chapter of the Year. The club plans various events on campus, including career development sessions (e.g., cover letter review), social sector networking nights, and a Q&A with representatives from the Career Development Of- fce. In recent years, the Social Sector Speaker Series has featured such participants as the executive director of

Doctors Without Borders USA, the president of the Climate Civics Institute, the director of the Bill and Melinda

Gates Foundation, and the director of marketing for PETA. The club also hosts a Philanthropy Conference and has cosponsored the First Year Case Competition with the Consulting Club (see the Consulting section under Profes- sional Specializations).

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 The 13th annual Yale Philanthropy Conference was held in February 2018 with the theme “Adaptive Philanthropy,

Resilient Sector.” The morning keynote was delivered by the president of Prosperity Now, while the president and

CEO of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy was the closing keynote speaker. The daylong conference’s discussion panels explored such topics as “Thinking Outside the Box: Fostering Creativity and Experi- mentation in Organizations,” “Changing Gears: Making Strategic Shifts and Realignments,” and “Toward Equity:

Advancing Responsive Philanthropy.” A closing reception concluded the day’s events.

The February 2017 event was themed “Transformations: Navigating Change for the Future.” The morning keynote was delivered by the vice president of education, creativity, and free expression for the Ford Foundation, while the president and CEO of ALSAC was the closing keynote speaker. The conference’s discussion panels and workshops were divided into two session categories, titled “Transforming Performance” and “Shifting Perspectives.” Indi- vidual workshops and panels explored such topics as “Making Data Work for You and Drive Your Strategy,” “Creat- ing Organizational Capacity and Flexibility,” and “Recruiting Millennials for Major Gifts.” The daylong conference concluded with a closing reception.

The 2016 Yale Philanthropy Conference took place in February and was themed “Fostering Ecosystems of Change.”

The morning keynote was delivered by the vice president of corporate citizenship/corporate affairs at IBM and the president of the IBM International Foundation. The closing keynote was delivered by the president of the F.B.

Heron Foundation. Discussion panels and workshops were divided into three session categories: “Thinking in

Systems,” “Fostering Innovation from the Ground Up,” and “Embracing Organizational Evolution.” Individual workshops and panels covered topics such as “Creative Destruction and Exit Strategies,” “Beyond Dollars: Leveraging

Your Role to Convene, Educate, Stimulate, and Empower,” and “Encouraging Experimentation, Risk, and Failing

Forward.” A reception concluded the daylong event.

With the theme “Refect. Innovate. Impact,” the 2015 conference featured a keynote speech by the vice president of initiatives and strategy at The Rockefeller Foundation, and an afternoon keynote by a special assistant to

President Barak Obama who is also the senior director of cabinet affairs at My Brother’s Keeper. Breakout panel discussions explored the overall event’s three primary topics: Refect, Innovate, and Impact. The Refect panel examined the themes “Learning from Business Models,” while the Refect workshop was titled “The Art of Story- telling.” Similarly, the Innovate portion of the conference involved a discussion and a workshop, titled “The Ex- ample of Incentives” and “How to Create a Culture of Change,” respectively. Two Impact discussions were offered on the themes “Increasing Effectiveness Through Collaboration” and “Data-Driven Decision-Making.” In addition, the founder and managing partner of DBL Investors hosted a freside chat, and conference participants enjoyed a networking lunch.

Founded in 1986 as the Outreach Management Consulting Group and later called SOM Outreach and the Outreach

Nonproft Consulting Club, the student-run group now called the Social Impact Consulting Club provides consulting services to organizations in the New Haven community. Working with public and private institutions as well as nonprofts, the Social Impact Consulting Club offers services free of charge to clients who could not otherwise af-

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 ford consulting services. Teams of frst-year students and a second year who acts as project manager work on such projects as business plan development, marketing plan development, and studies of organizational structure.

If needed, teams can also be connected with a faculty member who can assist with the specifc nature of the project, reported a second year we interviewed, who listed the following projects to which club members had contributed: a revenue growth strategy for the New Haven Institute Library, a strategic budgeting model for the

Connecticut Veterans Legal Center, an affordable housing project for the Greater New Haven Help Alliance, and an economic impact study for the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey. Other past projects include marketing strategy recommendations for the Greater Valley Chamber of Commerce, a strategic growth plan for Projects for a New Mil- lennium, and a market assessment of electric trolley use for the city of New Haven.

Through alumni and other guest speakers, roundtable discussions, and similar activities, the Business and the

Environment Club strives to fulfll its mission of “support[ing] students interested in the intersection of competitive business organizations and sustainable environmental practices,” as the group states on its website. The club also serves as a resource for other SOM organizations that include an environmental component in their activities.

Speaking about the opportunities available at the SOM for students interested in sustainability, a second-year student told us, “One of the great advantages of being an MBA student at Yale who is interested in the intersection of business and the environment is that one has the opportunity to identify, invite, and host executive-level leaders who have built successful businesses with sustainability at their core. It’s intellectually appealing and an amazing opportunity to build a professional network.”

A second-year student explained to mbaMission, “At Yale, we believe that helping others improves ourselves. We have a responsibility to help others.” In fact, 6.1% of the Class of 2018 spent their 2017 summer internship with a company in the nonproft industry (as did 8.6% of the Class of 2017 the previous year). To help fnancially level the playing feld, so to speak, for those students who opt for one of these frequently low- or even non-paying internships, the Yale SOM Internship Fund, established in 1979, provides fnancial support to those who spend their summer working in the social enterprise, public, or nonproft arena—thereby helping these organizations better

“afford” top MBA students while mitigating the comparative fnancial downside for students with an interest in this area.

Primary fundraising activities for the Internship Fund include Student Fundraising Week—during which SOM students are asked to pledge money to support their classmates—an auction, and a Star Search–style talent show.

“What’s incredible about IF is that it’s run by students. That means we help each other,” a frst year wrote in a blog post on the school’s Student Experience blog in February 2018. “What drew me to the cause was that the Intern- ship Fund exemplifed the spirit of collaboration and support, which makes our community so distinctive,” one of the fund’s organizers wrote in a February 2015 blog post. “It is truly phenomenal to see so many people dedicate their time and money to help their friends—with the end of fundraising week, the type of donations and support

I’ve seen from my peers as a cohort rep have really amazed me.”

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 In 2014, for example, the fund hosted a silent online auction in addition to the semiformal “Night in Valhalla” live auction. Auction items in recent years have included a weekend in a vacation home, a night’s stay at the Yale

Club, a month’s worth of free coffee at the school’s student-run café, lunch with Professor Robert Schiller, and a round of golf with Dean Snyder. Also in 2014, the school opened a student-run gym—called Fit for Thought—which donates all the membership dues it collects to the fund. A second year we interviewed explained, “The idea is that people should pursue their passions with an internship and not just take the most lucrative offer. The school comes together in a huge way … and usually raises close to $100,000 over the course of the year. This is a huge and important tradition here.”

The SOM likewise supports its graduates who choose careers in nonproft with a loan forgiveness program. Avail- able to MBA and joint-degree graduates alike, the program helps cover the repayment of tuition and fees originally funded via need-based loans, and eligible alumni can apply for this assistance anytime within ten years of graduation. The school’s loan forgiveness program, established in 1986, was the frst of its kind (according to the SOM website) and “has provided a model for similar programs at business schools” ever since.

Organizations that hired students from the SOM in recent years for either internships or full-time positions in this feld include the Environmental Defense Fund, the International Rescue Committee, the Veritas Forum, Education

Pioneers, New Sector Alliance, United Way of Greater Portland, Azuero Earth Project, EarthEnable, and Refresh

Appalachia.

Real Estate

Only 2.0% of the SOM’s 2016 graduates entered careers in real estate, slightly up from 1.7% in 2016 and 1.8% in

2015. The school has at least three electives, approximately three faculty members, and an active club that focus specifcally on this feld. Electives in real estate include “Real Estate Finance,” “International Real Estate,” “Cases in Commercial Real Estate,” and “Real Estate Finance for Institutional Investors.” “Real Estate Finance” provides students with an introduction to the feld, with an emphasis on fnancing issues. The goals of the “Real Estate

Finance for Institutional Investors” course are to develop in students both a general knowledge of real estate investment and a level of excitement for this unique area of business. Students are also encouraged to take advantage of real estate–related courses offered by other Yale University graduate schools, such as Yale Law School, the School of Architecture, and the School of Forestry.

