Meet Oxford Saïd’s MBA Class Of 2026

WHITE TIES & WHITE TAILS

Another distinctive feature of the Saïd MBA is the college system. At Oxford, there are 36 colleges and 4 private halls, with lineage that stretches back to the 13th century in the case of Balliol and Merton Colleges. Think of the colleges like the houses in Hogwarts, communities that bring together students from a wide range of academic backgrounds and nationalities. Known for their formal dinners, the colleges also provide academic support and maintain their own governance, cultures, and traditions. As MBAs, Saïd students can join these colleges and interact with an assortment of undergraduate and graduate students.

Among the most popular traditions is the White Tie Winter Ball at Merton College, where students arrive in “white tie tails and ball gowns for an evening of dancing,” says Luke Spill. For Catherine H. Wright, a JPMorgan and University of Texas alum, the ball reflected the best of the Oxford community.

“Historically, people would put up ladders to sneak in over the walls in full white-tie,” she jokes. “I surprised my MBA friends made it to the survivors’ breakfast at 4 AM and then co-hosted an American Thanksgiving celebration with 5 other MBAs the next day at Brasenose with 90 people from our cohort.”

HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: FORMAL DINNER

Formal Dinners are another staple of Oxford’s college system. Forget grabbing a quick sandwich and racing up to your room. In the colleges, students slow down and dress up for nightly dinners, which often start with soup or crumpets before moving to English fare like beef fillet or roast chicken before concluding with chocolate mousse or fruit tarts. Held in centuries-old dining halls, Formal Dinners rank among the “essential” experiences for Saïd MBAs, says Vivian Luo.

“This experience included attending a pre-dinner choral performance in beautiful chapels, filing into grand dining halls for a Latin grace, sharing a delicious three-course meal, and mingling with students from across Oxford’s schools and departments. They’ve also been a meaningful way to introduce visitors to the university and offer them a glimpse into my life as an Oxford Saïd MBA student.”

And meet people you might not normally encounter too. “Formal dinners are a perfect place to meet people from other disciplines,” says Mirgani Huseynli. “I’ve found myself chatting with students studying everything from the History of Economics to Nanotechnology for Medicine. Even within my MBA cohort, daily conversations with classmates from different countries remind me how much we – people around the world – share, despite very different backgrounds. Those interactions have made the Oxford experience feel truly global.”

More than that, these dinner interactions reinforce the notion that you don’t have all the answers – and you can learn something from everyone.

“I found myself discussing market efficiency with a philosopher and public-sector reform with a former diplomat,” recalls Namit Garg. “Coming from a quantitative finance background, it was eye-opening to see how differently equally intelligent people frame problems—challenging my instinct to look for optimisation and instead consider values, incentives, and human context. That collision of perspectives is something I’ve only experienced at Oxford.”

A PLACE TO HAVE A REAL CONVERSATION

Formal Dinners aren’t the only times for such collisions. One signature Oxford event is a Formal Debate at the Oxford Union, with past speakers and debaters including Bernard Arnault, Elton John, Nigel Farage, and Tom Hanks. For Leila Hoffpauir, the event was extra special since she was able to dine with Conan O’Brien after his speech.

“Having spent years freelancing and interning in late-night television, it was a surreal and meaningful experience to engage with someone whose work had shaped much of my early career in media. It was a moment where my past in media intersected with my present at Oxford in a way that felt both unexpected and affirming.”

To remember these experiences – both for herself and her classmates – Shradha Kapoor has been building a scrapbook of her year at Oxford, including a page for every college.

“My intention is to visit every college, attend a formal dinner, and capture each experience through photographs and handwritten reflections. I ask classmates to guide me through their colleges, sharing the traditions, hidden corners, and personal stories that give each place its soul. These visits often unfold into long walks and thoughtful conversations, with moments and words I carefully note down when they resonate with me.”

This sense of connection may be the defining aspect of the Oxford culture, adds Daina Mandewo, another P&Q Best & Brightest MBA.

“From the Oxford Union debates to the seminars across both University and town, Oxford is a place that still believes in the harder discipline of staying in conversation when we would much rather withdraw to our affirmation chambers. Whether in classrooms, over dinner, or after speaker events, there is an expectation that you listen closely, argue carefully, and remain intellectually open even when you are unconvinced. I found that deeply refreshing.”

HOLISTIC APPROACH TO PROBLEM-SOLVING

As a whole, the MBA Class of 2026 features 332 students who bring 5 years of work experience and averaged 690 on their GMATs. 96% of the class hails from outside the United Kingdom and come from 63 nationalities, making Saïd one of the most diverse MBA programs in the world. In addition, the class boasts near gender parity with 48% of the class being women.

Like many European MBA programs, Saïd operates off a one-year formal, which enables graduates to quickly return to the job market with less debt and opportunity cost. That said, it is also known for its popular 1+1 program, where students can earn an MBA and pair it with a Master’s degree from 37 different disciplines ranging from Environmental Change and Policy to Health Service Improvement and Policy.

“The Oxford 1+1 MBA offers a uniquely interdisciplinary pathway, which has allowed me to deepen my academic research while refining my skills as an impact-driven entrepreneur,” writes Evelyn Miller. “I was drawn to the programme’s ability to bridge rigorous scholarship with practical innovation, enabling me to formally connect my sociological research with the real-world work I do across creative, digital, and community-focused spaces.”

