Meet Rochester Simon’s MBA Class Of 2026

Everyone wants to start in New York City. The energy, the access, the possibilities – always something to do and something to pursue. Over time, the Big Apple loses its luster: The crowds, the noise, the crime – cramped and costly – no place to stretch out and no time to slow down. The city can drain you: mentally and financially.

That’s why some MBA students gravitate to a different part of New York: Rochester – home to the Simon Business School. Home to a million people, Rochester finished 9th in the latest U.S. News ranking of Quality of Life. A year earlier, the city placed 2nd in Condé Nast’s ranking of the country’s friendliest cities. Picture a low cost of living with housing at half the national average. Picture a city with four distinct seasons where you can sometimes just get away from it all – even as an MBA student. Just ask David Garrett, a first-year MBA in the Class of 2026.

“There is so much accessible nature within and around the city! If I need a break, I can take a quick bike ride on the river trail that hugs campus. Also, If I need to watch a beautiful sunset, the large and breathtaking Lake Ontario is not far away.”

BEST YEARS STILL AHEAD

Rochester isn’t Ithaca, however. It may be a postcard picturesque college town, but Rochester means business too. The University of Rochester leads the NY SMART I-Corridor Tech, a public-private partnership that stretches from Buffalo to Rochester to Syracuse. Within the next five years, the region is projected to produce a quarter of American semiconductor chips. The city was the starting point for companies like Western Union, Wegman, and Gannett – and is currently home to firms as diverse as Paychex, MicroEra Power, and Circle Optics. Long known as the “Imaging capital of the world”, Rochester has avoided the fate of Rust Belt cautionary tales and reinvented itself as a tech powerhouse says Alec T. Dietsch, a 2023 grad and P&Q MBA to Watch.

“One thing I didn’t realize before living in Rochester was the critical and central role the University plays in the resurgence of the City of Rochester. The University is a research hub, especially in the medical and optics fields, and there’s a robust entrepreneurial buzz that’s grown around the University: venture capital and consulting firms have sprung up to support the commercialization of novel technologies developed at the University. In this way, the University is helping to transform the city that’s still recovering from the demise of its largest employers—Kodak, Xerox, and Bausch + Lomb. I have been fortunate to get a chance to work with some of the companies involved in this ecosystem through experiential learning opportunities offered through Simon, like Simon Vision Consulting.”

Among the MBA Class of 2026, Rochester boasts a variety of charms. Samiya Yesmin, a native of Bangladesh, appreciates how Rochester provides a balance. She can meet people “from all corners of the globe” without the city being “overwhelming like some major urban centers.” At the same time, the food choices enable her to “stay connected to my roots.” The surroundings are just a bonus, Yasmin adds.

“The incredible natural beauty surrounding Rochester—lakes, state parks, rivers, and waterfalls—offers endless possibilities for outdoor adventures. Here, I truly get the best of both worlds: a world-class MBA program and a fulfilling wholesome lifestyle.”

NEVER A DULL MOMENT

Her classmates are equally smitten by the region. Colin Lease, an Alaska native who shot his first moose when he was 15, notes there is modest traffic in the area, with areas like New York City, Boston, and DC being just a short plane ride or (at most) a seven-hour drive away. Even closer, he says are natural beauties like the Finger Lake region, Adirondack Mountains, and Niagara Falls. Rochester itself features a deep roster of tasty restaurants and can’t-miss bars and music joints. The Eastman School of Music – one of the nation’s best – offers another layer of options to an already-vibrant arts scene.

Indeed, students and alumni alike point to a variety of activities they’ve already pursued around Rochester. Lan-Huong Nguyen, a Chicago transplant, has already hiked with classmates and lounged around with them on the lakefront. Sophia Leung, a 2023 grad, reminisces how Rochester was truly a four-seasons experiences. During the summer, she would kayak around the Erie Canal, before jumping over the gorges in the fall, and snowboarding in the winter (with wine tours being a year-round exercise with classmates). In Rochester, there are rocks to climb, beaches to explore, and ice fishing holes to drill. To maximize student exposure to these choices, the school maintains the ever-popular Outdoor Adventure Club, whose 2024-2025 slate already includes “hiking, white water rafting, skiing, [and] tubing” says Samiya Yesmin. For Anna Lisa Gromann, the club represents why the Class of 2026 came to the Simon School.

“One of the reasons why I decided to study abroad is to get to know a new country, the culture, and new people. What better way to experience all of this than on a rafting or hiking tour? I want to try things I haven’t done before and explore the beautiful countryside around Rochester…I want to become part of the #SimonStrong community and make my own contribution.”

CLASS STORIES

Gromann came 4,000 miles to join Simon’s MBA Class of 2026 after working as a product risk manager for medical products company in Germany.  She is also a black belt in TaeKwonDo, who is trained in kickboxing and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Her classmate, Tess Eustace served as a U.S. Army signals intelligence team leader, spending 10 months in Afghanistan in the process. Here, she earned a battlefield promotion.