The school’s Real Estate Club states on its site that it strives “to promote and increase awareness of the practice of, and professional development opportunities in, real estate, including development, fnancing, management, and commercial brokering aspects.” Club activities—which include guest speakers, alumni events, real estate run breakfasts, and compiling a resume book—bring SOM students together with today’s real estate practitioners and with students and faculty members from other professional schools at Yale who have an interest in this feld.

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 In addition, the school has brought speakers to campus to discuss topics pertaining to real estate. For example, the principals of the award-winning documentary Dream Builders: The Partnership of Peter M. Lehrer and Gene

McGovern previously spoke on the flm and their New York City construction business (the pair is credited with renovating the Statue of Liberty, EuroDisney, Ellis Island, and Canary Wharf, among other well-known sites). And as part of the Gordon Grand Fellowship lecture series, the chairman and CEO of Tishman Speyer (a multinational real estate development company—one of the world’s largest) spoke at the school about the future of commercial real estate, expressing his personal sense of optimism about what lies ahead.

Several SOM faculty members include the topic of real estate in their research, thereby expanding the school’s collective knowledge base on the industry. For one, famed economics professor Robert Shiller writes extensively on real estate matters. (See more on Professor Shiller in the Notable Professors and Unsung Heroes section.) In addition, William Goetzmann, who is the Edwin J. Beinecke Professor of Finance and Management Studies as well as director of the International Center for Finance at the school, has received attention for his studies in the area of real estate: a 2010 New York Times article highlighted Goetzmann’s research on real estate securitization in the 1920s, for which he had used documents from Yale’s History of Finance Collection to show parallels between modern markets and historical real estate securities.

Firms that hired SOM students for internships or full-time positions in real estate in recent years include Pruden- tial Real Estate Investors; The Bozzuto Group; AvalonBay Communities, Inc.; and Monument Realty.

Notable Professors and Unsung Heroes

Nicholas Barberis (som.yale.edu/nicholas-c-barberis): The Stephen and Camille Schramm Professor of Finance since 2006, Nicholas Barberis received his BA from Cambridge University in 1991 and his PhD from Harvard Univer- sity in 1996. He is a three-time recipient of the Yale SOM Alumni Association Teaching Award (2006, 2009, and 2013).

Barberis’s research focus is on behavioral economics, and he uses psychology to better understand trading behavior. In the core course “Investor,” which is primarily lecture based, he educates aspiring managers about asset al- location, valuation, futures and options, and returns and risk in markets. Through the course, students explore risk and reward in investment through the themes of economics, psychology, and organizational behavior. Speaking of the course in a 2012 SOM News article, Barberis said, “Psychology … can be helpful in understanding what goes on in markets. … Real-world fnance is much more than just crunching numbers.” A 12-minute video excerpt from

Barberis’s “Investor” course is available on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0qf3ZH5Gac.

Ravi Dhar (som.yale.edu/ravi-dhar): An expert in consumer behavior, Ravi Dhar is the George Rogers Clark Professor of Management and Marketing at the SOM and the founding director of the school’s Center for Customer Insights.

Dhar joined the SOM in 1992 after receiving his MBA and his PhD from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.

He also holds an affliated appointment in Yale University’s department of psychology. Dhar’s research explores how consumers form preferences for certain items and the subsequent prediction of consumer behavior in the

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 marketplace. He also consults with companies such as IBM, PepsiCo, and Visa and has had his work referenced in

Bloomberg Businessweek, the New York Times, The Economist, and USA Today. In 2012, second-year students chose

Dhar as the outstanding teacher of an elective course as part of the Yale School of Management Alumni Associa- tion’s Outstanding Teaching Awards, and in 2013, the Society for Consumer Psychology presented Dhar with the

Distinguished Scientifc Accomplishment Award, honoring his research in the feld of consumer behavior.

Gary B. Gorton (som.yale.edu/gary-b-gorton): Gary Gorton has been the Frederick Frank Class of 1954 Professor of

Management and Finance at the SOM since 2008, before which he taught at the Wharton School of Business at the

University of Pennsylvania. Gorton was formerly a director of the research program on banks and the economy for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and a senior economist at the Federal Reserve in Philadelphia, and his research focuses on such topics as the role of stock markets, banks, and bank regulation. His books Misunder- standing Financial Crises: Why We Don’t See Them Coming (Oxford University Press, USA, 2012) and Slapped by the

Invisible Hand: The Panic of 2007 (Oxford University Press, USA, 2010) offer in-depth analysis and discussion of the recent fnancial crisis. Gorton, who wrote his PhD dissertation on bank crises while studying at the University of

Rochester in 1983, notes on his website, “When I wrote it, I never dreamed I would live through one.”

The “Capital Markets” course Gorton teaches likewise focuses on the 2007 fnancial crisis, particularly as it related to capital markets. In it, he uses a mixture of case studies and lectures that touch on current fnancial events, and he expects students to keep up with the latest developments on the fnance scene by reading the business sections of the New York Times, the Financial Times, Bloomberg News, and the Wall Street Journal.

Andrew Metrick (som.yale.edu/andrew-metrick): Twice distinguished with Excellence in Teaching awards during his time at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Yale undergrad alumnus Andrew Metrick (’89) frst joined the Yale SOM faculty in 2008 as a professor of fnance. In 2009, he was named the Theodore Nierenberg Profes- sor of Corporate Governance and made faculty director of the Millstein Center for Corporate Governance. Then, in 2010, he became deputy dean for faculty development (a position which he held until 2016) and the Michael H.

Jordan Professor of Finance and Management. Finally, Metrick was named the Janet L. Yellen Professor of Finance and Management during the 2017–2018 academic year. Metrick’s interest in venture capital reportedly began when he volunteered to take over a course in the study area while at Wharton and led to the eventual publication of his textbook Venture Capital and the Finance of Innovation (with Ayako Yasuda; Wiley, 2010). His work now focuses on fnancial stability.

In his biography on the Yale SOM site, Metrick states, “The recent fnancial crisis made clear large gaps in our understanding of the modern fnancial system and the role it plays in the economy.” He also notes in his faculty bio that the fnancial crisis triggered something of a career shift for him, which “led to a complete change in my teaching, with all my courses now relating in some way to the functions and regulation of the fnancial system, especially when that system goes awry.” Metrick stepped away from the Yale SOM briefy in 2009–2010 to serve as an economist on President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors.

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Barry Nalebuff (som.yale.edu/barry-nalebuff): Perhaps best known as one of the founders of Honest Tea, for which he is now chairman, Barry Nalebuff is the Milton Steinbach Professor of Management at the Yale SOM. An expert in game theory and strategy, Nalebuff has been a professor at the SOM since 1989. A second year told mbaMission that in the classroom, Nalebuff “is a favorite for his sharp wit and insights.” His book The Art of Strategy: A Game

Theorist’s Guide to Success in Business and Life (W.W. Norton & Co., 2008) explores how almost all interactions, business and personal alike, have a game theory component. Nalebuff and Adam Brandenburger, a professor of business economics and strategy at NYU’s Stern School of Business, developed the concept of a new business strategy called co-opetition, which they write about in a book of the same name: Co-Opetition: A Revolutionary

Mindset That Combines Competition and Cooperation: The Game Theory Strategy That’s Changing the Game of Busi- ness (Crown Business, 1997).

The book describes co-opetition as “a revolutionary method that combines competition and cooperation.” A frst year noted in a 2010 Yale SOM Community Blog post, “Prof. Nalebuff never misses an opportunity to illustrate the ways in which companies can cooperate to grow the PIE (potential industry earnings). Of course, he then always reminds us that these same companies should compete aggressively to secure the biggest piece of that newly expanded PIE.”

Sharon Oster (som.yale.edu/sharon-m-oster): A second-year student we interviewed remarked that former SOM dean Sharon Oster “loves teaching almost more than [she loved] being dean!” Oster is the Frederic D. Wolfe Profes- sor of Management and Entrepreneurship and has taught “Basics of Economics,” part of the frst-year core—for a while giving everyone, as one second year told mbaMission, “a chance to get cold-called by their dean!” Oster’s expertise lies in economics and nonproft management. She is the author of several widely used business school text- books, including Modern Competitive Analysis (Oxford University Press, third edition, 1999), and has co-authored introductory economics texts such as Principles of Microeconomics (with Karl E. Case and Ray C. Fair; Prentice Hall, tenth edition, 2011) and Principles of Economics (with Karl E. Case and Ray C. Fair; Prentice Hall, tenth edition, 2011).