This spring, the Saïd MBA ranked 6th globally in CEOWorld’s Best Business Schools Ranking, a testament to just how in-tune the program is with the c-suite executives targeted by the ranking survey. One reason is that Saïd courses, such as GOTO: Systems Thinking, train students on how to break down and understand how complex systems work. In the process, students learn how to align structures that may exacerbate issues through unintended consequences and perverse incentives, says Daina Mandewo, another P&Q Best & Brightest MBA in 2026.

“That became especially real to me during our work on a decarbonisation initiative with the team at Vattenfall in London. The project challenged me to think beyond a single company or intervention and instead consider how policy, infrastructure, organisational priorities, and long-term behavioural change interact. It made me reflect on how often failure emanates from misunderstanding the systems for which we are designing. That is what I valued most about GOTO: it gave me a more honest way of thinking. It reminded me that systems do not have a singular hero nor villain. It helped me think about the interconnectedness of it all.”

AN INTERVIEW WITH AMY MAJOR

What can applicants, students, and alumni expect next out of Saïd MBA? Earlier this year, P&Q reached out to Amy Major, MBA Programme Director, MBA Recruitment and Admissions. In a far-reaching interview, Major covers everything from new program developments to AI to services for international students and alumni alike.

P&Q: What have been the two most important developments in your MBA program over the past year? What type of impact will they have on current and future MBAs?

Major: “It is hugely topical that AI will potentially take over many of the more basic tasks in the workplace as we create efficiencies with the tools available.

Organisations are looking more to people to have strong decision-making ability, strong leadership skills – might we say, human skills. We have developed the Human leadership programme within our Career Development Centre, an amalgamation of current offers and new initiatives which allows students to pick from a sort of picnic basket of opportunities to develop their human skills – this includes, for instance, Strategic Influence, Impactful Storytelling, and Having Difficult Conversations.  It is a response to the kind of future of work landscape.

The other thing we are doing is more in person examine examinations. We want our students still to think critically and learn and go through a learning process – in the age of ChatGPT. Employers still know that our MBA students leave with core business skills that they have critically learnt.”

P&Q: What do you see as the main differentiator that distinguishes your MBA program from other schools? How does it enhance the student experience and make them more attractive to employers?

Major: “A lot of business schools are very diverse. But I think the MBA cohort we have here at Saïd is the complete polar opposite of homogeneous. That is what we stand for. An employer knows when they consider an Oxford MBA graduate, they are going to receive or meet prospective employees who truly do have a global view.

It does not just come down to geographies, but sectors, socioeconomic backgrounds, all of the protected characteristics. If our students have not experienced diverse backgrounds before – they will have here. And that is such a strength in terms of an employee.”

P&Q: What types of services do you provide to first-year MBAs to ease their transition into business school?

Major: “We start on-boarding in June ahead of them arriving in late September. Then we have a two-week orientation that’s quite extensive. In terms of getting them as comfortable as they can be and ready for the MBA, there is academic content during launch and there’s the pre-MBA content, shared before launch, to help get them familiar too.

You’re always going to have people who have applied really early and are super ready to go; they are the ones who inform everyone else of everything they need to do. And there will be people who have applied later. But we help ease the transition, whichever student they are.”

P&Q: What types of support do you provide to international students before and during business school to enable them to better acclimate to your country?

Major: “There are alumni and current student panels during the admissions process, giving them a sense of what to expect. I think we provide quite a lot of 101 information sessions during launch to give them a sense of that.

Our international students – and that is most of our MBA cohort – not only have the Business School network, but they have their colleges as well. As part of the University, they each have a college home, where they meet and get to know students from every discipline. It also means, from a well-being and welfare perspective, we’ve got support within the department and within the wider university.

We do a lot of from a cross-cultural perspective and there are networks of every type, and the support network potentially of the cohort is really quite far-reaching. They also have an academic supervisor that they can call on. But there’s not a lot we can do to help them prepare for the weather!”

P&Q: How does your program integrate other disciplines, such as the liberal arts and STEM, across your curriculum to provide students with a more interdisciplinary experience in business school?

Major: “As part of Oxford University, our students encounter people from every discipline and benefit from the amazing range of perspectives that they get and they can attend lectures, talks, and events across the disciplines.

We also have electives at the School that specifically draw on the arts, including our Leadership Perspectives elective. There is also a business history elective. And we work closely with our STEM colleagues. Recently, a new Applied AI centre was launched at the School in partnership with the Computer Science department.

We have people from liberal arts backgrounds coming into the MBA. And we work with the wider University to enrich the programme. For instance, during our launch, for the last two years we have had a climate boot camp, which saw the renowned Physicist Professor Myles Allen give lectures to our new MBA students – bringing in concepts from across STEM.”

P&Q: What are two ways that your program is incorporating Artificial Intelligence into your programming? How do they better prepare students for the future world of work?

Major: “At our launch week, we had sessions on building your own GPT. Although some students will be AI natives, not all will be. We’re moving towards a generation of AI natives, but at the moment, we know employers are looking for a general level of literacy.

It is also built into many of our electives, not least Machine Learning, which help prepare students for their futures.”

Next Page: Profiles of 12 members of the MBA Class of 2026

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