The Curtain Is About To Rise On NYU Stern’s Big Mideast Venture: An Accelerated MBA In Abu Dhabi

It will be the only full-time MBA program brought by a top U.S. business school to the Middle East-North Africa region.

It will serve as the key cog in a pipeline of young professionals who want to build their careers in the MENA region.

After years of preparation and planning — and especially the last year of intense work — it’s almost ready to launch. The NYU Stern School of Business at NYU Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, opens its one-year full-time MBA program in January.

“The last year has been an absolute whirlwind — in a good way,” says Robert Salomon, dean of NYU Stern School of Business at NYU Abu Dhabi. “I’ve never had this kind of experience in my career before of trying to put together an entirely new program, and in some sense a new business school.”

A UNIQUE ‘INTERNSHIP’

That NYU Stern is the only major U.S. B-school to operate a full-time MBA program in the Middle East is not the only way in which its accelerated one-year MBA is unique.

The January-to-December program will be 54 credits, making it comparable to a two-year program in scope but all the more intense for its compressed timeframe. comprised of half a dozen seven-week academic modules complemented with an orientation pre-module, the program is based in Campus Center on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, with a summer term spent learning in two Doing Business in New York City courses on Stern’s hometown campus.

Faced with the problem inherent to one-year MBAs — the lack of a summer internship — Stern came up with a unique solution: the Experiential Internship Course, a multi-part learning opportunity that extends across the four Abu Dhabi-based modules. In it, students working in small teams will partner with organizations in the UAE to address real-world business challenges.

“One of the things that we were very mindful of is that in having a one-year full-time MBA program that runs straight through with no break, there isn’t a natural internship,” Salomon tells Poets&Quants. “There’s no, ‘OK, you’re going to go off and do an internship for a little while and then come back to school.’ So what we’ve done is, we’ve built it into the full-time MBA: Students will be doing what we refer to as the signature internship projects where they will be paired with local organizations that need help on specific issues, real-world issues that they’re facing at the moment. We already have 19 projects, which is more than enough that we need for the 50 or so students that we’ll have, because we’ll be working in groups on these projects. And the students will work on real problems with organizations from the get-go.”

Shorter and faster is the way of the future for MBA programs, Salomon agrees.

“I think that’s the way the market’s going,” he says. “If you ask me, I think 10, 15, 20 years from now, I’d say half the programs will be one-year programs and half the programs will be two-year programs.”

COST & REWARD

Applications are still open for the first cohort of the NYUAD MBA that begins in January. They close in October. (Click here to learn more.) October also marks the beginning of the application period for the second cohort that will begin the program in January 2026.

Tuition is $115,638, plus estimated living expenses of $38,724. Put together, that makes the program among the more expensive for a one-year program — but not more so than some peer programs like the Cornell Johnson Tech MBA and the USC Marshall one-year program. And as in those programs, several merit-based scholarships are available to help offset the cost.

Upon successful completion of the NYUAD MBA, students will graduate with a fully accredited New York University diploma, jointly conferred by NYU Stern School of Business and NYU Abu Dhabi. And then they’ll look for work — ideally staying in the region, Salomon says, which is bustling with jobs in industries that wants and need more MBA talent.

“Consistent with our tradition in New York and how we grew up as a school, obviously finance will be a big component of what we do. And Abu Dhabi is a financial hub,” says Salomon, a professor of international management who is in his 20th year with NYU Stern. “It’s home to some of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world. I think several of the top-10 largest sovereign wealth funds in the world are located in the UAE. Sophisticated financial institutions are located in the UAE, in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. So that’s one. Another is consulting. There’s a huge amount of consulting. All the large consulting firms, the BCGs, the Bains, the McKinseys, the KPMGs, the Kearneys, the PwCs, they all have hubs in the UAE and they all have large offices in the UAE.

“Oil and gas has been a traditional industry there. But when I think about the UAE, they’re also one of the fastest-growing alternative energy markets in the world. For example, they have the largest solar farm in the world. So alternative energy is an industry that’s growing and growing very quickly there. Their sustainability at large is growing very quickly there. Tech of all sorts. FinTech, EdTech — they’re pioneers in both of those spaces.

“So there are lots of areas where we’re seeing interest among the students. And not only that, the employers in the region are very receptive to having a top U.S. business school in the market.”

‘A GLOBAL INSTITUTION THAT’S LOOKING TO ATTRACT STUDENTS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD’

NYU Stern already offers two one-year accelerated MBA programs, both geared to specific industries: Its Fashion & Luxury MBA and the Andre Koo Tech MBA. Stern also offers its two-year MBA, of course, which P&Q ranks in the top 10 in the U.S. and Bloomberg Businessweek ranks in the top 15.

For obvious reasons, the NYUAD MBA will be different, with areas of interest to the MENA region built into the curriculum.

“One of the similarities between this program and the New York program is, we’re looking for the best and the brightest from anywhere in the world,” Salomon says. “Just like the New York program, we’re looking for people who are intelligent, have the IQ factor and also the EQ factor. That for us is very important. We’re looking for folks, just like New York, who have 2 to, let’s say, 10-plus years’ worth of experience commensurate with a full-time MBA program.

“But there is one difference. And the one difference is that we really are looking to identify people who are interested in building and developing their careers in the region, in Abu Dhabi, in Dubai, in the broader Middle East. And there’s a couple of things that make that attractive. The first one is, if you look at the UAE and the Middle East as a region more broadly, it’s one of the fastest-growing regions in the world. One of the consistently growing regions in the world. There are people coming to the UAE from all over the world.

“And there is a real desire in the UAE to attract talent — and not only attract talent, but keep talent there. And so we’re looking for folks who are smart, yes, have emotional intelligence, yes, but also who have a desire to contribute to the region in whatever way, shape, or form. So we’re not looking for local students to go to a local institution. This is going to be a global institution that’s looking to attract students from all over the world — but what they share in common is a desire to develop their careers in the region.”

Learn more about the NYU Abu Dhabi one-year MBA program. And see a Q&A with Dean Robert Salomon on the next page, edited for length and clarity.