WashU Olin’s MBA Is Getting A Major Makeover

Washington University in St. Louis wasn’t having any trouble drawing interest from applicants to its MBA program. Quite the opposite.

With the changes to its curriculum announced for fall 2025, the Olin Business School might well be looking at another app windfall in the near future.

That’s because flexibility is the name of the game these days in graduate business education, and the Olin School has upped its flexibility quotient in three key ways. First, Olin has added seven new concentrations, from Business Analytics to FinTech to Wealth & Asset Management, for a total of 12. Next, they significantly increased elective coursework and allowed first-year students to take electives. And finally, they reduced overall core curriculum requirements.

‘ALWAYS EVOLVING TO FOSTER GREAT OUTCOMES’

Take as a whole, the moves seem designed to give Olin even more luster in the admissions season of 2025-2026. If the school somehow improves on what was an incredible 2024-2025 — when it grew its MBA class by 25% on the strength of an incredible 99% increase in MBA applications — Olin’s leadership can credit their democratic approach.

In planning the changes, Olin took feedback not only from recruiters and faculty, says Evan Bouffides, senior associate dean of graduate programs, but from current, former, and prospective students as well, with an eye toward the needs of future ones.

“The WashU Olin curriculum is always evolving to foster great outcomes for our students and society as a whole,” Bouffides tells Poets&Quants. “These latest charges result from input and collaboration across a variety of stakeholders including students, faculty, recruiters and alumni. Our student engagement efforts included surveying both past and prospective students, as well as more informal feedback conveyed in student-to-advisor conversations. Similarly, conversations with our career center, informed by their close professional connections, helped to ensure our revised curriculum is aligned with the market’s needs.”

NEW CONCENTRATIONS: 15% OF 2025 MBA CLASS HAS A HEALTH BACKGROUND

Many of Olin’s changes are a result of the market’s demand for talent with greater specialization post-MBA. That is certainly true of the addition of seven new concentrations: Brand & Product Management, Business Analytics, Financial Technology, Health, Leadership & Human Capital Management, Private Capital & Strategic Ownership, and Wealth & Asset Management. These are in addition to the already existing concentrations of Consulting, Corporate Finance, Entrepreneurship, Marketing Analytics, Operations & Supply Chain Management. Each concentration requires 12 credits to fulfill, and students can opt to pursue one, two, or more to personalize their MBA education.

Among the new concentrations, Health — part of Olin’s Business of Health strategic initiative — is a response not only to what is plainly occurring in the marketplace but also what Olin sees in its own program and backyard, Bouffides says.

“Health represents 20% of U.S. GDP and continues to grow, making it one of the most in-demand sectors. There is a clear market opportunity for innovative business leaders to address the gap between today’s health challenges and what current systems are able to deliver,” he says. “Not surprisingly, we’ve seen an uptick in students with healthcare backgrounds seeking an MBA. At Olin, 15% of this year’s MBA class has a background in health, making it the largest industry in the class along with financial services.

“WashU Olin is in an ideal position to drive the business of health by leveraging strong partnerships with WashU’s renowned Schools of Medicine and Public Health to share ideas, collaborate on research, and educate students. St. Louis is also home to a dynamic health ecosystem with organizations ranging from biotech startups to leading health systems.”

MORE ELECTIVES, FEWER CORE REQUIREMENTS

The Olin School, ranked No. 21 in Poets&Quants‘ 2024-2025 MBA ranking of U.S. programs, will make two other major changes to its full-time program in the fall. The first is an increase in elective coursework, allowing students to begin taking electives during year one of their MBA. Sixty percent of Olin MBA students’ overall coursework now will be comprised of electives.

With increased electives necessarily comes a reduction in core curriculum. That’s the other big change: a reduction in core requirements that will give students more flexibility, Bouffides says, creating an education path that matches with their goals and career aspirations.

“We’re always listening to our students, current and past, and we made these changes based on their feedback on what they want in an MBA program, as well as evolving market demand for students with greater functional and/or industry specialization in the post-MBA job market,” he says. “As you might expect, the refreshed MBA curriculum reflects some of the core tenets of success outlined in Olin’s recently launched strategic plan: offering a distinctive approach to individualized business education that is highly tailored to each student’s purpose and connected to an engaged business community, preparing graduates for their next jobs as well as their long-term careers.”

‘A DYNAMIC COHORT WITH DIVERSE PERSPECTIVES’

If you’re looking for a model MBA program for appealing to diverse candidates, you could hardly do better than Washington Olin has in recent years.

Not only did the Olin MBA go STEM in 2020, a move designed to appeal to international candidates, but Olin last fall enrolled a class that was more than 50% women for the first time in school history. With 53% women in its MBA Class of 2026, Olin leads all top-50 U.S. B-schools, one of only three to cross the parity threshold.

“Olin strives to welcome diverse classes every year across a variety of dimensions including gender, industry, and functional experience,” Bouffides says. “The breadth of concentrations and variety of class formats we offer help us to deliver on our educational mission by meeting different students’ learning needs and professional interests. We’re thrilled that our larger application pool this year allowed us to recruit one of most diverse classes in our history. That said, we do not establish explicit demographic targets at the start of an admissions cycle.”

Olin’s MBA Class of 2025 is 51% international and its Class of 2026 is 44% international. Moreover, the latter class is comprised of 34% under-represented minorities.

“We design our programs to meet the needs of the broader community we operate in and serve,” Bouffides says. “With each new class, our goal is to create a dynamic cohort with diverse perspectives inclusive of students’ lived experience and professional backgrounds. By increasing the number of concentrations from five to 12 under the new curriculum, students now have more opportunity to personalize their education.”

DON’T MISS THIS TOP MBA PROGRAM DOUBLED ITS APPS — AND ENROLLED 53% WOMEN