Stanford

Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business (GSB), founded in 1925 and located in Stanford, California, is internationally recognized as among the very best business schools in the world today. It is the second wealthiest business school in the US, with an endowment of roughly $1 billion and a yearly operating budget of $133 million. It offers programs of study leading to three different kinds of degrees: the two-year general management MBA, the ten-month Sloan Master’s Program, and Ph.D.’s in a variety of fields of study. It also offers a number of stand-alone, non-matriculating Executive Education programs, geared toward seasoned business professionals looking to enhance an existing skill-set or to branch out in new directions.

Its faculty is world-renowned, and boasts three Nobel Prize laureates, two recipients of the John Bates Clark award, 15 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and three members of the National Academy of Sciences. So far, there have been 28,297 alumni of the GSB, many of whom have gone on to become titans of the modern business world, including Phil Knight (MBA ‘62), CEO and founder of Nike, Inc., Charles R. Schwab (MBA ‘61), Roy L. Raymond (MBA ‘76), founder of Victoria’s Secret, Joseph “Joe” Coulombe (MBA ‘54), founder of Trader Joe’s, and billionaire investor Richard Rainwater (MBA ‘72). Currently, roughly 80% of GSB alumni live in the USA, with about a third of these living in the Bay Area of California. The remaining 20% are distributed primarily throughout Europe, Asia and South America.

Stanford MBA Program
In accordance with its stellar reputation, admission to Stanford’s MBA program is extremely competitive. Each year, six to seven thousand applicants vie for only about 370 seats, and fewer than 10% of all applicants gain acceptance. Taking the Class of 2010 as an example, the average admitted applicant had a GMAT score of about 730 (with TOEFL scores averaging 280 for foreign students), and four years experience in the workforce, typically in either investment management, consumer manufacturing & services, or consulting. Women comprise 36% of the class, 35% are international students, and 24% are US minorities. Since 2006, the curriculum, while maintaining its grounding in the fundamentals of economics, marketing & strategy, accounting, finance, operations and organizational behavior, has become very student-focused, with each student responsible for creating an individualized course of study under the close guidance of a faculty mentor. The curriculum has also recently evolved to include an expanded academic focus on leadership and communication development as well as management in the emerging global economy. An intimate faculty to student ratio rounds out what is certainly one of the strongest educational experiences available to anyone in pursuit of an MBA.

Stanford Sloan Master’s Program
Along with the London Business School and MIT, Stanford is one of three institutions to offer this fellowship, which is open to mid-career corporate managers or executives with a minimum of eight years’ business experience; candidates are typically sponsored by the organizations for which they work. The GMAT (as well as the TOEFL for non-native speakers of English) is required, as is a bachelor’s degree or higher. In contrast to the MBA program, 60% of the students in the Sloan program are international. The curriculum consists of 11 required courses and 5 electives, taken as a full-time course load over 10.5 months. Each year, 56 Sloan Fellows are enrolled, and receive an MS in Management degree upon completion of the program.

Stanford Ph.D Programs
The GSB offers doctorate level training in the following disciplines: Economic Analysis and Policy; Finance; Accounting; Marketing; Political Economics; Operations, Information & Technology; Organizational Behavior; and Interdisciplinary Research. A Minor in Business is also available for students pursuing a Ph.D. in one of Stanford’s other graduate schools. The program is intended for those seeking academic teaching and research careers in the study of business management, and is structured to be four years long, moving from classroom-based coursework and research activities in the first two years toward more individually driven reading and research in the third and fourth years, ultimately culminating in the final oral examination and defense of one’s dissertation. Admission standards for the Ph.D. program are as lofty as those of the MBA program, and the application process is as competitive, if not more so. Taking the class beginning their studies in the Fall of 2009 as an example, 19 students (15 men, 4 women) were selected from a pool of 588 applicants, which amounts to an acceptance rate of 3%. Of these, 53% already have advanced degrees. They are coming from eight different countries, and 63% of the class is international.

Stanford Executive Education Programs
The Stanford Graduate School of Business offers a number of non-matriculating courses of study, ranging from four to five day seminars on diverse subjects such as wealth management, business practices for environmental sustainability and influence & negotiations strategies, to the six-week Stanford Executive Program (SEP), which features an intensive general management curriculum taught by over 30 GSB faculty members, designed for high level executes with at least 12 to 15 years of managerial experience with responsibilities involving strategic determination at the company-wide or country-wide level. Tuition ranges from about $9000 for a four-day seminar to $54,000 for the SEP.