The Michael F. Price College of Business MBA: What You Need To Know

Named after a famous Wall Street investor and money manager Michael Price, the University of Oklahoma’s Michael F. Price Business School offers a full-time MBA Program in the city of Norman, just south of Oklahoma City, and it is far more of a center for culture, technology and scientific research than one might expect out of a smaller Oklahoma city. Graduating their first class in 1930, the program is just under 100 years old.

Over 16 months completing 48 credit hours, students can expect to spend much time in The Gene Rainbolt Graduate School of Business, home to the Oklahoma MBA. The intentionally small program of this year’s 40 incoming students is structured to provide the friendliest environment to students as possible, and to ensure that faculty and students have as much interaction as possible.

The half-semester format allows students to begin elective coursework prior to beginning a summer internship. The program offers rigorous core business courses and plentiful opportunities for students to dive into their specific interests. Students can choose from six specializations in finance, entrepreneurship, healthcare administration, digital technologies, media management, and arts management.

The definitive strength of the Oklahoma MBA program is its energy specialization. The culture of energy at OU is pervasive, with a large number of its graduates going to work in the oil and gas industry. Eddie Edwards, the executive director of the MBA program, says that energy lives at OU.

“Our students recognize that the energy community is a very tight-knit group and that everyone knows each other very well,” said Edwards. “They also recognize that having an MBA from OU with the energy specialization gets you noticed in the energy community.”

One of the most notable hallmarks of the energy specialization at OU Price is its collaboration program with the Institute of French Petroleum in Paris. Each year, the school sends three of their students pursuing the energy specialization to attend the institute in Paris, where they immerse themselves in coursework focused on the energy industry.

“We are one of only two schools in the United States that has an active relationship with the Institute of French Petroleum in Paris, which is an outstanding international energy school,” said Edwards “The program is one where a student can come out with an MBA as well as a Master’s in Energy Economics.”

Prospective MBAs should know the energy culture at OU Price is entirely focused on the oil and gas sector of the energy industry, with a number of major companies nearby such as Chesapeake Energy, Continental Resources and Devon Energy.

“We have alumni all over the world in every industry and especially in energy,” Said Eddie Edwards, executive director of the OU MBA program. “They work for major companies as well as the smaller more independent companies.”

Despite the smaller size of Oklahoma’s Price College of Business, the school boasts a fairly well-established alumni community that shows its strength most clearly in the energy industry.

“My current favorite aspect of our Full-time MBA program is the recent addition of a 3-part Experiential Series, which begins with a 12-14 day international study trip which was most recently to Southeast Asia, followed by a semester-long course of team-based consulting projects with local companies, and finally by a semester long course of individual consulting projects for area companies. Each project in both consulting courses concludes with a formal presentation to company management, which is graded by the company representatives. Consulting project topics may include analyses of markets, finances, strategy, operations, or data. I believe these three new offerings introduce our students to both the complexity and velocity of today’s global business economy,” says Edwards.