All The STEM Programs At Major U.S. Business Schools

Rochester Simon’s STEM MBA is the 2018 Poets&Quants Program of the Year. Rochester Simon photo

University of Rochester Simon Business School 

All Specializations in Full-Time MBA

Rochester Simon tweaked every part of its curriculum to become the first MBA program to be fully STEM-designated no matter what specialization a student chooses. MBAs at Simon can specialize in everything from brand management and strategy to asset management and venture capital and still get the precious STEM designation that especially appeals to international students.

Harvard Business School

Management Science Track in the Full-Time MBA; Master of Science in Engineering Sciences and Master of Business Administration (MS/MBA) & MS/MBA Biotechnology: Life Sciences Program

In early 2020, HBS proposed a new academic track comprising a series of first- and second-year courses that could qualify for a management science focus. Students who opt into this track through their course selection are “demonstrating a commitment to STEM-focused careers.”

HBS also has two STEM degrees, both joint degree programs with other schools at Harvard. The first, launched in 2018, is the Master of Science in Engineering Sciences and Master of Business Administration (MS/MBA), operated jointly with the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. It is a two-year, full-time program that spans four semesters, augmented by additional summer and January term coursework. In the first year, students take a System Engineering course that “emphasizes an interdisciplinary approach to analyzing complex systems,” as well as the HBS MBA Required Curriculum which “conveys concepts and builds skills across disciplines relevant to general management, including marketing, organizational behavior and finance.” In the second year, students take electives at each school.

About the second degree, announced in June 2019, HBS says, “The world needs more leaders working at the intersection of science and society.” The MS/MBA Biotechnology: Life Sciences Program is a collaboration of HBS and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in the Harvard Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, and it aims rot equip students with “approaches to the science and medical aspects of entrepreneurial activities and will empower them to build organizations with the potential to transform human health.” The curriculum focuses on “an understanding of effective, sustainable structures for discovery and development, the ethical implications of new therapeutics, and equitable access to the fruits of therapeutic discovery.”

MIT Sloan School of Management

Entire Full-Time MBA Program; Sloan Fellows MBA; Sloan Executive MBA; Leaders for Global Operations Dual-Degree Program

STEM makes sense at few schools more than MIT, where fully a third — 33% — of current Class of 2021 MBA students carry undergraduate engineering degrees, and another 11% have math and science bachelor’s degrees. Nearly 20% have work backgrounds in tech, with another 10% coming from either the energy or industrial sectors. In the LGO program, MIT students can earn an MBA and a master’s degree in engineering in two years. They develop management expertise and technical abilities as joint students in the MIT School of Engineering and the MIT Sloan School of Management. The school partners with elite companies to provide research fellowships and place graduates in high-tech roles. Students finish with a master’s degree in engineering and an MBA.

MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics

Master of Applied Science in Supply Chain Management

MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics offers a Supply Chain Management master’s program in two formats — a 10-month, fully residential option, and a hybrid online + on-campus blended option. All incoming students are initially enrolled for the MASc-SCM degree.

Delaware Lerner offers a STEM-designated dual degree that gets grads an average starting salary of more than $80,000. Lerner photo

University of Delaware Lerner College of Business and Economics

MBA/MS Dual-Degree Program

The Lerner College MBA/MS dual-degree program promises that students will “master the tools you’ll need to use data to leverage assets, optimize outcomes and predict future results.” Located in central Delaware within a few hours of Washington D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, the growing tech scene of Wilmington, and the financial centers of New York City, the Lerner program boasts accomplished faculty and a diverse cohort. The school’s state-of-the-art facilities, such as the JPMorgan Chase Innovation Center and the Lerner College Trading Center, “are designed to foster collaboration among students, faculty and industry.” The average salary for graduates is north of $80K, and 96% of all students rated their overall educational experience within the Lerner graduate and MBA programs as excellent or good. 

Pace University Lubin School of Business

MBA in Information Systems

With a Lubin MBA in Information Systems, students can “take charge of technology transformations and gain a strategic advantage through a thorough grounding in critical business factors, specialized database and IT network knowledge, faculty who are experienced and well-connected in the field, and internships in leading organizations headquartered nearby.” The degree, which costs about $140K, gives grads the skills to lead an organization through strategic decisions about information systems, telecommunications, database administration, Internet technologies, systems analysis and design, and how they support the needs of the business.

What is Vanderbilt best known for? If you answered “finance,” you’re right. Vanderbilt photo

Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management 

MBA Finance Concentration; MBA Operations & Analytics Concentration

Vanderbilt is recognized worldwide for its finance faculty, who have received many awards for their research and teaching and also serve on prestigious editorial boards. The school’s finance courses provide students with a grasp of the fundamental techniques required for the practice of financial management. Relying upon extensive experience in the classroom, Vanderbilt continually updates the finance curriculum to incorporate the latest developments and important innovations in the markets, as well as academic research. For the Finance concentration, students must take eight credit hours of electives and can choose from such offerings as Risk Management, Derivatives Markets, and Financial Data Analysis; the Operations & Analytics concentration is open to MBA students beginning in the fall of 2020.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute Foisie Business School

Full-Time MBA

The MBA program for STEM professionals is “student-centered, inquiry-driven, and problem-oriented from start to finish and offers the flexibility to complete the degree requirements around your other obligations,” according to the Foisie School, which has around 14 MBA students. Total tuition cost: just over $75,000. The program boasts online learning and “robust” face-to-face interaction, with a format that emulates the real world as students work with faculty, form multidisciplinary teams, and “coordinate action across geographic distances, time zones, cultural perspectives, and languages.”

University of Pittsburgh Katz Graduate School of Business

Master of Business Administration with Business Analytics

This program requires students to complete the existing graduation requirements for both the MBA degree and the University of Pittsburgh Graduate Certificate in Business Analytics. Students immerse themselves in cutting-edge quantitative methods and analytical tools, statistics, data mining, and data-driven decision-making.