Simon School MBA named ‘Program of the Year’ for 2018
Simon School MBA named ‘Program of the Year’ for 2018
The Simon School was honored by Poets & Quants for its newly revamped MBA curriculum, which is the first in the country to offer a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) designation in every area of specialization, (University of Rochester photo)
The MBA program at the Simon Business School has been named the “Program of the Year” for 2018 by Poets & Quants, a leading online news source covering the graduate business education market. It is only the second program in the US to receive that honor, after Cornell University.
The Simon School was honored for its newly revamped MBA curriculum, which is the first in the country to offer a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) designation in every area of specialization, from banking and corporate finance to brand management and operations. A STEM designation makes the program especially attractive to international applicants, since federal government programs allow graduates of STEM-designated degrees to stay in the United States for three years of work experience, instead of the standard one year.
“Along with benefiting our students, these moves will give Simon a real competitive advantage, because we are the only true STEM business school,” says Simon Dean Andrew Ainslie.
Given that Simon has long used an analytical lens to research and teach finance, accounting, operations, marketing, and other facets of business education, the designation seemed a perfect fit, say the school’s leaders. As Gregory Bauer, dean of full-time programs at Simon and the Rajesh Wadhawan Professor, puts it: “We were analytical before analytical was cool.”
“The school leveraged its quant-heavy curriculum with a strong focus on analytics and economics to gain STEM designation,” wrote Poets & Quants in their review of the MBA program. “Simon was in a unique position to take advantage of the opportunity.”
The school’s undergraduate major was also recently earned the STEM designation for both the bachelor of arts and bachelor of science programs for all five of the program’s tracks.
Along with this acknowledgement from Poets & Quants, in 2018 the Simon MBA program was also named one of the top 15 MBAs for women by the Financial Times.
