Four Things that Make the Yale MBA Program Unique

Continuing our series of admissions insights clipped from Veritas Prep's Annual Reports, our in-depth insider's guides to 15 of the world's top business schools, this week we look at four traits that make the Yale School of Management unique among top business schools. (Our Annual reports are absolutely free with registration, but we thought we'd share some snippets here to help get you started in your Yale SOM research.)

The Yale School of Management discovered that the "silo" approach to teaching -– where each discipline is compartmentalized into the traditional areas of Marketing, Finance, Economics, Operations, and so on –- does not fully prepare students for the realities of 21st Century business needs. The silo approach was successful in the past when careers were developed by vertical movement within one specialized discipline. However, in today's environment, successful management careers no longer have boundaries, as they require expertise in each discipline in a cross-functional manner.

What follows are four things you need to know before you apply to Yale SOM:

1. Organizational Perspectives. In light of the program's philosophical shift, SOM has completely overhauled its core curriculum to allow for the complete integration of the disciplines in a manner more representative of the problems managers will face in the world of business. The core curriculum is now broken into eight multidisciplinary areas referred to as Organizational Perspectives. These perspectives focus on issues encountered both inside and outside the firm in a relevant context.


2. Increased International Focus. In addition to the new core, first-year students are now also required to travel to one of several destinations in the world as part of the International Experience Destinations program. These trips allow students to study their businesses of interest within another culture and setting. The trip is linked to the spring course State and Society and the year-long Leadership Development Program. This furthers SOM's long-standing history of maintaining a global perspective. The diverse student body is celebrated in October of each year through International Month as presentations are given by members of each parts of the global community. The culmination of the month-long celebration is the pot-luck dinner where students provide dishes that represent their cultures and styles of cuisine.


3. Hands-on Instruction. The faculty has embraced a hands-on teaching philosophy to augment SOM's new curriculum. Instructors routinely solicit student contributions in the classroom, rather than just delivering rote lectures. They also address social responsibility and corporate governance issues to maintain the school's long-held commitment to ethical behavior. Classes run the gamut from case method and lecture to student-oriented projects and presentations. Business leaders from all sectors often lead class discussions and interact with students to discuss real-world problems and potential solutions. It is commonplace to see team project competitions judged by the very business leaders who faced the same issues in real life.


4. "Raw Case" Approach. Yale SOM offers a unique version of the popular case method teaching style, known as the "Raw Case" approach to management education. Most case method programs use what are commonly referred to as "cooked" cases (or "closed" cases) that are packaged and synthesized before use. Yale SOM has developed its own set of cases which are housed on a multimedia platform and feature the types of open-ended, "fuzzy" source materials that a professional might encounter while analyzing a problem. It requires Yale students to sift through all the data and information to find what is pertinent and what can be ignored. Distilling information is often one of the most challenging aspects of real world problem solving and Yale SOM is attempting to teach its students how to jump over this hurdle before diving into an analysis.

Today's blog post was clipped from our Yale SOM Annual Report, one of 15 completely free guides to the world's top business schools, available on our site. If you're ready to start building your own application for Yale or other top MBA programs, call us at 1-800-925-7737 and speak with an MBA admissions expert today!