Four Reasons Why You Should Consider the Yale School of Management

The Yale School of Management is one of the top-ranked MBA programs in the world, and we get inquiries about it from prospective applicants all the time. Given its climb in the rankings in recent years, odds are that you’ve considered it, too. But, how well do you really know the school? How do you know if you and Yale are a good fit? How do you know if the Yale admissions committee will decide that you’re a good fit for the school?

Today we look at four reasons why you might want to apply to Yale SOM this year:

You want to enter the public sector or nonprofit world.
This one is already very well known, of course, but to leave this unmentioned would be sacrilege. Yale is considered the best program for nonprofit, and SOM is right up there with Ross and Stanford in scoring on the social responsibility and corporate ethics scales.

Consulting and finance appeal to you.
Despite the common wisdom that Yale is the school for non-profits and other bleeding-hearts, the fact is that SOM places more graduates into consulting than any other field except finance. And this is hardly a surprise: With the unique cross-functional approach to its education, Yale creates strategic thinkers with nimble minds, who are able to deal with ambiguity and consider multiple perspectives as they work through problems – all ideal qualities in a good consultant. Yale’s proximity to Wall Street means that plenty of graduates move to the next state south when they are ready to begin their careers.

You prefer a small, tight-knight class.
Partly because of the small class and the close bonds that form during the business school experience, and partly because of the tilt towards “doing good” that attracts many to Yale in the first place, Yale students can expect to receive a lot of help, both while completing their studies and when looking for that key internship or first job — or second, third, or fourth. The faculty and administration remain directly involved in their students’ careers and are well connected with industry, making for win-win relationships that benefit the entire SOM ecosystem.

You have a high GMAT score.
While we don’t want to discourage an otherwise strong candidate from considering Yale, the truth is that, with such a tiny class size, the admissions committee really cannot afford to admit more than a handful of students with scores below a 660. Because the GMAT scores of its students factor in, rightly or wrongly, in some of the rankings methodologies, we believe Yale is especially vigilant about this metric and will be hard pressed to admit a candidate who is sub-par on the test side. There are of course always exceptions, but just know that other schools with larger classes can more easily absorb candidates with a wider spectrum of profile statistics.

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