Poets and Quants

Michigan’s Ross School of Business

by John A. Byrne

Michigan's Ross School of Business is ranked 13th among the best business schools in the U.S. by Poets&Quants.

Michigan's Ross School of Business is ranked 13th among the best business schools in the U.S. by Poets&Quants.

University of Michigan

12. Stephen M. Ross School of Business

701 Tappan Street
Room E2540
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
Admissions: 734-763-5796
Email: RossMBAAdmissions@umich.edu
Website: http://www.bus.umich.edu/Admissions/Mba/WhyRoss.htm
Apply Online: http://www.bus.umich.edu/Admissions/ApplyNow.htm

Admission Deadlines for Class of 2014:
Round One: 10/10/11
Round Two: 1/4/12
Round Three: 3/1/12

The theme of the MBA program at the Ross School of Business is action-based learning. Many schools give lip service to this buzzword, but Michigan lives it with the most extensive consulting projects with outside organizations offered by any business school in the world.

First year core features four seven-week terms: Fall A, Fall B, Winter A, and Winter B. The first three terms provide a broad grounding in the fundamentals of business. In the fourth term, students put the core to work in the Multidisciplinary Action Project (MAP) course, combining analytical tools with teamwork and leadership development on a consulting project with an actual firm or organization.

For MAP, students are assigned to five-person teams and then lent to a company and a project that starts in the third week of January. There are 150 possible projects to choose from, with a bewildering array of global companies, for the 500 first-year students. This isn’t part of a course and the experience is not optional, as it often is at other business schools. It’s mandatory, intense, all-consuming, and occupies your complete time for seven straight weeks. Each team has two faculty advisers who act as coaches on the project.

In 2010, Google had the most popular project: 246 of the 497 students asked to be assigned to the Google team which had to come up with a strategy and plan for Google to successfully launch a new product in the European and East African markets. The logistics of pulling this off, with companies as varied as Amazon, Citigroup, Colgate-Palmolive, Barclays, General Electric, and Hershey’s, among others, in places as farflung as Peru, Malaysia, Italy, India and South Africa, among others, represents as huge an investment as any business school has ever made to create a truly differentiated experience for MBAs.

In the second year, students choose electives at Ross and other graduate and professional schools at the University of Michigan. A total of 57 graduate credit hours must be fulfilled to complete the MBA program.

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  • Mike

    Great article, today I have a lot to research because I am deciding between Ross and Duke full time MBA’s. Do you have any additional help or extra material for this decision?? I would like to hear your comments.
    Thanks Mike

  • http://poetsandquants.com/members/jbyrne/ John A. Byrne

    Mike,
    Honestly, I don’t believe you can make a bad decision. Michigan and Duke are great business schools. A lot of this depends on where you want to end up? In what part of the country or world and in what kind of job? I hope you have visited both schools and had the chance to chat with students and faculty to make a gut call on your compatibility with the cultures of these institutions. If you want to work in the south or the east coast, I give a slight preference to Duke. If you want to work in the mid-west, I’d give a slight preference to Michigan. Not knowing about your interests and goals, it’s hard to say much more. Good luck.

  • Mike

    John thanks for your prompt answer. I visited both schools, both have great different advantages. Let’s say that my interest are: Consumer Marketing in High-Tech (Amazon, Apple, Google) or Retail. No preferences on location, but it is important the alumni network, the General Management and Entrepreneurship resources for a long term career goal. Also I would like to work in other countries, so the broader global reputation, the better. Hope it works!!! Thanks in advance and congratulations for this terrific site, you are doing an outstanding job here.

  • http://poetsandquants.com/members/jbyrne/ John A. Byrne

    Mike,

    I really do think both schools are terrific. Because the three tech companies you mention are headquartered on the West Coast, I would make sure you’re up for a very pro-active internship and job search at either Duke or Michigan. The MAP project at Michigan may give you an extra advantage to leverage into a great job in tech. But that all depends on the lottery to get a consumer marketing/tech project. Based on your trips to both schools, I think this is a gut call. Go with your gut based on what you heard and saw when you were on those campuses. Good luck. Like I said, you can’t make a bad decision here.

    Best,
    John

  • Luis

    Hello John, i also want to congratulate you for this magnific site. It has been a great help throughout my application process. I have been accepted at Ross and Duke. As you just said, both are great schools but i do have to make a decision within the next days. I have visited both schools and I know that from the personal side (because i´ll be traveling with my wife and 3 year old daughter) I will have a great experience at either of these schools. Their culture is very alike. So I want to focus the decision on the professional side. My background is in finance, specifically in asset managament in Peru and Chile. Which school do you think has a stronger reputation in the finance field and therefore could give me best opportunities to obtain an internship and eventually a job offer?.
    Thank you very much.

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