Carnegie Mellon Tepper’s International MBA Population Has Fallen 30% In 2 Years

There are plenty of seats available in the Tepper Quad this fall as the B-school enrolled its smallest MBA class in years

From 2023 to 2024, Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business saw the steepest decline in international students of any top-25 U.S. MBA program, plunging from 53% to 39% of the full-time class. Now, in the Class of 2027, the share has slipped again, to 37% — and the cohort has shrunk to 144 students total after a fourth straight year of contraction.

For a school long known for its global footprint, the decline is striking — and it extends beyond percentages: Tepper’s new class represents 21 countries, down from 27 last year.

The school is far from alone in grappling with shrinking international representation (see here, here and here), but Tepper’s rapid slide stands out. As recently as two admission cycles ago, it ranked among the most internationally diverse MBA programs in the United States. Today, it is recalibrating to a new reality — one that could become even harsher as U.S. immigration policy shifts under the Trump administration.

TRUMP’S $100K VISA FEE ADDS FUEL TO THE FIRE

Though most top U.S. schools still have not released their MBA class profile data, the broader trend is undeniable. Poets&Quants’ annual analysis of international enrollment showed that as recently as 2022, most leading programs were still on the upswing, with 22 of 27 reporting year-over-year increases. Tepper’s sharp retreat — 16 percentage points in two years, a more than 30% decline — marks the demonstrative end to that pattern, and, like its peers, suggests a program under pressure from global competition, shifting applicant pools, and the growing uncertainty around U.S. work visas.

The political backdrop compounds these challenges. In September 2025, the Trump administration introduced a $100,000 fee on new H-1B applications, a seismic jump from the prior average of about $1,500. The policy, which also requires sponsoring employers to pay the fee before foreign workers can enter the country, has already sparked lawsuits and fierce debate. For international MBA candidates, the implications are clear: the cost of securing a U.S. job after graduation has skyrocketed. For employers, the calculation has shifted as well. Sponsoring an MBA graduate now carries a price tag that will likely make companies more selective, favoring only the highest-paid roles or the most indispensable candidates.

The impact is particularly acute for Indian students, who represent the lion’s share of H-1B recipients and form a backbone of international enrollment at Tepper and many of its peer schools. With the fee in place, and with other proposed (or threatened, depending on your perspective) changes, the traditional ROI of a U.S. MBA becomes much less certain. Instead of seeing the American degree as the clearest path to global mobility, more students may turn to programs in Europe, Canada, or Asia that offer more predictable post-graduate work opportunities.

Source: CMU Tepper

A SHRINKING CLASS WITH STRONG CREDENTIALS

For Tepper’s Class of 2027, after the drop in internationals perhaps the most notable data point is class size. At 144 students, the cohort is the smallest in memory, having dropped now for four straight years, down from 192 in 2022, 171 in 2023, and 156 last year.

The average GMAT score for the who took the 10th edition, older test is 707, up from 697, with a median of 710. For the newer Focus edition, the average is 659, with a 655 median. Students bring an average of more than five years’ work experience, and the class maintains Tepper’s reputation for quant-driven rigor with an average GPA of 3.33, up from 3.26 last year. 

Tepper reports a GRE quantitative average of 163 for the Class of 2027, with a median of 164, and a GRE verbal average of 159 (median 159). The total average is 322, down 1 point from last year’s class average. The middle 80% of combined GRE scores range from 308 to 336. 

Undergraduate backgrounds in the Class of 2027 skew strongly technical. Engineering leads at 42.45%, followed by Business/Commerce at 23.74%. The next largest groups are Economics (10.79%) and Math/Physical Science (6.47%), with Arts/Humanities (5.76%), Social Sciences (5.04%), and Other (5.76%) rounding out the cohort — a profile that underscores Tepper’s quant-forward identity.  

Students in the Class of 2027 bring experience from a wide range of professional sectors, but technology and new media dominate the profile, representing nearly 19% of the cohort. Financial services follow at 16.06%, while consulting contributes 13.87%. Healthcare accounts for 10.22%, and government work makes up another 11.68%. Manufacturing (7.3%), consumer goods and retail (2.92%), and energy and clean tech (1.46%) round out the mix, along with smaller shares from consumer products (0.73%) and a broad “other” category (11.68%). 

DON’T MISS TEPPER SCHOOL DEAN STEPPING DOWN NEXT YEAR

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