In addition, Oster is an expert in nonproft management. Her text Strategic Management for Nonproft Organiza- tions: Theory and Cases (Oxford University Press, 1995) is used in the SOM course “Non-Proft Management,” which a second year described to mbaMission as “always heavily oversubscribed.”

Oster came to the SOM from Yale University in 1982 and was the frst woman to receive tenure in 1983. She was also the frst recipient of the Yale SOM Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1988, which she received a second time in

2008. In addition, she was recognized with the Yale SOM Alumni Association Teaching Award in 2013 and featured among Poets&Quants’ “World’s 50 Best Business School Professors” in October 2012. Oster’s tenure as dean began in 2008 with the unexpected departure of previous dean Joel M. Podolny. When announcing the appointment of Ted

Snyder as the SOM’s incoming dean, the then Yale University President Richard Levin praised Oster, saying, “Sharon stepped up without hesitation to the dean’s role last year when my unexpected call came. She has served the SOM community with a steady hand and unwavering commitment, and I am truly grateful she has agreed to stay on as dean until Ted Snyder’s arrival in 2011.”

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Robert Shiller (som.yale.edu/robert-shiller): Even those not considering pursuing an MBA degree may be familiar with Robert Shiller, thanks to the famed Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Index. In fact, Shiller’s contributions to the feld of behavioral fnance won him the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economic Science (with Lars Peter Hansen and Eugene F. Fama). Currently the Sterling Professor of Economics at the SOM, Shiller has been at Yale since 1982.

The SOM website notes that Shiller has written about “fnancial markets, behavioral economics, macroeconom- ics, real estate, statistical methods, and public attitudes, opinions, and moral judgments regarding markets.” And according to Treasury & Risk magazine, which named Shiller one of the 100 most infuential economists of 2009, he “is credited with predicting the 2007 housing market peak and the subsequent plunge of global markets.” SOM students appear to hold Shiller, who often uses games to explain ideas, in high regard. “He’s awesome,” a second year told mbaMission, with a “very nice, easy manner.” Another second-year student we interviewed said, “You come out [of his class] pretty convinced of the things he says.” In addition, Shiller writes regular columns for both the New York Times and Project Syndicate.

Social/Community Life

Closing Bell: SOM’s weekly happy hour, Closing Bell, takes place on Thursday nights. Given that students have no classes on Fridays, Closing Bell kicks off the weekend. Generally held at an off-campus location, this event is at- tended by students and their partners as well as by faculty and staff and sometimes carries a theme—a February

2018 Closing Bell, for example, celebrated the Chinese New Year. According to a second year we interviewed, “It’s a great chance to catch up with friends after a busy week and to make plans for the evening, which often includes a trip to GPSCY [the Graduate & Professional Student Center at Yale, aka Gryphon’s Pub, described later in this section] or other popular watering holes like Mory’s, or quieter dinners and gatherings.”

Gartska Cup: For some, life in the Northeast would not be complete without ice hockey. The hockey club at the

SOM is reportedly one of the largest at the school, attracting student players of all abilities. Said a second-year student we interviewed, “Playing hockey or attending as a spectator is a blast, especially since we use Ingalls Rink, an amazing facility where the currently top-ranked Yale hockey team plays its matches.” Referring to the Stanley

Gartska Cup, he added, “The season culminates with a frst-year versus second-year game in April, named after our deputy dean [now professor in the practice of management], whose frst name is Stanley—get it?” Speaking of the event in a February 2013 video on the SOM community blog, a frst year said, “It’s just a great way to relax, unwind, but have some good, clean, competitive fun,” adding that a “requisite amount of trash talking on the ice” goes on between the frst and second years. Even those with little interest in sports might want to consider attending—in 2016, the invite to the Cup referred to the event as “the best party of the year.”

Gryphon’s Pub at GPSCY: Located in a Gothic-style building on York Street in the heart of Old Campus, Gryphon’s

Pub has been run by the Graduate & Professional Student Center at Yale since the 1970s. This members-only club is managed by Yale graduate students and features several lounges, a big-screen TV, pool tables, and nightly

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 drink specials. Membership dues, which were $20 in 2017–2018, are considered a bargain, given the $2–$5 cover charge (which members are not required to pay) and the frequency with which students tend to fnd themselves at Gryphon’s!

Harvard-Yale Football Game: Students we interviewed reported that “Bulldog” football is a key component of autumn on the Yale University campus, and the Harvard-Yale rivalry (known as “The Game”) is considered one of the most important face-offs on each season’s schedule. Since 1875, The Game has been played nearly every No- vember at the end of the football season. Because the event alternates between the Harvard and Yale venues each year, SOM students will have the opportunity to attend The Game at the Yale Bowl at least once during their time at the school. However, given the two schools’ proximity to each other, we expect that travelling to Cambridge,

Massachusetts, to attend The Game at Harvard is worth considering.

Graduate students pay student pricing for most athletic events and sit in the student section. The Yale Bowl is only about a mile and a half from campus, and students often walk to the event together in “caravans” after tailgating in the parking lot. The Game brings both the universities and their business schools together. One second-year student told mbaMission, “When we host, we have a weekend of events, including a dance party at GPSCY [the

Graduate and Professional Student Center at Yale] and a tailgate the morning of the game. Both of my years, we organized a mixer with HBS, as it’s a great opportunity to mingle with other business school students.”

Academic Summary

Curriculum: Students must complete 72 units of credit, including 34 from core courses, to graduate. In addition, students must fulfll the school’s Global Studies Requirement by participating in one of the following curricular offerings:

• Global Network Course

• Global Network Week

• Global Social Entrepreneurship courses

• International Experience course

• Semester-long international exchange with a partner school

In 2006, the SOM instituted its integrated curriculum, which consists of a series of core courses and the Global

Studies Requirement. The core is divided into two sections: Orientation to Management, which takes place in the early fall, and Organizational Perspectives, which takes place in late fall and continues throughout the remainder of students’ frst year. The second year consists entirely of electives, which students may select from and take at any of the schools at Yale University.

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Integrated Core Courses

• “Basics of Accounting”

• “Basics of Economics”

• “Competitor”

• “Customer”

• “Employee”

• “The Executive”

• “The Global Macroeconomy”

• “Global Virtual Teams”

• “Innovator”

• “Introduction to Negotiation”

• “Investor”

• “Managing Groups and Teams”

• “Modeling Managerial Decisions”

• “Operations Engine”

• “Power and Politics”

• “Probability Modeling and Statistics”

• “Sourcing and Managing Funds”

• “State and Society”

Additional Elements

• Global Studies Requirement

• Leadership Distribution Requirement

Grade Disclosure Policy: The Yale SOM has a nondisclosure policy with regard to grades. The school does not com- pute GPA or class rank.

Grading Policy: Grades at the SOM fall under fve categories: high honors, honors, profcient, pass, and fail. High honors are granted to 10% of each class.

Majors: The Yale SOM does not offer majors or special concentrations.

Research Centers and Initiatives:

• Center for Customer Insights

• Center for Business and the Environment

• Chief Executive Leadership Institute

• China India Insights Program

• Initiative on Leadership and Organization

• International Center for Finance

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 • Program on Entrepreneurship

• Program on Financial Stability

• Program on Social Enterprise

• SOM Lab

• Yale Center Beijing

Teaching Method: The Yale SOM uses a diverse set of teaching methods, including case study, lecture, and experiential learning. The school is also known for having developed the “raw” case format, in which students use real-time data rather than previously prepared cases.

Admissions Basics

Note: Any specifcs discussed in this section related to application requirements were valid for the 2017–2018 admissions season (unless otherwise noted). Be aware that requirements for any subsequent admissions cycles may differ.

Always check with the school directly to confrm all application details.

The Yale SOM allows applicants to join the school’s admissions community through newsletters, a student blog, admissions discussion forums, and numerous admissions events. Admissions events are held in the United States and internationally and take place throughout the fall and early winter. The SOM Community Blog (http://som. yale.edu/programs/mba/blog) provides an inside look at life at the school from the perspective of both frst- and second-year students. The blog is updated regularly throughout the academic year and touches on such topics as study groups, social life, and career aspirations.

Application Process: The Yale SOM has three application rounds and accepts only online applications. Applicants can log in to their admissions profle and regularly check the status of their application. Applications are reviewed by at least two members of the admissions committee and in random order. As a result, applications can be reviewed at any point in a round, rather than on a frst come, frst served basis. Most applications are brought for consideration by the full committee, and decisions are made as a group.

Interview requests are sent out throughout each admissions round, and no candidate is admitted without an interview. Each admissions decision deadline falls approximately ten weeks after the round’s application deadline.

