Stanford Graduate School of Business

Background

The school was founded in 1925 when Trustee Herbert Hoover formed a committee of Wallace Alexander, George Rolph, Paul Shoup, Thomas Gregory, and Milton Esberg to secure the needed funds for the school's founding. There are three Nobel Prize winners on the faculty, 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. Its faculty members maintain several joint appointments with affiliated research centers. The GSB maintains very close links with the venture capital, finance and technology firms of nearby Silicon Valley.

There are 26,309 living alumni, including 17,803 alumni of the MBA program. Stanford Graduate School of Business is renowned to have produced a remarkable number of successful business leaders and entrepreneurs, many among the world's wealthiest, from its alumni base.

In August 2006, the school announced what was then the largest gift ever to a business school – $105 million from Stanford alumnus Phil Knight, MBA '62, Founder and Chairman of Nike, Inc. The gift went toward construction of a $375 million campus, called the Knight Management Center, for the business school. Construction was completed in 2011. The business school comprises the Knight Management Center and the Schwab Residential Center (named after alumnus Charles R. Schwab, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of the Charles Schwab Corporation).

There are ten buildings at the Knight Management Center: the Gunn Building, Zambrano Hall, North Building, Arbuckle Dining Pavilion, Bass Center, the Faculty Buildings (comprising East and West buildings), the Patterson Building, the MBA Class of 1968 Building, and the McClelland Building.

In May 2016 the school announced that Jonathan Levin would become the tenth dean of the GSB commencing that September.

Rankings

Stanford's MBA program was ranked 2nd in the United States by U.S. News & World Report in 2016, and 1st in 2015. The school is currently ranked 1st by Forbes, 4th in the Financial Times Global MBA rankings, 13th by The Economist in its Full Time MBA ranking and 2nd by Bloomberg Businessweek.

In the ranking aggregator Poets & Quants Stanford's MBA program was ranked 2nd in the US. In 2016, the school's MBA program was ranked #18 worldwide for social and environmental impact by Corporate Knights magazine.

Student profile

The Stanford Graduate School of Business is the most selective business school in the U.S. It has maintained the highest ratio of "applicants to available seats" of any business school in the U.S. for the last decade. It has also had the lowest acceptance rates (typically <7%) of any business school. For the Class of 2018 which entered in 2016, 6% of applicants were offered admission, and the average GMAT score of 737 and average GPA of 3.73 are the highest of any business school in the United States.

The school has approximately 400 students per year in its full-time two-year MBA program. It is relatively diverse compared to its peer institutions. The most recent entering class was approximately 42% female, 20% ethnic minorities and 44% international. Current and past students include Fulbright Scholars, Marshall Scholars, Coro, Gardner, Soros, Rhodes, Rotary, and Truman fellows. Approximately 15% of the class entered the MBA program with other graduate or professional degrees; including medical doctors, lawyers, and Ph.Ds. Stanford GSB also offers a PhD in Management degree for those looking to pursue a career in academia.

The students at the school have traditionally maintained a policy of grade non-disclosure whereby they do not release grades. Some annual academic distinctions do exist. Students graduating in the top ten percent of the class are designated "Arjay Miller Scholars", named after the former dean, Arjay Miller (1969–79). The top student receives the Henry Ford II award at graduation. At the end of the first year five students are also designated Siebel Scholars based on a combination of academics and extracurriculars.

The GSB has several student-run organization focused on various career paths, affinity groups, and interest areas. Recently the Women in Management (WIM) organization was featured on leanin.org for its inclusion of men in conversations around gender equity.

Curriculum

In June 2006, the School announced a dramatic change to its curriculum model. The new model, dubbed "The Personalized MBA Education", has four focus points. First, it aims to offer each student a highly customized experience by offering broader menus of course topics and providing personal course-planning mentoring from Stanford Business School faculty advisors. Second, the new program attempts to deepen the school’s intellectual experience through several smaller, high-impact seminars focused on critical analytical thinking. Third, the new program will increase global business education through both new course options and requiring international experience from all students. Finally, the new program expands the schools focus on leadership and communication through new courses that examine students’ personal strengths in the topic. Overall, the school sees the flexible program as an important point of differentiation that leverages the school’s smaller relative size versus most other top MBA programs. The graduating class of 2009 was the first class having gone through the new curriculum.

There are several courses at the GSB that are considered iconic to the broader educational experience.

"Interpersonal Dynamics," or more frequently referred to as "Touchy Feely" delivers a highly personalized learning experience with the ultimate goal of creating more productive personal and professional relationships. Most of the learning occurs in “T-group” sessions in which small, intimate groups of 12 students learn about themselves and the nuances of interpersonal dynamics, aided by Stanford-trained facilitators.

"Managing Growing Enterprises" teaches students how to handle real-life management challenges via role-playing difficult conversations.

Design

In the late 1990s PWP and Ricardo Legorreta won a competition to design a new facility for a short-term intensified MBA program at the Stanford School of Business. A complex of spaces—including residential rooms, lecture facilities, and kitchen and dining areas—is softened by landscape features including a pool surrounded by willow and fern, a large grassed courtyard planted with dark green conifers, a formal palm court, and an orchard of pear trees.

The outdoor spaces are designed to allow for a broad range of events, ranging from conversational groups of two or three, to working groups of nine or ten, to large parties and reunions. Three large-scale tent spaces are provided within the landscape design.

There are three main art installations on campus, including Monument to Change as it Changes, Monument to the Unknown Variables, and Ways to Change.

Full-time MSx Program

The Stanford MSx Program is a full-time, one-year master's degree program for successful managers in mid-career. The program’s principal objective is to help participants strengthen their capacity for organizational leadership. Participants gain an understanding of their personal leadership capacities, develop a strategic and integrated perspective on organizational leadership, and deepen their command of key management disciplines and functions. The ideal MSx candidate is a senior manager who has had or will soon be appointed to his or her first general management position.

The Stanford MSx was previously called the Stanford Sloan Master's Program, because students in the program are known as Stanford Sloan Fellows. The Stanford MSx is one of the three Sloan Fellows programs, sharing a similar format with the others at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the London Business School. These programs were initially supported by Alfred P. Sloan, Chairman of General Motors from 1937 to 1956, who envisioned the Sloan Fellowship as a means of developing the "ideal manager".

Fellows who successfully complete the academic program are awarded the degree of Master of Science in Management. The degree distinguishes itself from the MBA by acknowledging the life experiences of fellows, as well as the intense nature of the shorter program. Like the MBA program, the MSx program requires a set of core courses along with electives (normally mixed with MBAs), however, the MSx program has separate core courses, more tailored for the experience level of fellows.

Stanford MSx Class of 2014 Profile

General differences between the MBA program and the MSx program

Organizational relationships

Stanford GSB has a number of relationships with other leading business schools. It offers a number of Executive Education programs jointly with Harvard Business School. It also offers one of the three Sloan Fellows programs, coordinating with the others at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the London Business School.

Alumni Association

The Stanford GSB Alumni Association provides a wide range of opportunities (see: Alumni Statistics), services and resources for their alumni, including local regional/chapter activities, special alumni events, continuing education programs, alumni career services, international conferences, reunion programs, Alumni/Student programs and password protected online services.