You’re considering an MBA because you want to grow professionally and make an impact. You have talent and drive. You have the capacity to change and achieve success. And you need an MBA program that’s as innovative and invested in helping you make that transition as you are. At the Kelley School of Business, we take learning beyond the classroom to give you the skills to build your future as a business leader.
Define your own true success with a Kelley MBA
MBA curriculum components
Your Kelley MBA starts prior to your first semester with Me, Inc., a two-week intensive program in team-building and career development that sets you up for success over the next two years. If you don’t have a business background, you might also want to do Jump Start, a week-long accelerated introduction to core business concepts. And from day one, you can take advantage of Graduate Career Services to help you find the major, career path and companies that are the best fit for you. Review this semester-by-semester breakdown to view your options.
Academics
Sharpen your financial and statistical skills in this one-week primer.
Dive into two weeks of activities—including team building exercises—that prepare you for the next two years.
Leadership Development
Explore yourself—your strengths, your weaknesses, what you add to your team and organization—so you can better lead others.
Career Development
Learn about yourself, your interests and your team. Prepare your personal brand story. And start networking.
Academics
You’ll begin your Kelley MBA with the intense—and invaluable—Integrated Core curriculum, where Kelley’s best professors strengthen your business acumen in finance, marketing, quantitative analysis for business decisions, and other key areas. You’ll lean on your Core team as you build your skills in strategy, operations, and communications. You can expect to change the way you think about business and build lasting bonds with your team members.
Choose one of our industry-focused Academies and start learning about your chosen field.
Leadership Development
Complete class projects—and strengthen your teamwork skills—with classmates from varied backgrounds.
Build the functional skills you need to lead with competence and confidence.
Expand your network and your skills—a great way to develop your foundation as a leader.
Career Development
Get one-on-one guidance on your networking, interviews, your brand story and your career plan.
Discover career options and meet professionals in your chosen industry.
Connect with employers through Academy and Kelley activities, and get ready for internship interviews.
Academics
Work on real-world projects with guidance from your Academy director and learn how to lead in a peer-based team environment.
Choose among seven majors, and deepen your studies with a minor or certificate.
Start taking courses in your major and other classes that fit your interests and goals.
Leadership Development
Enhance your team-based leadership skills—such as navigating group dynamics—and complete real-life projects that help organizations.
Solve problems for entrepreneurs and nonprofits, both in a student-led class and through on-site visits in the U.S. or abroad.
Career Development
Get hands-on experience—through a site visit or consulting project, for example—that sets the stage for your internship.
Interview with recruiters on campus, and then, if needed, launch a network-based search.
Improve your emotional intelligence, get tips for success during your internship and more in these workshops.
Academics
Leadership Development
Put what you've learned into practice, and draw on your first-year experiences to lead with confidence and impress your managers.
Practice your leadership skills by helping to prepare the next generation of Kelley talent.
Career Development
We provide the tools to help you distinguish yourself—in your internship and beyond.
Description of the video:
Dan Pickering, Corporate Strategy Manager at 3M:
The common denominator between golf and business is the determination to succeed. In golf the practice that you put in is at the range. It's a repetitive motion, it's time-consuming, you're putting in the work. And you're eager to step out onto the course and perform and see what you have. I think the exact same thing applies to the internship programs. It's a great opportunity to be able to showcase a lot of the skills that I've developed at Kelley and develop my career to the next level. I'd be lying if I didn't say there's anxiety coming in. Expectations are high. And you're with a lot of smart people that are asking you to solve some of their toughest business problems. And the internship is really a chance to showcase everything that you've learned before school, everything you've learned during school, and put a lot of that stuff into practice.
The marketing frameworks that I learned through the Core, and also through the business Academy, I use those to solve all my projects here at my internship. The nature of these consulting projects is there's a lot of ambiguity to them. There's a million different directions that you could go, but you need to be able to focus in to what's the most important things, structure those problems, and then execute on how to solve it, and then communicate what you've proposed as a solution.
At Kelley, we had such a great exposure to these types of projects. Kelley's preparing you a number of ways. There's the schoolwork, but then it's also everything else that's part of being a member of the Full-Time MBA class. So it's all the time pressure that they put on you, all the opportunities to take on extra work, the group work, the nature of the consulting projects, the case competitions. Through the experience here at 3M, I've been able to build on what I learned and experienced at Kelley and further my understanding of the corporate world, but then also develop and put into practice a lot of the critical thinking skills, the consulting skills, and the marketing frameworks that I learned at Kelley.
The Kelley interns here in the Twin Cities, we've got together a number of times, just for social events. It's great to be somewhere that's completely new, but to feel like you're already connected. So I have three great networks already. All the Kelleys that are interning here with me, all the other interns here at 3M with me, and then also the alumni at 3M, the Kelley alumni. Where...you feel completely at home in a place so far from home.
The internship is difficult. You're asked to do a lot of things. It's a very short time period. You're eager to prove yourself and that you belong. The experience has been phenomenal, though, in terms of growth. I feel like I'll be such a stronger person going back into school.
Academics
Select more courses that intrigue you, all taught by expert Kelley faculty.
Select an optional second-year Academy to further develop your entrepreneurial or leadership skills.
Leadership Development
Work with local businesses owned by women and underrepresented minorities, or organizations that empower these groups.
Plan the trip and the curriculum, then test your leadership skills by managing student teams in foreign environments.
Guide a first-year student and get experience nurturing talent and motivating a peer.
Shape students' experience, plan activities, and bolster your leadership skills.
Career Development
Interview on campus with top organizations, and highlight the personal story you've developed at Kelley.
Work with your coach on job-search essentials like refining your resume, practicing for interviews, and negotiating offers.
Academics
Take those last eye-opening courses you need before you start your career.
Consider applying to study at a top business school in another country, from Italy to India.
Meet influential Washingtonians and explore the relationship between business and government.
Use all of your MBA skills in a business simulation and attend executive development sessions with industry leaders.
Leadership Development
Mentor the project teams—made up of high-achieving Kelley undergraduate students—and work with a faculty member to plan and execute the course.
Solve problems for entrepreneurs and nonprofits, both in a student-led class and thousands of miles from campus.
Help a first-year student define his or her goals and the key steps needed to be successful.
Lend your expertise to teams of first-years in your Academy’s project class.
Wrap up your responsibilities and prepare to hand off the club to the next class of Kelley leaders.
Career Development
Top-ranked career services and the world's largest business school alumni network form your powerful professional team.
Continue tapping into your coach’s expertise as you launch your post-MBA career.