Admissions notifcations are made throughout each round, and the latest an applicant would hear from the admissions committee would be the date listed on the school’s website as the admissions decision deadline. Applicants are initially notifed of an acceptance via telephone, with electronic and hard-copy confrmation to follow. Denials are sent out via email.

Admissions Rounds: Like many business schools, the SOM has three admissions rounds, falling in the autumn, winter, and early spring. Rounds 1 and 2 have no appreciable difference between them with regard to competitive

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 advantage, and the school’s general recommendation is for candidates to submit their application when they feel it is at its best. Round 3 is more competitive simply because fewer open spots remain.

GMAT/GPA Cutoff and the GRE: The SOM stipulates no required minimum for a candidate’s GPA or GMAT score.

However, the 80% range for the GMAT for the Classes of 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 was 690–760. The average undergraduate GPA for the Class of 2019 was 3.69. In 2010, the Yale SOM began accepting GRE scores, either in place of or in addition to GMAT scores.

TOEFL: The school does not require a TOEFL score for international applicants.

Word Limits: Although the admissions committee does not anticipate entirely strict adherence to word limits, discretion is appreciated. As of 2017–2018, the school had reduced the number of required essays from four to one and shortened applicant responses to a total word limit of 500. “We did so not because we’re trying to water down the application but rather to focus on what we think matters most to us,” wrote Assistant Dean and Director of Admissions Bruce DelMonico in a letter announcing the change, according to a July 2014 Poets&Quants article.

International Quotas: The Yale SOM has no quota for any kind of student, international or otherwise. International students have traditionally made up roughly one-third or more of the SOM class from year to year, and this pro- portion has been approaching half for more recent classes (45% for the Class of 2019, 46% for the Class of 2018, and 40% for the Class of 2017).

Younger Candidates: The Silver Scholars program, which was created in 2001 to celebrate the Yale SOM’s 25th anniversary, is a three-year MBA program designed specifcally for college seniors. Applications are limited to current college seniors, and candidates do not have to be U.S. citizens. “[The program provides the] unique opportunity for college seniors to earn an MBA in three years directly after graduation and move more quickly toward their career goals,” explains the school’s website. Silver Scholars spend their frst year following the SOM core curriculum, their second in a year-long internship, and then return to campus to complete their elective course work during their third year of the program.

Recommendations: The SOM requires that applicants submit two recommendations, and at least one should come from a person who has worked in a supervisory capacity with relation to the candidate in his or her latest position and can therefore knowledgeably assess the candidate’s job performance.

Campus Visit: Although a campus visit is not a requirement for admission to the SOM, on its site, the school’s admissions committee encourages applicants to make the trip to New Haven to get to know the school frsthand and to spend some time exploring the town. A typical campus visit includes sitting in on a class, taking a tour led by a student ambassador, and having lunch with students. The day concludes with an admissions question-and- answer session and may also include an admissions interview, if the candidate has been invited for one. Visits begin in early September and are scheduled online for Monday through Thursday. The Admissions Offce’s “Cam-

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 pus Visits” page (http://som.yale.edu/our-programs/full-time-mba/admissions/campus-visits) provides driving directions to the school as well as information on train travel and lodging.

In an interview with mbaMission, Assistant Dean and Director of Admissions Bruce DelMonico stated, “We encourage people to visit campus because we believe that it’s one of the best ways to get a sense of the SOM culture, community, and classroom experience. It benefts the applicant from that perspective and can perhaps make them better candidates in the sense that they can leverage this more sophisticated knowledge of Yale SOM in their application.”

Interviews: Interviews are by invitation only. Approximately 30% of SOM applicants are offered an interview, and no candidate is offered admission without an interview. Offers for interviews come randomly via email throughout each admissions round. Interviews are typically 30 minutes long and are most often conducted by trained second- year students on campus. Some off-campus interviews may be conducted either with alumni or through Skype.

“The format of the interview is behavioral in nature,” DelMonico explained in a 2013 post on the school’s MBA Blog, stating, “We will ask you questions about your past experiences and decisions to get a better sense of how you act and think. The best way to prepare for an interview is to know your résumé, reread your application essays, and have a good sense of what you have done well—and not so well—in the past, and why.”

Video Questions: In the 2013–2014 admissions season, the SOM introduced a new video question component to its application. Candidates are presented with three brief prerecorded online question prompts and are then required to record live responses of up to 90 seconds each via webcam. After viewing each question prompt, applicants are allotted 20 seconds to prepare their answer. The three video prompts consist of an open-ended question inquiring into the candidate’s general background, a behavioral question that asks the candidate how he/she would react in a hypothetical professional situation, and a “thought” question that asks the candidate to take a position on a specifc issue.

“The intent is that this new application element will be another opportunity for applicants to tell us more about themselves than we would otherwise learn from things like essays and recommendations,” explained DelMonico in a 2013 MBA Blog post. The video question is therefore supplementary to, and not a substitute for, the in-person interview. “I would especially emphasize that we do not expect perfection with these questions,” DelMonico added in a 2014 MBA Blog post. “We know that they are unrehearsed, extemporaneous, in-the-moment responses. We are more concerned about the thoughtfulness of your responses than the ‘polish’ of the presentation. (That said, please do dress appropriately.)”

Waitlist: The Yale SOM encourages applicants to submit new materials during their time on the waitlist if they feel that doing so will strengthen their application. The waitlist is not ranked; therefore, if a spot becomes available, an offer is made after the entire list is reviewed. In addition, the Admissions Offce is willing to offer feedback regarding why an applicant was waitlisted. When an applicant is waitlisted, the Admissions Offce directs candidates

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 to review the “Waitlist FAQs” (http://som.yale.edu/yale-som-waitlist), which offers insight into the process. Del-

Monico explained to mbaMission that this document “gives them guidance about what they should and shouldn’t do, what to expect, etc. Anyone who is waitlisted is advised to review that document closely so they know what to do next.”

Financial Aid: The Yale SOM website states that 73% of students receive fnancial assistance. In 2015, for example, the school provided $1.4M in loan forgiveness. An in-house loan program is available for international students that allows them to borrow up to the full cost of the MBA program at reasonable rates. All fnancial aid matters are handled through a dedicated business offce at the SOM. Every applicant is automatically nominated for merit scholarships, and awards are announced in conjunction with the candidate’s offer of admission.

Feedback: Applicants who are denied admission can receive feedback on their applications should they request it.

Unsuccessful applicants are asked to wait until the summer, after the admissions season is over, before request- ing this feedback, however.

Reapplicants: If an applicant is reapplying within two years, he or she only needs to resubmit a new application form with fee and write new essays. All other materials are kept on fle. The candidate’s essays should explain how the reapplicant has improved his or her candidacy since the original submission. In addition, new recommendations—though not required—may be similarly informative. The admission rate for reapplicants is reportedly the same as that for frst-time applicants. DelMonico explained to mbaMission, “We provide feedback to candidates who aren’t admitted to the program, so frst asking for and then addressing that feedback is the most important thing a reapplicant can do.”

Yale School of Management Essay Analysis, 2018–2019

We hosted a question-and-answer session with several leading admissions offcers (www.youtube.com/ watch?v=b0uVg70ZVl4&t=66s) earlier this year that featured Yale School of Management (SOM) Assistant Dean for

Admissions Bruce DelMonico. Ever the straight shooter, Bruce told us that the SOM would not be changing its application essay prompt for this season. We likely should have just taken him at his word, but just to be sure, we waited to see whether Yale would indeed offcially recommit to its single essay, and… it did! The school has made no modifcations to its prompt. So, you have one 500-word essay with which to make an impression on the admissions committee. Here it is…

Describe the biggest commitment you have ever made. (500 words maximum)

In a Yale SOM blog post about the school’s essay prompt, Bruce noted that this “seemingly simple and straightforward question” was composed with assistance from one of the program’s organizational behavior professors.

Yale’s admissions committee clearly takes the application essay seriously and is being thoughtful about the types

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 of behaviors it wants to see in the school’s students. In our online event, Bruce declared himself “agnostic” about whether applicants should discuss a personal commitment or a professional one. He notes that he is simply trying to gauge the level to which candidates commit themselves, rather than the context of the engagement: “We don’t have a preference for professional or personal accomplishments… We are not making value judgments about what that commitment is, but it is more about how you approach that commitment, how you have demonstrated that commitment, and what sorts of behaviors underlie that commitment.”

