A 12.3% Rise In MBA Apps At Yale SOM

Talk about playing a hot hand.

Yale University’s School of Management saw a 12.3% increase in applications to its MBA program this past year to a new record of slightly more than 4,100 seeking one of its 348 seats. At a time when applications to two-year MBA programs have declined at many schools, apps at Yale have shot up a whopping 60.5% in the past five years.

Those increases, more importantly, have allow the school to substantially increase its average GMAT and GRE scores, grade point averages, and the caliber of undergraduate institutions on the resumes of its incoming classes. This year’s incoming class, for example, boasts the highest average GMAT and GPA ever recorded at Yale, 727, up two points over last year, and 3.67, vs. 3.63, respectively.

Yale’s median GMAT score of 730 is now equal to Harvard Business School. The average grade point average for SOM’s Class of 2019 now slightly exceeds Harvard’s 3.67 and is second only to Stanford’s 3.73. And with this latest application jump, Yale has more candidates per available seat in the classroom than even Harvard Business School, 11.8 vs. HBS’ 11.0. The latest application surge, moreover, exceeds that of any other school that has released those numbers. At Wharton and Kellogg this year, applications were essentially flat. At Harvard, they were up by 6%.

‘OUR MBA CLASS NOW RANKS AMONG THE TOP THREE GLOBALLY ON MEASURES OF ACADEMIC QUALITY’

“The increased volume has been accompanied by a commensurate increase in the quality and diversity of the applicant pool and therefore of matriculating students,” says Anjani Jain, acting dean of Yale SOM. “By our estimation, our MBA class now ranks among the top three globally on measures of academic quality.”

Jain, who was named acting dean when Edward Snyder took on a one-year sabbatical, told Poets&Quants that the school has made new gains in alumni fundraising and the recruitment of new faculty from such schools as Wharton and the University of Chicago. SOM’s annual fundraising campaign attracted an alumni participation rate of 53%, up again from 51.9% last year.  That is a rate of participation that is about twice the average of SOM’s peer schools and also almost twice the average of other graduate professional schools at Yale.  Only one other business school, Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, boasts a higher participation rate.

SOM says nine new professors, representing roughly 10% of the school’s entire tenure-track faculty, who are joining our faculty this year.  Their areas of scholarship include finance, organizational behavior, economics, and entrepreneurship.  Among them are senior faculty who have previously held appointments at the University of Chicago Booth School, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

45% OF THE CLASS OF 2019 HOLD NON-U.S. PASSPORTS

The gains come at a school that had long been an also-ran among the top-tier players in business education. But ever since Snyder’s arrival in July of 2011, SOM has focused on a strategy of becoming the most global of all the U.S. schools, breaking down boundaries between the business school and the greater university, and paying greater attention to B-school basics from admissions quality to alumni relations. That strategy has led to considerable gains in the rankings and in application volume (see How Yale SOM Crashed The M7 Party).

The increase in applications allowed SOM to shave two percentage points off its acceptance rate which fell to 17% this year, down from 19% a year earlier. That’s better than Wharton’s 19.6%, Kellogg’s 20.1%, or Chicago Booth’s 23.6% (based on last year’s numbers). Yale SOM reported a yield rate of 49%, a point better than a year earlier. Yield reflects the percentage of admitted candidates who ultimately enroll at the school.

In releasing the new class profile for its latest crop of incoming students,  SOM also revealed median GRE scores. The median verbal score for the class is 166, with a middle 80% range of 157 to 170, while the median quant score is 164, with a mid-80% range of 160 to 169. Yale typically enrolled the highest percentage of MBA students with GRE scores than any of its peer schools.

STEM UNDERGRADUATES ALSO UP AT YALE SOM THIS YEAR

By the numbers, 45% of the Class of 2019 holds passports from a country other than the United States, with 48 different countries represented overall. That percentage includes permanent residents of the U.S. and U.S. dual-citizens and is roughly the same as last year’s entering class with 46% from outside the U.S. Women make up 43% of the class, exactly the same as a year earlier, and U.S. students of color 27%; 12% are underrepresented U.S. students of color, a sliver down from 13% last year.

There were only slight changes in the undergraduate and work backgrounds of the new class. Some 20% worked in financial services, up a tick from 19% last year, 19% hail from non-profit jobs, up from 16%; 16% from consulting, the same as last year, 12% from the tech industry, and 7% from healthcare.

Like Wharton, which saw a significant increase in STEM undergrads this year, SOM also upped the ante on students with STEM backgrounds. The school said 21% of the new class has engineering, information technology or computer science degrees, up a full four percentage points from 17% last year, while math and physical science majors take up 11% of the seats, same as a year earlier. Business majors make up 23% of the Class of 2019, up from 22%, economics majors represent 15% of the incoming students, down from 17%. Students with undergrad degrees in the humanities and social science disciplines represent the largest single segment of the class, as usual, at 30% of the class, down three percentage points.

MAJOR U.S. FEEDER COLLEGES: HARVARD, YALE, USC, CORNELL & PRINCETON

In its published class profile, Yale SOM also made available detail that is seldom revealed by business schools. The school identified the top five U.S. and international undergraduate feeders to its MBA program. Yale said the most U.S. students came from Harvard, Yale, the University of Southern California, Cornell University, and Princeton University. Outside the U.S., the top five feeder colleges were Thammasat University in Bangkok, the University of Delhi, the University of Toronto, FGV San Paulo in Brazil, and the University of Tokyo.

Yale also said that the class of 348 students includes 15 Silver Scholars and 12 former U.S. military members. Some 18% of the MBA students come to SOM already having a graduate degree on their resumes. Roughly 13% are pursuing joint degrees with their MBAs, including nine JDs and five MDs.

Bruce DelMonico, assistant dean for admissions, is playing up the diversity of the new class which showed up on campus on Aug. 14th for orientation. “They speak roughly 50 different languages, including Yoruba, Polish, Arabic, Russian, Mandarin, Hindi, Portuguese, and Swedish (not to mention classical and medieval Latin, Homeric and Attic Greek, old Norse, and American Sign Language),” wrote DelMonico in a blog post. “Seventy percent of the class speaks at least two languages; 27% speaks at least three.”