MBA students at the Stanford's new $350 million Knight Management Center

2. Stanford University

Stanford Graduate School of Business

518 Memorial Way

Stanford, California 94305

Admissions: 650-723-2766

Email: mba_2010_11@gsb.stanford.edu
Website: http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/mba
Apply Online: https://app.applyyourself.com/AYApplicantLogin/ApplicantConnectLogin.asp?id=SU-MBA

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

Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, known simply as GSB, is the most selective B-school in the world. The school accepted only 7% of the applicants who applied for admission to the Class of 2013, ahead of Berkeley, Harvard or any other U.S. or European business school. The selectivity is a function of the school’s relatively small size, with a class of just 380 students, its Silicon Valley location, and its stellar reputation in academic circles. Just as stunning, Stanford has the highest average GMAT scores of any business school in the world: a breathtaking median of 740. And GSB graduates earn the highest average starting salaries: $125,000 for the Class of 2011.

It’s goal is ambitious: to only accept students, who in Dean Garth Saloner’s words, “have the leadership capacity to change the world.” The tagline of the school? “Change Lives, Change Organizations, Change the World.” This lofty mission is taken seriously by the admissions staff which sorts through more than 7,000 applications a year for applicants who already have shown enough of the right stuff to get in.

The big news at Stanford in 2011 was the opening of a new $345 million world-class campus. The new complex gives Stanford’s B-School some 360,000 square feet of space, roughly 30 percent more than it had in its previous location. There are now 13 tiered classrooms, up from 11, 20 flat-floored classrooms, up from eight, and 70 breakout and study rooms, a huge improvement from 28 previously. The larger number of breakout rooms, in particular, will help the school to more effectively deliver its new curriculum changes that emphasize smaller seminar-style courses. A new 600-seat auditorium replaces the previous 324-seat model. There also are eight 16-person seminar rooms, to allow for more intimate instruction, eight showers for MBA students who also can use the university athletic center next store, and an 870-car underground parking structure on a campus where parking was always an ordeal.

Completely gone are the windowless classes where most of Stanford’s MBA courses had been taught in a blocky building put up in 1966. With the exception of a behavioral lab, all the classrooms now have natural light.

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