You may initially think that this prompt is rather narrow in scope, allowing you space to share the story of just a single professional or community project and nothing more. Although you can certainly discuss your dedication to a particular project or cause, you are defnitely not restricted to this approach. Consider this: you can also be committed to an idea (e.g., personal liberty) or a value (e.g., creating opportunity for others), and approaching your essay from this angle instead could enable you to share much more of and about yourself with the SOM admissions committee. For example, you might relate a few anecdotes that on the surface seem unrelated—drawing from different parts of your life—but that all support and illustrate how you are guided by a particular value. Or, to return to the example of personal liberty as a theme, you could show how you take control of your academic and professional paths, adhering steadfastly to your values and vision. Whatever you choose to feature as the focus of your commitment, your actions and decisions, manifest via a variety of experiences, must allow you to own it as a genuine part of who you are as an individual. Identifying a theme that you think no one else will ever use is not your goal here; presenting authentic anecdotes that powerfully support your selected theme is what is important.

However, if you prefer to focus on a single anecdote, the commitment you claim must be truly inordinate. Being particularly proud of an accomplishment is not enough to make it an effective topic for this essay. You need to demonstrate your constancy and dedication in the face of challenges or resistance, revealing that your connection to the experience was hard won. Strive to show that you have been resolute in following a sometimes diffcult path and have doggedly stayed on course, citing clear examples to illustrate your steadfastness. Nothing commonplace will work here—you must make your reader truly understand your journey and leave him or her more impressed by your effort than the outcome.

The Next Step—Mastering Your Yale SOM Interview: Many MBA candidates fnd admissions interviews stressful and intimidating, but mastering this important element of the application process is defnitely possible—the key is informed preparation. To help you on your way to this high level of preparation, we offer our free Interview Primers.

Download your free copy of the Yale School of Management Interview Primer today at https://shop.mbamission. com/products/yale-school-of-management.

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 mbaMission’s Exclusive Interview with Yale School of Management’s Admissions Director Bruce DelMonico

May 2016

The Yale School of Management’s (SOM’s) long-standing admissions director, Bruce DelMonico, recently took some time to chat with us about the MBA program’s current admissions process and provide insight into a few issues that are no doubt of interest to Yale SOM applicants. The following are just a few of the key topics DelMonico addressed:

• The steady increase in the school’s application numbers in recent years

• The admissions committee’s consensus approach to admit decisions

• How a candidate can avoid sounding inauthentic in the application

• The number one thing applicants should do when they fnd themselves on the waitlist

• His thoughts on the ubiquitous GMAT versus GRE question

• The inspiration behind Yale SOM’s video question

Read on for the full interview.

mbaMission: First, let me start by thanking you for talking with me today. We appreciate it. Some have been saying that the Yale School of Management [SOM] is losing its reputation of being quirky and untraditional and instead becoming more Wall Street, more corporate. Would you agree with this, and if so, does it change the kind of student you’re trying to attract?

Bruce DelMonico: I’ve heard that over the past year or two—concerns about the culture changing or losing the school’s character—but actually, I don’t agree with that assessment. From the admissions perspective, frst of all, it hasn’t changed anything in terms of what we’re doing or who we’re hoping to attract. I haven’t seen changes in terms of the composition of the incoming students. I think if anything, in terms of that frst job after graduation, the shift may be a little bit more toward consulting. I think that’s probably consistent with what other schools are seeing. I don’t think that’s a sign of anything large or any major deviation from our culture or mission, or from the character of the school. I think that remains intact.

mbaMission: Great. The school has seen a pretty steady increase in application numbers over the past couple years. What do you believe is driving this increase, and what effect has it had, if any, on how you evaluate candidates? And what’s been the effect on selectivity?

BD: That’s a good question. I think you could even go back farther and say that over the past decade, there’s been an increase. I’ve been at the school for 11 years now, and when I started, we received somewhere around 2,000 applications. Now we receive somewhere around 3,500. So, in my time, there’s been about a 70% increase in the number of applications we receive, which is a big jump. And I think there are a number of things behind this. I’d

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 like to think that some of things we do in admissions have helped, but there have also been changes on a larger scale—the introduction of the integrated curriculum, Dean [Ted] Snyder’s arrival—a lot of momentum that’s been happening, so really sharpening our focus, deepening our integration with the university, expanding our global presence and our global aspirations, really working to continue to refne our integrated curriculum, and then things like Evans Hall, our new campus, have helped us or garnered attention. I think all those things have contributed to the growth of our applicant pool. As for the selectivity, we’ve been roughly in the same range over the past few years, because as we’ve grown the pool, we’ve also grown the class size. We used to be in the low 200s in terms of the class, and now, we’re in the low 300s. So the class has grown to a large degree in parallel with the applicant pool, and I think that’s held the selectivity consistent.

In terms of the evaluation process, we obviously have more fles to go through. But we of course want to maintain the quality of the process and not cut corners. We have more people reviewing, so that’s helped, but some of it is just simply working a little harder. We defnitely evaluate more fles in a week than we had previously, but we don’t want to devote any less time to them. We actually have a consensus-based process, which means we all sit down as a committee and have to be in agreement on the outcome of the fles, of the applicants. Naturally, that has taken more time as the pool has grown, but we’ve been able to manage it. I’m a believer in that consensus model, so that’s something we’ll stay with.

mbaMission: That does seem like it might slow the process down a bit, having a whole group making the fnal decisions, rather than just one or two people.

BD: It does, but my belief is that it yields a richer outcome, and we make sure that we’re balancing, so that everybody brings a different perspective. I think that’s an important part of the process.

mbaMission: Sure. With the increase in applications, do you feel you’ve also seen an increase in quality, for a lack of better word, in the applicants you’re getting, or are you just getting a greater number of the same-level candidates?

BD: My sense is that it’s more the latter than the former. We’ve always received really, really strong, high-quality applications, and we continue to. So I don’t know that qualitatively, there’s been at the top end a huge increase in the quality of the pool. What we’ve seen is that there have been more of those high-quality applicants, if that makes sense. I don’t think the quality of the top end has gotten any stronger, but the depth maybe has gotten a little bit deeper. I think that’s obviously a good thing for us.

mbaMission: Got it. You regularly offer applicants the advice of being themselves in their application, rather than trying to be whatever they think you or the admissions committee wants them to be. How do you know when someone is not being genuine in their application? Are there certain tells?

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 BD: Maybe there are people who are so good at it we can’t tell! But we do tell people to be themselves, and I know other schools do as well, and we do it for a good reason. We want to get a sense of who you really are. I’ve used this analogy in the past, and hopefully, it’s a helpful one, but my professional background is that I’m a lawyer, so

I was a litigator. And when you’re preparing someone for a deposition or for trial, the frst thing you tell them is to tell the truth. And there are two reasons you do that: one is that it’s right thing to do, and then the second is that it’s much easier to remember the truth.

And I think that applies in the application process as well. What we’re looking for as we’re evaluating candidates is to make sure that everything kind of fts together, which isn’t to say that it has to be entirely consistent across every element of the application, that it’s all uniform. But when you say one thing in your essay about what you’ve done and what you’re interested in doing, and then your recommenders say something completely different, and your academic record and professional background show something else, those are the things we see as potential tells that you’re trying to present yourself as someone other than who you are.

So that will raise a red fag for us. By telling the truth and being yourself, you’re not presenting multiple selves to different schools, and you don’t have to keep track of “What did I say to this school?” and “What did I say to that school?” I think there’s a sense that some schools are fnance schools or marketing schools or nonproft schools or operations schools, and therefore you need to be a fnance person or a marketing person or a nonproft person or an operations person to each of these schools. I don’t know if that ever was the case in the past, but I know that certainly at Yale and every other school, the admissions offces are looking to put together a very diverse class, so you don’t have ft any one particular model or mold.

mbaMission: Right.

BD: But when you start to sort of shape your candidacy to ft the school—I mean obviously, you might highlight certain aspects of yourself to different schools, based on what you think might resonate more with them—but if you go too far in that direction, you start to seem insincere or not terribly genuine, and that’s where the red fags come in. So, if you have always been in fnance and now you want to go into nonproft, well, did you ever volunteer?

Did you ever do anything in the nonproft space? Where is that interest coming from? Or if you have always been in the nonproft space and want to go into fnance, where is that interest coming from? What’s behind that? If we see a disconnect there, that’s where we question that aspect of the candidacy.

