Yale SOM Dean Taking A One-Year Sabbatical

ted snyder

Anjani Jain (left) will serve as acting dean, while David Bach (right) is being named deputy dean

TAKING A YEAR OFF AFTER A HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL SIX-YEAR RUN AT YALE

Though Yale SOM has yet to claim a No. 1 ranking on any of the most influential lists, it is a school with remarkable momentum and one that is now solidly among the top ten business schools in the U.S. (see How Yale SOM Crashed The M7 Party). Since Snyder’s arrival in July of 2011, applications to the school’s MBA program are up a whopping 46%, more than any other peer school, at a time when applications to two-year MBA programs have generally declined. With a 13% increase in the latest admissions cycle, Yale SOM has for the first time received more than 4,000 applications, or roughly 4,114 applicants, for its 340 seats. There are now more applicants per classroom seat at Yale, 12.3 candidates for every available classroom slot, than Harvard (10.4), Columbia (9.9), Kellogg (9.6), Wharton (7.8), or Chicago Booth (7.0).

The overall quality of Yale’s applicant pool, moreover, has shown steady and remarkable improvement, from visible and less visible metrics. The average GMAT of the entire applicant pool this year exceeded 700 for the first time at 702, a 14-point improvement over the 688 five years earlier in 2012. The average undergraduate GPA for the entire pool hit 3.49 last year, up from the 3.40 in 2012. Meantime, the average GMAT for the enrolled class hit a record 725 last year, up from 720 in 2012, while the average GPA for incoming students was 3.63, better than 3.54 in 2012.

Those achievements, of course, are not only Snyder’s; they also belong to the senior leadership team he recruited, especially Jain and Bach. Snyder plucked Jain from Wharton where he had been on the faculty for 26 years. Jain had served in multiple leadership roles at Wharton, including ten years as vice dean of its full-time MBA program. Snyder found Bach at IE Business School in Spain where he was dean of programs, the second most powerful job at the school.

‘THIS IS A MONSTER TEAM’

“This is a monster team and in some ways this is the perfect time to step aside from the day-to-day stuff,” says Snyder. “Anjani has 26 years of experience at Wharton. He has run all parts of Wharton over some period of time and david is getting promoted to deputy dean.”

Jain holds a bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics from Indore University in India, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and a PhD in operations research from the University of California, Los Angeles. He joined the faculty of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1986 and served for 26 years before joining Yale SOM.

At Wharton he taught courses in operations management and management science at the MBA, PhD, and undergraduate levels. In 1993 he became director of Wharton’s MBA Program and was instrumental in several curricular initiatives. From 2000 to 2010 he served as vice dean and director of Wharton’s Graduate Division and from 2010 to 2012 as vice dean of Wharton’s MBA Program for Executives.

ACCOMPLISHED TEACHERS AND ADMINISTRATORS

Jain has won numerous teaching awards and has taught courses at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, and the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad and Mohali. He has served on the International Advisory Council of the ISB and as its co-area leader in operations management.

Bach, meantime, directs the school’s Executive MBA and the newly established Master in Advanced Management; spearheads engagement with the Global Network for Advanced Management; catalyzes curricular innovation in the area of global business; guides online education initiatives; and oversees Yale Center Beijing.

A winner of multiple teaching awards, Bach was named one of “40 under 40” business school professors by Poets&Quants, one of the “Top 50 business school professors on twitter”, and has twice given a GMAC keynote address on innovation in management education.

A native of Germany, he received his PhD and MA in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and holds a BA magna cum laude in Political Science and International Studies from Yale University.

DON’T MISS: HOW YALE SOM CRASHED THE M7 PARTY or DEAN OF THE YEAR: THE THREE-PEAT CHANGE AGENT

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