Poets and Quants

Warwick Business School

Scarman Road
University of Warwick
Coventry, West Midlands CV4 7AL, United Kingdom
Admissions: +44 (0) 24 7652 4100
Email: warwickmba@wbs.ac.uk
Website: http://www.warwickmba.com
Apply: http://www.warwickmba.com/go/apply

Application Deadline: July 31, 2012

In common with most European MBA programs, the full-time offering at Warwick Business School is an intensive 12-month effort. Students come to the University of Warwick’s campus in Coventry, about two hours north of London, in September and graduate in August. The school offers students the option to extend the program to 15 months by taking on an international exchange at a large number of schools all over the world, including the University of Chicago’s Booth School and Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business.

The program kicks off with a solid foundation of seven core modules that teach the business basics: accounting and financial management, economics of the business environment, marketing, modelling and analysis for management, operations management, organizational behaviour, and strategic advantage.

Then, you get to pick six elective modules from a menu of 39 different courses, ranging from Advanced Corporate Finance to Supply Chain Management. There are some fairly compelling electives here including “Managing the Digital Workplace,” “Leadership and the Art of Judgement,” and “Cross-Cultural Management.” The latter course dovetails nicely with the fact that 91% of the MBA students at Warwick come from outside the U.K.

The program also features consulting project that requires both a management report and what Warwick calls “an academic dissertation.” Don’t let the word “dissertation” put you off. The school says it needs to be about 15,000 words and its purpose is to show your “understanding and logical application of relevant concepts.” Students have worked on projects with such world-class companies as Accenture, Deloitte, IBM, Pepsico, Rolls-Royce, Siemens and Volvo.

Despite the 12-month schedule, Warwick says that students can take summer internships with companies of up to 12 weeks in length while they are working on their consulting projects.

Latest Up-to-Date MBA Rankings:

Poets&Quants (2012): 33 (among top non-U.S. schools)
BusinessWeek (2012): NR
Forbes (2011): 8 (international one-year programs)
Financial Times (2012): 27 (Global) 14 (Non-U.S.)
The Economist (2012): 60 (Global), 24 (Non-U.S.)

Rankings Analysis: Warwick Business School vastly improved its standing in Poets&Quants’ 2012 list of the best non-U.S. MBA programs in the world, moving up more than any other top 25 school. Warwick placed 16th, up from 33rd a year earlier. The P&Q ranking puts Warwick among the best business schools in the U.K. and Europe.

The improvement was  largely due to a significantly better showing in the latest 2012 Financial Times’ ranking of global MBA programs. The FT awarded Warwick a global rank of 27 in 2012, one of the largest improvements of any of the schools in The Financial Times survey. Only a year earlier, the FT had ranked Warwick 58th globally. Among non-U.S. schools, the FT now ranks Warwick 14th, up 16 places from 32 in 2011.

The Economist, meantime, ranked Warwick 24th among non-U.S. schools in 2012, while Forbes gave Warwick its best ranking, an eight place finish among international schools with one-year MBA programs.

Tuition & Fees: 30,000 British pounds ($47,400)
Recommended Total Budget: 40,000 to 45,000 British pounds ($63,200 to $71,100)
Median GMAT: The school reports that 620 or more is “usually competitive”
Acceptance Rate: NA

Full-Time MBA Enrollment: 70
International: 80%
Female: 31%
Mean Age: 31

Average Base Salary: 54,500 British pounds ($86,130)
Percentage of MBAs with Job Offers Three Months Later: 96% for the Class of 2010