“They are extremely rare, and it was a huge honor and really affirmed my ability to step up and lead in tough situations. It reminded me how important it is to stay calm, focused, and dedicated when the stakes are high.”

David Garrett comes to Rochester after working as a lead kindergarten teacher. His business experience: working the cash register at Chick-fil-A, leaving him with an ability to say “My pleasure” in his sleep. Kennedy Graves, a senior treasury advisory for BMO, passed the Certified Treasury Profession (CTP) exam. Not only does the exam have a 60% failure rate, but she was the youngest person in her group to achieve the feat. Colin Lease designed a deposit account solution for the Spirit of Alask Federal Credit Union that is now responsible for nearly a third of its application volume. As a Baylor undergrad, Folake Obasanya created a cultural humility program that has been completed by 30,000 students (to-date). A DEI analyst before business school, Obasanya was drawn to Simon for its STEM designation – the first major graduate business program to achieve this designation.

“Growing up, I avoided STEM because it felt intimidating and less accessible for women of color. During the pandemic, I taught myself how to code, and that changed everything. It gave me the confidence to dive into computer science, a field where I don’t see many people like me. It hasn’t always been easy as an African American queer woman in tech, but those challenges have made me even more determined to grow.”

DRIVEN BY DATA

Indeed, the Simon MBA is known as a data-driven, heavily informed by management science, analytics, and economics. Not surprisingly, it boasts one of the world’s top pricing programs. Even more, the MBA program frames itself as “unabashedly analytical”, with Colin Lease lauding its “analytical frameworks and quantitative analysis.” This approach aligns perfectly with Samiya Yesmin’s world view.

“I don’t just see numbers as mere data; to me, they tell a story, paint a picture, and reveal underlying needs.”

Lan-Huong Nguyen says the data-driven approach made an impression early. In her Experience Simon Weekend, Nguyen says her group completed a sample class where they discussed race and gender in homeownership. “I was blown away by how we navigated the conversation on racial and gender discrimination and the dangers of misusing and misinterpreting data. I was thankful to have Professor Ravi Mantena guide us through this conversation and how the curriculum inherently considers DEI perspectives.”

Connecting data and decision-making has been a focus that has carried over once the Class of 2026 arrived on campus says Aayush Agam Shrivastava, who studied medicine before moving into the impact space. “We had structured problem solving in our pre-fall semester, and I am not only using the knowledge I earned there in my life as a student, but I am already using it avidly in case studies, business models, and in the approach to solve any professional problem. It has taught me what to do with the data that I have been given.”

That said, Simon isn’t just a program for Quants, say alumni. Missy Keesler, a 2024 grad, points out that she chose Simon because of her inexperience in analytics. “Working on a ‘weakness’ can be intimidating. Once we were in the depths of the first year, I quickly realized this was not true, as did many of my classmates. Simon does a great job of developing core classes to build a foundation for our data analytics, supported further with different electives we may choose. Further, the resources Simon provides, such as tutors, teaching assistants, lab hours, and accessibility to professors, make data analytics very doable and no longer scary.”

In a 2023 interview with P&Q, Simon Dean Sevin Yeltekin emphasizes that the program emphasizes making its graduates “technology fluent” in order to prepare them to use data for high-level decision-making.

“Everybody’s always trying to sell somebody the new shiny tool,” Yeltekin says. “These managers have outside firms approaching them to say, ‘Give us your data, and we can number crunch it for you.’ But if you don’t understand what you’re doing, you can waste a lot of time, waste a lot of money, and actually make really bad decisions as well. So we centered this around the experiences of a manager, someone who is able to combine a marketing, operations, or finance function with data.”

A CLASS PROFILE

Overall, the Class of 2026 features 116 students who hail from 22 countries. Women account for 46% of the class, with the middle 80% of ages running from 24-32. Another 35% of U.S. students in the class are members of underrepresented groups. In terms of testing, the middle 80% of the class had GMAT scores spanned from 620-730, while the middle 80% of undergraduate GPAs ranged from 2.7-3.8. Several students also submitted GRE scores, with the middle 80% Quant and Verbal running 151-169 and 151-160 respectively.

As undergraduates, 27% of the class majored with Business-related fields. Engineering and Math and Science graduates each accounted for a 22% share, followed by Humanities and Social Sciences (17%) and Economics (12%). Professionally, you’ll find class members who have worked at some of the world’s top companies: Accenture, Bank of America, Barclays, Capital One, Citi, Cognizant, Deloitte, Grant Thornton, Nestle, Procter & Gamble, PwC, and Schlumberger.

As a whole, the Simon MBA ranks 28th with Bloomberg Businessweek and 32nd for U.S. News among American programs. While The Financial Times pegged Simon 55th globally, the school achieved a 9.519 average score on Student Satisfaction from students and alumni – the 8th-highest score in the world. What’s behind this success? This summer, P&Q reached out to Rebekah Lewin, Senior Assistant Dean of Admissions & Programs. From new developments to global business programming, here is what you can expect from the Simon MBA.

Next Page: An Interview with Rebekah Lewin and Profiles of 12 Members of the Class of 2026.