The Most Popular MBA Courses

“Management of Services taught by Professor of the Practice Zeynep Ton, who wrote the books, The Case for Good Jobs and The Good Jobs Strategy. She helped us understand how and why some of these operational systems seem to work differently than others, challenging a false dichotomy that businesses have to decide between people and profits. We explored how different business choices (e.g., higher pay, higher expectations, more slack in staffing) impact each other, ideally in a reinforcing way that creates a stable system that creates jobs people want while also generating profits that satisfy investors. That is not to say it is easy to do it – in fact most of the class is dedicated to understanding just how hard transformations like these can be. Her class has been the one that has inspired/equipped me most to be a different kind of business leader – one I can be proud of.”
Patrick Yeung, MIT (Sloan)

“My favorite course at Stern was Difficult Conversations. The course is framed around navigating conflict, but its deeper focus is how meaning moves between people and how easily it can unravel. We were challenged to unpack difficult conversations from our own lives and re-examine how identity, fear, ego, and unspoken intentions quietly shape outcomes. One core idea that stayed with me is that every productive conversation expands a “shared pool of understanding.” If that pool isn’t growing, neither are the people in it.

Difficult Conversations forced me to confront how often progress depends on curiosity: on regulating your own reactions, asking better questions, and being willing to sit in discomfort long enough to learn something new. I found myself talking about the class constantly, even at a rooftop party where I spent nearly an hour walking friends through conversations they had been avoiding. That moment made something click for me: my life is a series of important conversations, some difficult, some not. This may be one of the few periods in my life where I can dedicate intentional time to practicing that skill, and I couldn’t have imagined a better way to do so.”
Justin Shalap, New York University (Stern)

“My favorite course was NYU Stern’s Doing Business in… (DBi) South Africa. Spending two weeks in South Africa immersed in the culture, economy, and political landscape opened my eyes to what global business really looks like beyond textbooks and case studies. Being on the ground made me realize how culturally, politically, and economically naïve we can be without firsthand experience. Learning directly from local entrepreneurs, community organizations, and through township visits challenged my assumptions about growth, innovation, and impact. It pushed me to think more holistically about how business decisions ripple through societies and deepened my appreciation for context-driven leadership. The experience ultimately reinforced my desire to build responsibly on a global scale.”
Alisha Agrawal, New York University (Stern)

“My favorite course I took during my MBA was Applied Improvisation for Communication taught by Greg Hohn. It completely pushed me out of my comfort zone, but I came out of the class with greater confidence as a presenter. More importantly, it was a reminder that even in professional settings, humor is powerful. In the right situations, taking yourself a little less seriously can humanize you and lead to deeper connections with colleagues and clients.

I will never forget the “final” for the course, which was a live improv show performed on stage in front of many of my classmates. To me, it felt harder than any finance or accounting exam I had faced. I was nervous on my way to the venue, but as soon as I got on stage with my partners in the scene, the audience seemed to melt away. I ended up having so much fun that night — it will always be one of my core MBA memories.”
Victoria Leigh Peace, North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler)

“Decision Models and Prescriptive Analytics was my favorite MBA course. Each class is built around a business problem and a mathematical concept, worked through in Excel. The topics ranged from investing scenarios to hiring decisions. What I loved was the puzzle-like nature of the course. You learned by doing, actively working through a real problem as each new concept was introduced. Even the heavier mathematical concepts became practical and easy to grasp. I left the course with another tool that I know will serve me well across my career.”
Corey King, Northwestern University (Kellogg)

“My favorite course in the MBA, and my favorite course of all time, was Why Business? by Professor Otteson. This class adds intricate and thought-provoking layers to a typical business ethics course. We discuss topics like the moral concerns surrounding capitalism, the specialization of labor, and income inequality. Traditional business school skills like SQL and double-entry accounting serve important functions, but using them without the rich context of the mission-driven education I received in Why Business? would have risked divorcing the pursuit of business from its human end.”
Diab “Dody” Eid, Notre Dame (Mendoza)

“GOTO: Systems Thinking was my favourite MBA course because it pushed me furthest beyond my instincts. My background is in medicine and healthcare innovation, where I am often drawn to direct problems and practical solutions. Systems thinking forced me to slow down and look more carefully at the structures around those problems. From the incentives, dependencies, feedback loops, and unintended consequences that shape outcomes long before a solution reaches the end user.