But even when we see that, that doesn’t automatically mean we’re not going to admit that person. Sometimes we’ll see a candidate who says, “I have these goals,” but we’ll look at their profle and get the sense that they’re saying that because they think that’s what they need to say. We might still admit them, and they might think they got admitted because they said that, but actually, they got admitted despite having said it. We recognize that they’re maybe being a little cute with the application, but we still fnd their application compelling, and we’re willing to overlook that.

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 mbaMission: Okay. So what would you say to someone who thinks, “I can’t just be who I am in my application because I’m too boring,” or, “I don’t have anything impressive to say, so they won’t notice me”? What advice would you give someone like that?

BD: That’s a good question. I have to say that if your goal is to stick out and be unique, no one else will have the same experiences you have, and even if you say, “I’m boring” or, “My career path has been too straightforward,” the way to stand out is to discuss what you did there, how you distinguished yourself. We’re looking for people who have a range of different backgrounds, but the thing that really makes them stand out is that they really sell what they’ve done. So if you maybe have what you think is a traditional MBA background, and you don’t stick out in terms of where you’ve been, the way to stick out is by focusing on what you’ve done. That’s really what will get our attention.

mbaMission: Sure. If you were to speak to someone who had just decided to go for their MBA and hadn’t done any research at all on any of the top schools, but you could tell them only one thing about Yale, what would be your selling point?

BD: No pressure! Okay, I won’t be evasive and say, “Well, I couldn’t pick just one.” If I really could give only one thing, I would say that we’re a school where the mission matters. Our mission is to educate leaders for business and society, and we really care about that mission. We care about living up to that mission. It’s very broad, it’s very multisector, and it’s the founding mission. It’s been the same since the school was founded back in 1970s. It very much still guides what we do at the school. So, that is the one thing I would tell someone who is just coming to the process and just learning about SOM.

mbaMission: Nicely done! What guidance can you give someone who fnds him- or herself on the waitlist? And why might someone end up on the waitlist in the frst place?

BD: People can end up on the waitlist for a number of different reasons. We might really like their candidacy, but there might be one thing we have a question about or one thing we feel they need to strengthen. It could be something very specifc, or it could just be that it’s a very competitive applicant pool, and they’re strong, but we want to have a better sense of how the pool and the class are going to shape up before we make a fnal decision. They might be on the waitlist really just because of the competitiveness of the pool. We do also sometimes waitlist people without interviewing them, and I think that sometimes freaks people out, so just to let people know, that’s not the norm, but it’s not so uncommon that you should be concerned. If you didn’t get an interview but then fnd yourself on the waitlist, sometimes that can be a sign that there might be one thing that we have a question about or something we want to get a little more clarity on.

The advice I would give, I think the main thing is that if you fnd yourself on the waitlist, when you get the decision, we will give you a list of FAQs that tells you, here are some next steps, here’s what you can do, and the frst thing we say is to reach out and ask for feedback. We have an email address you can use to request feedback, and it

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 surprises me the number of people I speak to on the waitlist, when I ask whether they asked for feedback, they say no. In my mind, that should be the frst thing you do. We’ll tell you why you’re on the waitlist. We’ll tell you what we think you can do to improve your candidacy, to strengthen yourself and strengthen your chances of getting in. But there are people who don’t take advantage of that opportunity.

So, the frst thing is defnitely ask us why you’re on the waitlist. It might be that it’s a very competitive year, and that’s all we can say, or there might be something very specifc we can tell you that will help. The other thing is to continue to be in touch, but obviously, in appropriate ways and at appropriate times. If you have a major update, let us know. If you want to just check in every so often, that’s fne, too. But there are some people who are in touch several times a week. I would not suggest that; that’s what can distinguish you in a not-so-positive way. But every two weeks or once a month, if you want to check in and see how things are going and just reiterate your interest, that is always helpful to us. It’s always good for us to know that you remain interested, you want to continue to be considered, and that could be a helpful thing just by itself.

mbaMission: Sure. Is there an end date for the Yale waitlist, or do you keep accepting candidates more or less up until the last minute?

BD: It depends on the year. We can accept people sometimes up to the very last minute. We try to give people some sense of what the time frame is, but it depends on how things evolve on our end. We try not to keep a huge waitlist going into the summer, for example, just because it’s not fair to people to leave them in limbo for that long.

So we try to have a somewhat more targeted waitlist. And every so often, at various points, we’ll reach out to see if you are still interested, so we know that if we get to the point where we’re thinking about making additional offers, we have a current list of people who are still interested and people who aren’t anymore.

mbaMission: That makes sense. As you know best, Yale has accepted the GRE in addition to the GMAT for quite a while now. How would you compare the two exams from an admissions perspective, and if you were to recommend that an applicant take only one or the other, which one would you suggest?

BD: Right, we have accepted the GRE for a number of years, and I think at this point, roughly 20% of students in our incoming class took the GRE as opposed to the GMAT, which I think is probably on the higher end among schools.

We have no preference for one or the other; we value them equally. I think it would be a little perverse for us to accept both but then weight one more heavily than the other. We wouldn’t want to disadvantage anybody either way.

In terms of recommending taking one or the other, I really think it’s a matter of personal preference, which one you feel more comfortable with. We look at them the same, and we incorporate them into the process the same way.

There’s actually a concordance tool that ETS offers to help us better understand how the scores align. It’s a little bit broad, but it’s narrowed since the frst inception, so it gives us a decent sense of what the corresponding score might be. We also have now a number of years of students who have come through and taken the GRE, so we’ve done our own regressions and analyses and have a better sense of how to view the tests. So, I think from the appli-

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 cant perspective, it’s really just which one you feel more comfortable with. A lot of our applicants who have taken the GRE are interested in perhaps a joint degree with another school—so forestry and environmental sciences, for example, or public health—and they want to take just one test as opposed to two, and that’s fne. Or maybe they’re thinking about other graduate schools, not just business school, maybe something like public policy school, and the GRE has more fexibility in that regard. But it’s really a matter of personal preference.

mbaMission: Okay. What was your primary motivation for adding the video component to the Yale application, and what information or insight do you feel you get from the video question that you don’t get from the other parts of the application?

BD: We actually frst piloted the video component in I think 2011, so it’s been several years since we frst started playing around with it. And it came about from a conversation we had internally. I was talking to a colleague who has now moved on, and we were talking about how admissions offces really hadn’t incorporated technology in what we thought was a very benefcial way, things like video essays or having applicants upload some sort of multimedia presentation. We didn’t feel as though that was really taking advantage of the technology as much as it could, and it wasn’t really leveraging the benefts of the technology. At the same time, we felt that some of the formats might advantage people with more resources. They would be able to put together more impressive pack- ages or have more advanced technology available to them. So we were thinking about what kind of technology we could use that would level the playing feld but also give us really good insights that we wouldn’t be getting in other contexts. That’s where the video questions came about.

Again, I think we piloted it in 2011. We played around with different vendors and different formats to get to where we are now, and I think it will continue to evolve. In terms of what we’re hoping to get out of it, at the basic level, we want to get a sense of someone’s speaking ability, especially their English ability if they’re a nonnative speaker.

Actually, in tandem with incorporating the video questions, we eliminated the TOEFL and the IELTS requirements, so no English language test, because we felt we could evaluate that directly ourselves. Beyond that, we wanted to get a sense of how well someone can think in the moment, so that extemporaneous speaking ability, which is a little bit beyond basic English ability and can show how well you think on your feet, because that is a skill that is tested and needed in business school and beyond.

We do focus some of the video questions on certain different competencies that we think are important. We’re still working on building that part in terms of really structuring the questions and coding the responses in a way that we feel is helpful to us. That’s where I think a lot of the evolution will be. But we do feel that the video question provides a perspective on the applicant that we can’t get just from the paper application. It provides a new dimension, a new aspect to the candidacy, and I can say that we tend to view it almost invariably as a positive.

It’s very rare for the questions to be a negative in someone’s application. More often it’s the case that it will allow us to see something new and maybe be even more interested in the candidate than we were before, so I think it’s overall positive for the applicants.

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 mbaMission: I’m sure that will be very reassuring to any candidates who may be worried about the video component.

BD: I think that’s the thing that when I talk to people, they’re the most nervous and the most apprehensive about, and the advice I tend to give people is, frst of all, we don’t expect perfection—nobody does it perfectly—and second, you invariably did better than you thought you did. I think people are just really nervous about it.

mbaMission: Absolutely. Do you recommend that candidates apply in any specifc round? Is one better than the other?

