MIT's Sloan School of Management is ranked eighth among the best U.S. business schools by Poets&Quants.

5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Sloan School of Management

50 Memorial Drive, Suite E52-126
Cambridge, MA 02142
Admissions: 617.258.5434
Email: mbaadmissions@sloan.mit
Website: http://mitsloan.mit.edu/mba/
Apply Online: http://mitsloan.mit.edu/mba/admissions/apply.php

Admission Deadlines for Class of 2014:
Round One: 10/25/11
Round Two: 1/10/12 (rolling admissions)

MIT Sloan’s two-year MBA Program is comprised of a combination of case studies, team projects, lectures, live case discussions, interactions with industry leaders, and hands-on lab classes. Throughout the first-semester core, students build the foundation of their MIT Sloan education. Working with a team of five or six classmates, they gain fundamental skills through required course work in economics, accounting, managerial communication, business statistics, and organizational processes (as well as an elective in either strategic marketing or finance).

Only one-semester long, the core allows students freedom and flexibility in pursuing their personal goals throughout the rest of the program. And students enjoy the company and intellectual stimulation of their cohort — a group of roughly 60 students (made up of 10-12 teams) who take their courses together.

Latest Up-To-Date MBA Rankings:

Poets&Quants (2011): 5
BusinessWeek (2010): 10
Forbes (2011): 10
U.S. News & World Report (2011): 3
Financial Times (2011): 9 (Global), 5 (U.S.)
The Economist (2011): 11 (Global), 8 (U.S.)

Ranking Analysis:

In our 2011 ranking of the best MBA programs, the most improved school in the top ten was MIT Sloan which gained three spots to capture fifth place in a tie with Columbia Business School. MIT’s gains came largely as a result of  a four-place jump in the Forbes survey, which measures return-on-investment, and a two-place rise in The Economist ranking. MIT rose to a rank of ten on Forbes’ biennial list, up from 14th two years earlier, and to a rank of 11th on The Economist’s global list, up from 13th in 2010. The Financial Times apparently didn’t agree with the upward swing because MIT slipped one spot on the FT’s global list to ninth from eighth place a year earlier.

BusinessWeek, which largely ranks MBA programs on the basis of student and recruiter satisfaction, places Sloan tenth among the best U.S. schools. That was in 2010, the last time BW did its biennial ranking of the top programs. Though MIT slipped one spot from its 2008 rank of ninth, the school’s grads gave it very high grades. MIT finished third in BusinessWeek’s graduate satisfaction survey and 14th in its corporate recruiter poll. As one very satisfied grad told BusinessWeek: “The MBA at MIT Sloan is a uniquely engaging, hands-on experience. The classrooms are not only full of smart and engaged students, but with students who are action-oriented. It is illustrative to consider that many (if not most) of my classmates were practicing engineers prior to school–they’re not just smart, with nice resumes, but they are “roll up your sleeves” type people.”

B-School Smack Down Reports:
Sloan vs. Harvard Business School
Sloan vs. Berkeley’s Haas School of Business

MBA Program Consideration Set:

Stretch Schools:  Harvard, Stanford, Wharton
Match Schools: Columbia, Dartmouth, Northwestern’s Kellogg School, Berkeley, Duke, Virginia
Safe Schools: New York University, Michigan, Yale, Cornell

Tuition & Fees: $103,797

School Recommended Two-Year Budget: $165,264
Median GMAT: 710
GMAT Range: 670-770
Average GPA: 3.57
Acceptance Rate: 13%

Full-Time MBA Enrollment: 790
International: 38%
Female: 38%
Minority –
African American: 8%
Asian American: 24%
Hispanic or Latino American: 15%
Mean Age: 28

Median Base Salary: $119,000
Average Signing Bonus: NA
Percentage of MBAs with Job Offers at Graduation: NA
Percentage of MBAs with Job Offers Three Months Later: 96%

Estimate of Total Pay over a 20-Year Career*: $3,031,132 (one of only seven schools with career pay exceeding $3 million)

Note: MBA Program Consideration Set: If you believe you’re a close match to this school–based on your GMAT and GPA scores,  your age and work experience, you should look at these other competitive full-time MBA programs as well. We list them by stretch, match and safety. These options are presented on the basis of brand image and ranking status as a general guideline.

*Payscale 2010 estimate for Bloomberg BusinessWeek.