What's Your Story Idea? July 6, 2009, 12:21PM EST

Fresh Out of College and Off to Business School

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"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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Harvard has also been able to attract students like Eric Calderon, 22, a recent graduate of Texas A&M University who is now working as a petroleum engineer at Concho Resources (CXO) in Midland, Tex. He planned to work for at least three or four years before applying to business school but quickly changed his mind when he learned about the 2+2 program.

"To know for sure that you're going to graduate school before you even finish your undergraduate degree is a really good feeling," says Calderon, who was accepted to the program and will be heading to Harvard in the fall of 2011. "It's a nice thing to have in your back pocket."

does it dilute the mba experience?

Rochester's Simon School established its Early Leaders program four years ago, opening the MBA program to students with anywhere from zero to three years of work experience. The program was the brainchild of admissions director Greg MacDonald, who believed it would allow the business school to attract more women and under-represented minorities.

"I think the business-school industry needs to be more open-minded to all sources of talent, whether students are 22 or 32," MacDonald says.

Today, nearly one-third of the school's MBA enrollment falls under the Early Leader category, MacDonald says. Rochester is one of the few business schools that admits such a large number of students with little or no work experience—last year there were 43 in the graduating class. Programs like Simon's have been subject to criticism from some in the business-school world, who worry that bringing a bevy of fresh-faced college graduates into the classroom will dilute the quality of the MBA experience. Some worry that the older students in the program, with several years of work experience behind them, will resent the naivete of their younger classmates.

This has not been the case at Simon, says MacDonald. The older, more experienced students tend to reach out to the Early Leaders to help them get acclimated back into the academic world, while the younger students turn to their older counterparts for networking advice and industry connections.

"Some of the older students might be critics coming in, but often, many of them will end up graduating as some of the biggest supporters of the Early Leaders initiative," MacDonald said.

His experiment has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. MacDonald has established recruiting partnerships with staff at 30 colleges and universities across the country who have helped get the word out about the program to their students. The school has also made progress in its goal of enrolling more women, increasing the number of women in its MBA program by 20% since launching the Early Leaders program.

job placement is on par with older mbas

This year, applications to the Early Leaders program were at an all-time high, accounting for 40% of the full-time MBA applicant pool, MacDonald says. The school has also seen an rise in the number of students coming to Simon directly from undergraduate programs, he says, noting that there were 20 students who fell into that category this past academic year.

Another reason the program is succeeding? Job placement for these Early Leaders is on par with the rest of the MBA class. In 2008, 37 of the 43 students in the Early Leaders program landed jobs within three months of graduation. In most cases the salaries these students commanded were only $12,000 to $15,000 lower than those in the MBA program with more extensive work experience.

If the past serves as any indication, the school may be on to something. Many of Simon's most famous graduates—such as Bob Keegan, chief executive officer of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. (GT), and Joe Abrams, a co-founder of MySpace—came to business school in the 1970s or mid-'80s, a time when it was more common to go to business school immediately after college or just a year or two after graduation, MacDonald says.

"We're not really inventing something new," MacDonald says. "We're just kind of going back to the past and, hopefully, allowing history to repeat itself."

Damast is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com.