BD: We really don’t. We model to admit the same quality of students in each round, so it’s not as though there’s an advantage to applying in one round versus another. We have three rounds, and we’re also part of the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, so we do receive applications that come in through the consortium and that are referred to us. But in terms of our three direct application rounds, like a lot of schools, we counsel people that if they can avoid the third round, they should try to do that. That’s not because it’s inherently any more diffcult, but just because it’s more variable. It depends on how many people have already been accepted into the class in the frst two rounds, so you just don’t know. It could be more than we were expecting, or it could be less. It’s that uncertainty that can make it more challenging. The main piece of advice we give everybody is to apply when you have your strongest application ready. Don’t rush to get it in earlier if it’s going to be less strong. And especially between rounds one and two, as I said, we model so that the quality of people we’re admitting stays constant throughout, so there’s no advantage in applying in one round versus another.

mbaMission: That’s helpful. What can reapplicants do to improve their chances the second time around? Those people who don’t get into Yale this year, what advice would you give them about trying again next year or the year after?

BD: This is similar to what we tell people in terms of the waitlist. People are not successful for different reasons, so it’s not just one thing that each person can do; it’s really specifc to an individual. And again, like with the waitlist, we’ll give feedback to applicants who are not successful. We do it over the summer, after the admissions season has wound down, in June, typically. We will provide feedback to anybody who was denied admission, and that’s really where you can get a sense of what you need to do to strengthen your candidacy, whether we felt you needed a little more professional experience, or we needed better evidence of your quantitative abilities, or any number of other things. We can give you that feedback, and that can help guide you as you think about strengthening your application for that reapplication. One other thing is that we run the numbers every year, and the admission rate for reapplicants is actually the same as for frst-time applicants, so it’s defnitely not the case that we have any sort of bias or prejudice against reapplicants. We defnitely encourage them, and we defnitely do admit people who have reapplied.

mbaMission: That’s great. When you say you give feedback, what’s the format? Over the phone?

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 BD: We’ve tried different formats, and right now, we do it by email. We fnd that’s the most helpful way to do it.

mbaMission: Okay, thanks. Can you share any stories of outstanding applications or interview performance from the past couple years? What is something a candidate did or said that really stood out to you?

BD: That’s such a tough one for a few reasons. One, candidacies are so different, there’s no template for it—you know, this person did this, so if you do that same thing, you’ll be successful. And I feel as though with things like interviews, for example, a lot is based on the relationship, the give-and-take between the interviewer and the in- terviewee, and that can vary from person to person, which I think makes the interview especially challenging. I can’t think of any particular things or stories that stood out. One thing, and again it comes back to sincerity, is people acknowledging weaknesses but then explaining them and what they’ve learned from them and what they’re hoping to improve on. If you’ve done that well, it defnitely stands out. I fnd that, if done well, it can be incredibly compelling. So it’s not just constantly touting your successes and how great you are, but stepping back, having a little bit of perspective, a little bit of self-awareness and incorporating that into your reason for wanting to get an MBA or using it to show your growth and development. I fnd that I’m often drawn to and rooting for those candidates who show that kind of self-awareness, that sense of humility, that desire to grow at business school and beyond.

mbaMission: That makes sense. What is a part of the application process that you would like to see applicants spend a little more time on or maybe take a little more seriously?

BD: That’s another tough question, because every application is so different, and the weak points tend to differ for each person. Obviously, we’re looking for lots of different qualities, and we’re looking for lots of different com- petences as we evaluate candidates for the program. And this is an across-the-board kind of thing, but one thing we do look at is quantitative ability. All business schools have some quantitative component in the course work, and obviously, we’re ultimately looking to admit people with long-term professional success, but we also want to make sure they’re able to keep up and do well in the more immediate term, during their two years in the program.

And one thing we see sometimes is applicants who maybe haven’t demonstrated that quantitative profciency through their course work, their testing, or their work experience, or some combination of the three. We look at all those three together. And I think where people don’t take advantage of the opportunity to strengthen their profle is by either not acknowledging that they might not have that exposure or as much exposure as they could, or by acknowledging it but not doing something about it—telling us, for example, “If I’m admitted, I will take statistics and microeconomics.” What we would like to see is you acknowledge it and then actually be proactive in taking those courses to show you have the ability and the preparation to be able to keep up. That’s just one of a number of different things I could point to, but that’s one I think we see probably more often than some others.

mbaMission: Got it. Thank you again for bringing us up to speed on the Yale program and admissions process.

BD: No problem! Happy to talk.

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Appendix: Yale SOM Facts and Figures

Note: Facts and fgures in this section are prone to change. Occasionally, conficts may exist between the school’s publications and its web pages. Applicants are urged to recheck facts and fgures for the most up-to-date information.

Basics

Year Established: 1976

Location: New Haven, CT

Dean: Edward A. Snyder (2011)

Assistant Dean and Director of Admissions: Bruce DelMonico (2006)

Programs:

• Executive Education

• Executive MBA

• Full-Time MBA

• Master of Advanced Management

• Master’s Degree in Global Business and Society

• Master’s Degree in Systemic Risk

• PhD

Joint Degrees:

• MBA/JD (School of Law)

• MBA/MEM or MF (School of Forestry)

• MBA/MPH (School of Public Health)

• MBA/MD (School of Medicine)

• MBA/MARCH (School of Architecture)

• MBA/MFA (School of Drama)

• MBA/MDIV or MAR (Divinity School)

• MBA/MA in Global Affairs (the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs)

• MBA/PhD (Graduate School of Arts & Sciences)

Class Profle (Class of 2019)

Enrollment: 348

Median GMAT: 730

GMAT Range (middle 80%): 690–760

Median GRE (Verbal): 166

GRE Verbal Range (middle 80%): 157–170

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Median GRE (Quantitative): 164

GRE Quantitative Range (middle 80%): 160–169

Median GPA: 3.69

GPA Range (middle 80%): 3.38–3.94

Female Representation: 43%

U.S. Minority Representation: 27%

U.S. Underrepresented Minority Representation: 12%

International Representation: 45%

Employment Statistics (Class of 2017)

Median Base Salary: $124,900

Median Other Guaranteed Compensation: $33,000

Graduates accepted positions in the following industries:

• Consulting: 35.9%

• Finance: 21.8%

Investment Banking: 12.1%

Diversifed Financial Services: 5.2%

Private Equity/Venture Capital: 2.4%

Investment Management: 2.0%

• Technology: 14.1%

• Retail: 6.0%

eCommerce: 5.6%

• Nonproft: 5.2%

• Media/Entertainment: 3.2%

• Consumer Packaged Goods: 2.8%

• Law: 2.4%

• Energy: 2.0%

• Real Estate: 2.0%

• Health/Pharmaceuticals: 1.6%

• Manufacturing: 1.6%

• Government: 0.8%

• Architecture: 0.4%

Graduates accepted positions in the following functions:

• Consulting: 48.0%

External Consulting: 35.9%

Internal Consulting/Strategy: 12.1%

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 • Finance/Accounting: 26.6%

• Marketing/Sales: 10.1%

• General Management: 7.7%

• Other (Law [2.4%], Sustainability [0.8%], Architecture Design and Urban Planning [0.4%], Healthcare [0.4%],

Real Estate [0.4%], and Other [0.4%]): 4.8%

• Operations/Logistics: 2.8%

Graduates accepted positions in the following locations locations (Note that the subsections listed under United

States and International represent percentages adding to 100% of each of these regions separately, rather

than 100% of the entire graduating class.):

• United States: 81.0%

Northeast: 54.7%

West: 25.9%

Mid-Atlantic: 8.0%

Southwest: 4.5%

South: 4.0%

Midwest: 3.0%

• International: 19.0%

Asia: 38.3%

Europe: 21.3%

Canada: 17.0%

Central America: 6.4%

South America: 6.4%

Australia: 4.3%

Middle East: 4.3%

Africa: 2.1%

Hiring Organizations: The school includes a comprehensive list of companies that hired SOM MBAs for both full-

time and internship positions in 2015–2016* here: http://som.yale.edu/our-programs/mba/careers/employ-

ment-report/hiring-organizations

(*The most recent report available at the time of the publication of this book.)

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Bibliography

Publications

“2009 100 Most Infuential People in Finance.” Treasury & Risk. June 1, 2009. www.treasuryandrisk.com/

Issues/2009/June%202009/Pages/100MostInfuentialPeopleinFinance.aspx

“A First Look at the New SOM.” Yale School of Management News page. December 10, 2008. http://mba.yale.edu/

news_events/CMS/articles/6723.shtml

“Announcing the Winners of Yale’s Biggest Entrepreneurship Prizes.” Yale Entrepreneurial Institute. April 18, 2016.

http://yei.yale.edu/announcing-winners-yales-biggest-entrepreneurship-prizes

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DelMonico, Bruce. “Ten Questions from Prospective Students.” Yale School of Management News page. Undated.