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.”
Daina Mandewo, University of Oxford (Saïd)

“Lean LaunchPad, without a doubt. Speaking with over 150 customers, forming a team, and pitching a real startup idea made it the most hands-on experience of my MBA. Our mentor was Erik Blachford, Expedia’s first CEO. And Ralph Guggenheim, one of the producers of Toy Story — my favorite movie as a kid — taught us about storytelling and reviewed our pitches. I didn’t expect to learn how Pixar thinks about narrative in a business school class. That’s Haas.”
Gonzalo Vásquez Neyra, UC Berkeley (Haas)

“My favorite MBA course was Sales Management and Strategy with Professor Doug Chung. Given my background in sales, I expected the course to reinforce ideas I had already seen in practice, but I was surprised by how much it deepened and sharpened my thinking. The course has a reputation for being highly sought after, and it quickly became clear why. Professor Chung is exceptional at leading case-based discussions: he pushes students to take clear positions, defend their thinking, and wrestle with the real tradeoffs behind sales force design and execution. What I found especially valuable was the course’s emphasis on compensation structure—how to design incentive systems that actually drive the right behavior, and how those systems need to differ across business models and strategic contexts. It was a class that felt both intellectually rigorous and immediately practical, and I know the lessons will stay with me throughout my career.”
Daniel Sewell, University of Texas (McCombs)

“My favorite course at Darden has been Financial Crisis and Civic Reaction with Scott Miller. The course traces the anatomy of financial crises from the South Sea Bubble of the 1720s all the way to the present day, uncovering the patterns, human behaviors, and structural failures that make each crisis familiar and distinct. We developed a historical lens through which to understand modern financial markets recognizing that while the instruments and institutions may change, the dynamics of speculation and contagion remain consistent.”
Elena Céspedes Subirá, University of Virginia (Darden)

“My favorite MBA course was Accounting, largely because of how much it surprised me. I struggled with Financial Management in the first term to the point I was convinced I was going to fail and went into Accounting with real hesitation. But the course was built around a six-year business simulation, where we made strategic decisions as teams and then stepped into the role of accountants to interpret the outcomes through the financials. Instead of learning concepts passively, we had to diagnose performance through profit and loss statements, understand the consequences of our choices, and use that insight to guide the next “year”. It was the first time accounting felt less like numbers and more like decision-making under uncertainty.

What elevated the experience was the energy it created in the room. The simulation turned the course into an electric competition. There was no prize beyond bragging rights, but in a cohort filled with driven and competitive people, that was more than plenty. The pressure made everyone sharper, more vocal, and more invested in collective outcomes. My team ultimately finished as the most profitable and the most aligned with our cost leadership strategy (we did end up getting stripped of our winning title because we accepted a corrupt deal in the final year, but technicalities…), but what stayed with me was how the format drew out everyone’s drive. It made the learning deeply tangible, transforming a subject I resisted before even opening the book, into one of the most practical and empowering parts of my MBA.”
Megan Dirgins, Warwick Business School

“Among the many impactful classes I took during my MBA, Negotiations with Professor Hilary Elfenbein stands out as particularly memorable for how experiential it was. The class involved numerous mock negotiation exercises with our classmates, which gave us a very hands-on learning experience. Each post-exercise analysis made it very clear that negotiation outcomes are often influenced by the very human elements of identity, relationships, reputation, perceptions of fairness and risk, and how people interpret power. At the end of the course, we were asked to create a one-page “cheat sheet” for our future selves. Mine embraced a few principles I want to carry forward: continuously invest in gaining skills that offer you more alternative pathways; remember that how the other side feels about the process matters as much as the financial outcome; and don’t default to avoiding power — use it deliberately and responsibly.

Some of the most valuable business school experiences I have had are the classes that reaffirm my natural instincts. While I came to business school to learn what I did not know, it has been equally valuable to better understand what I already know intuitively so that I can make more deliberate decisions going forward. This course helped validate some of those instincts, providing the structural logic to fortify my intuition into a deliberate leadership practice.”
Jasdeep Kaur Dulay, Washington University (Olin)

“Scaling Operations, taught by Professor Gad Allon. It was the most practically relevant course I took at Wharton. The course covers every dimension of scaling a business – from operational efficiency and business model alignment to organizational culture and identifying the binding constraint. For someone who wants to build and operate startups, it was like getting a diagnostic toolkit for the exact problems I’ll face. I walked out of every class with ideas I could immediately apply.”
Harshwardhan Singh, Wharton School

“It is difficult to choose one favorite course during my MBA, as I have had the privilege of taking many phenomenal courses at Yale. One that stood out to me was Professor Sarah Biggerstaff’s Leadership Lab. This class equips students with practical leadership skills, including coaching, delivering feedback, overcoming internal barriers to personal development, and navigating conflict with competence.

Powerfully, it also closes the gap between the “locus of acquisition”, or the point at which a student is first exposed to a new concept, and the “locus of application”, or the point at which the student puts it into practice. Most of the assignments required us to apply what we had learned that week to contexts in our own lives in which we were leaders and then to reflect on how that “practice” had gone. This blend of learning new concepts, immediately applying them to real-world situations, and reflecting on how we could improve, was an incredibly effective way for me to consolidate what I was learning.

I was paired with a fantastic peer mentor, who was another student in the class, and a professional executive coach. The latter both challenged me to unpack my underlying assumptions about how to telegraph competence and authority as a woman and to identify concretely what I consider excellent leadership in practice. The Leadership Lab stood out to me because I was able to put everything I was learning into practice immediately. As the co-president of the Social Impact Consulting Club leading multiple project teams of student consultants, for example, I was able to apply new-to-me best practices related to coaching and delivering feedback as I learned them.”
Caroline Petro, Yale School of Management

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