Smith School Welcomes New MBA Students

Mint chocolate chip may be the favorite ice cream flavor of the incoming MBA class, but food isnt the only thing on these high-achievers minds! Surpassing the now second-year MBAs by a few points on GMAT scores, the full-time MBA Class of 2003 has an average GMAT score of 658 with 5.2 years of professional experience.

Two weeks ago, the annual pre-semester buzz began in Van Munching Hall. Two hundred and twenty-two (222) students from 32 countries joined together at the Smith School for their MBA orientation program. Scavenger hunts, club bazaars, and the Experiential Learning Module (ELM), The Marketplace Simulation, helped students get acquainted with their classmates, the school and, in many cases, the United States.

Ranked 13th by the Wall Street Journal and 19th by Financial Times, the Smith MBA program attracts students from around the world. Forty-two percent of the class is from outside the United States. Asia, the most represented continent, makes up 28 percent of the class, Europe and Latin America 6 percent each, and Middle East and Africa 2 percent, combined.

This years class is 72 percent male, with an average age of 28. Asian Americans represent 8 percent of the class, African Americans 6 percent, and Hispanic Americans 1 percent.

Business (27 percent) and engineering (21 percent) were the most popular undergraduate degrees and the class had an average GPA of 3.4. The University of Maryland, College Park, is the most represented institution with 17 students.

Employees at PricewaterhouseCoopers surely know the value of an MBA. Five first-years have traded in their jobs there, at least temporarily, for a Smith MBA. Other previous employers include: KPMG, Ernst & Young, Booz-Allen & Hamilton, Accenture, Citibank, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM.

Finance is still tops as far as MBA concentrations go 26 percent think they might concentrate in finance, with information systems (19 percent) and management and organization (16 percent) not far behind.

Yue Zhang comes to the Smith School from Beijing, China, and is excited to be part of the great Smith MBA program. She graduated from the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing and is planning to concentrate in finance. Dzintars Dzilna, from New York, attended Rutgers University and he was attracted to the Smith School because of its strong information technology program. (pictured, left)

Welcome new students! Students entering the undergraduate program will be profiled in an upcoming home page story.