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“Encendia (YEI ’10) Wins $25,000 Sabin Prize.” Yale Entrepreneurial Institute Newsletter. April 2011.

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“First Year Case Competition.” Yale School of Management News page. December 22, 2011. http://mba.yale.edu/

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“From the Director of Admissions: Six Common Questions Answered.” Yale School of Management News page.

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“Global MBA Rankings 2013.” Financial Times. January 28, 2013. http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/

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“Global MBA Rankings 2015.” Financial Times. January 26, 2015. http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/

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“Global MBA Rankings 2016.” Financial Times. January 25, 2016. http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/

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“Global MBA Rankings 2017.” Financial Times. January 29, 2017. http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/

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global-mba-ranking-2018

Griswold, Alison, and Vivian Yee. “SOM Still Short on Funds.” Yale Daily News. September 8, 2010.

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“Healthcare Experts Discuss the Drive for Reform.” Yale School of Management News page. February 22, 2010.

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Henderson, Drew. “New SOM Dean Visits Campus.” Yale Daily News. January 22, 2010. www.yaledailynews.com/

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Henderson, Drew. “SOM First in Hiring.” Yale Daily News. November 3, 2009. www.yaledailynews.com/news/2009/

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“Integrated Leadership Case Competition Goes Global.” Yale School of Management News page. April 3, 2014.

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“Internship Fund Auction Sets a Record.” Yale School of Management News page. April 20, 2011.

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“Internship Fund Reaches 100% Support from the Class of 2011.” Yale School of Management News page.

February 25, 2010. http://mba.yale.edu/news_events/CMS/Articles/7099.shtml

“Learning from the Experts.” Yale School of Management News page. March 24, 2011. http://mba.yale.edu/

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“Marketplace Reports on SOM’s Raw Cases.” Yale School of Management News page. August 28, 2008.

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Middleton, Diana. “Turnaround Specialist to Take On Yale.” Wall Street Journal. June 3, 2010.

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“New Resources for Yale SOM Entrepreneurs.” Yale School of Management News page. June 25, 2010.

http://mba.yale.edu/news_events/CMS/Articles/7174.shtml

“New Yale SOM Dean Appointed: Edward A. Snyder.” Yale School of Management News page. January 29, 2010.

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mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Norris, Floyd. “In the Packaging of Loans, a Bust with Precedent.” New York Times. January 28, 2010.

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Reeve, Caroline. “Internship Fund: A Refection of Yale SOM’s Mission in Action.” Yale School of Management MBA

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“Running a Conference, Learning to Lead.” Yale School of Management News page. April 3, 2009.

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“SOM Dean Edward Snyder is Reappointed.” YaleNews. January 7, 2016. http://news.yale.edu/2016/01/07/

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“Some Frequently Asked Questions About Curriculum Reform: Can You Tell Me More About the International

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Staley, Oliver. “Harvard Business School Drives Yale and MIT’s Edifce Complex.” Bloomberg. August 25, 2010.

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“Top 100 U.S. MBA Programs of 2013.” Poets&Quants. December 2, 2013. http://poetsandquants.com/2013/12/02/

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whichmba

“Which MBA? 2011 Full-Time MBA Ranking.” The Economist. October 13, 2011. www.economist.com/whichmba/

full-time-mba-ranking

“Which MBA? 2012 Full-Time MBA Ranking.” The Economist. October 4, 2012. www.economist.com/whichmba/

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“Which MBA? 2016 Full-Time MBA Ranking.” The Economist. October 13, 2016. www.economist.com/whichmba/

full-time-mba-ranking?year=2016

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“Yale School of Management Appoints Abigail Kies to Lead Career Development Offce.” Yale School of

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“Yale School of Management MBA Students Gain International Exposure Through Study Abroad: School Makes

International Experience Required Part of New Curriculum.” Yale School of Management News page.

December 18, 2006. http://mba.yale.edu/news_events/CMS/Articles/5837.shtml

“Yale SOM Class of 2013 Arrives on Campus.” Yale School of Management News page. August 15, 2011.

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news_events/cms/articles/5729.shtml

“Yale SOM Team Wins National Net Impact Case Competition.” Yale School of Management News page. November

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Accessed May 27, 2014. www.businessweek.com/bschools/rankings/full_time_mba_profles/yale.html

Web Sites

11th Annual Yale SOM Private Equity Conference: http://pe.som.yale.edu/2011/index.html

2017 Yale Healthcare Conference: www.yalehealthcare.com/

The Art of Strategy: www.artofstrategy.net

Co-opetition Interactive: http://mayet.som.yale.edu/coopetition/

Entrepreneurship @ SOM: http://entrepreneurship.som.yale.edu

Global Network for Advanced Management: http://advancedmanagement.net

The Museum of Money and Financial Institutions: http://museumofmoney.org

Origins of Value: A Virtual Museum of Money and Finance: http://media4.its.yale.edu/res/sites/originstest2/

Program on NonProft Organizations at Yale University: http://ponpo.som.yale.edu

Yale Center for Business and the Environment: http://cbey.research.yale.edu

Yale Center for Customer Insights: www.cci.som.yale.edu

Yale Entrepreneurial Institute: http://yei.yale.edu

Yale Healthcare and Life Sciences Case Competition 2011: http://yhlc.yale.edu/2011CaseCompetition

Yale Healthcare and Life Sciences Club: http://sites.som.yale.edu/healthcare/about-us/

Yale School of Management: www.mba.yale.edu

Yale School of Management Admissions: http://mba.yale.edu/MBA/admissions/

Yale School of Management Community Blog: http://blogs.som.yale.edu

Yale School of Management Core Courses: http://mba.yale.edu/MBA/curriculum/core/index.shtml

Yale School of Management Elective Courses: http://mba.yale.edu/MBA/curriculum/electives/ElectiveCourses.

shtml

Yale School of Management Health Care Conference 2012: www.yalehealthcare.com

Yale School of Management Hiring Organizations 2011: http://mba.yale.edu/MBA/careers/employment/

hiring_organizations.shtml

Yale School of Management International Center for Finance: http://icf.som.yale.edu

Yale School of Management Leader’s Forum Video Feature: http://mba.yale.edu/viewer/leaders_forum.shtml

Yale School of Management Net Impact: http://sites.som.yale.edu/net-impact/

Yale School of Management Private Equity Club: http://pe.som.yale.edu/2011/index.html

Yale School of Management Program on Social Enterprise: http://pse.som.yale.edu

Yale School of Management Real Estate Club: http://sites.som.yale.edu/real-estate/

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Interviews and Other

Admissions Director, Yale School of Management. Personal Interview. May 16, 2016.

Admissions Offcer, Yale School of Management. Personal Interview. November 4, 2010.

Admissions Offcer, Yale School of Management. Personal Interview. November 27, 2010.

Admissions Offcer, Yale School of Management. Personal Interview. July 11, 2011. mbaMission Student Survey. Online via SurveyMonkey.com. December 5, 2012.

Member, Yale School of Management Administration. Personal Interview. December 10, 2010.

Member, Yale School of Management Administration. Personal Interview. May 3, 2011.

Representative, Yale Center for Business and the Environment. Personal Interview. May 17, 2012.

Representative, Yale Center for Business and the Environment. Email exchange. April 10, 2013.

Admissions Offcer, Yale School of Management. Personal Interview. September 10, 2010.

Yale School of Management First-Year Student. Personal Interview. October 19, 2010.

Yale School of Management First-Year Student. Personal Interview. April 28, 2011.

Yale School of Management Second-Year Student. Personal Interview. November 4, 2010.

Yale School of Management Second-Year Student. Personal Interview. November 22, 2010.

Yale School of Management Second-Year Student. Personal Interview. December 14, 2010.

Yale School of Management Second-Year Student. Personal Interview. January 21, 2011.

Yale School of Management Second-Year Student. Personal Interview. June 13, 2011.

Yale School of Management Second-Year Student. Personal Interview. March 20, 2012.

Yale School of Management Second-Year Student. Email Exchange. May 7, 2015.

Oakes, Jack. Director, Career Development Center. Personal Interview. September 29, 2009.

President, Darden Partners Association. Personal Interview. April 15, 2012.

mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Yale School of Management · 2018–2019 Headed to b-school?

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