Fresh Out of College and Off to Business School

Business schools are offering new programs to attract a younger, more diverse pool of candidates—and undergrads are responding

By Alison Damast

"Fresh Out of College and Off to Business School" was suggested by BusinessWeek reader "Bobdar." He is a student in the Wharton MBA for Executives Program and works in the healthcare industry.

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Sergey Zinger raced through his undergraduate career as a student at SUNY Geneseo in upstate New York, finishing his degree in business administration in a record three years. During his senior year, Zinger, one of the top students in his class, started conducting a job search, but none of the entry-level postings that surfaced excited him.

He'd heard about the Early Leaders Program at the University of Rochester's Simon Graduate School of Business (Simon Full-Time MBA Profile), one of a handful of MBA programs open to accepting students straight from college, and decided to apply.

"The opportunities I'd have graduating straight from undergraduate just weren't of the caliber that I really wanted," says Zinger. "I knew I'd eventually want an MBA, so I figured why not do it now?"

He was accepted to the program and entered the business school at the age of 21, one of the youngest members of his MBA class. His gamble paid off when he landed a plum job as a financial analyst in the corporate finance department at Exxon Mobil (XOM) this year, with a salary comparable to those of his classmates with years of work experience. Says Zinger: "I was able to bypass the boring entry-level job market, which was huge."

Zinger is part of a growing movement of students seeking to enter business school either straight from their undergraduate programs or with just one to two years of work experience. This impatient generation is changing the equation for business schools, which typically require students to spend four to six years in the workforce before applying. Most programs still adhere to those requirements, limiting—to just a small handful in most cases—the number of college graduates who can make the leap to business school shortly after graduation.

accepting the gre as well as the gmat

But there's evidence that a mindset shift is occurring among business school admissions officers. More schools are selectively dropping their age requirements and allowing students to submit the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) for admissions in lieu of the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), a move they say helps them reach undergraduates who might not otherwise consider a business degree. At the same time, a growing number of business schools—from Harvard Business School (Harvard Full-Time MBA Profile) to Rochester's Simon—are introducing new programs to attract a younger and more diverse pool of students. Even schools with well-established programs that allow undergraduates to earn their bachelor's degree and MBA in five years—commonly known as 3+2 programs—are reporting a spike in applications and interest from freshman and sophomores.

At Purdue University's Krannert School of Management (Krannert Full-Time MBA Profile), which runs a 3+2 program, competition for the 6 to 10 spots the school usually offers to undergraduates has been stiff, says Brenda Knebel, Krannert's MBA admissions director.

"I think the interest over the years has continued to increase for this program," says Knebel. "We do a callout in the fall and we find that more and more freshman are coming to the sessions we run on the program."

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