The Eli Broad College of Business at Michigan State University ranked No. 55 in this year’s 2023 rankings – jumping an impressive 17 places from last year’s No. 72 in our 2022 rankings.
Broad’s admissions process this year was slightly more selective, with an acceptance rate of 44.40% for this year’s incoming class compared to last year’s 48.30%. Broad’s average SAT score for their recent incoming class dropped over 40 points this year, from 1277 for last year’s incoming class to 1234.8 for this year’s incoming class.
Employment opportunities at the B-school remain very strong, with 96.81% of the Class of 2023 securing full-time employment within three months of graduation compared to 95% of the Class of 2022. Internship rates dropped a bit from a good 87% of 2022 grads completing an internship before the time they graduate to a still solid 74% for the Class of 2023.
Broad College continues to offer a quality undergraduate business education that includes the latest skill sets, strong leadership programming, and end-to-end capstone experiences.
BROAD’s ‘T-SHAPED’ CURRICULUM
The Broad curriculum heavily emphasizes a comprehensive understanding of different disciplines with deep knowledge and skills in one or more disciplines, hence the “T-shaped” concept. Broad students have access to seven different majors including Accounting, Finance, Hospitality Business, Human Resource Management, Management, Marketing, and Supply Chain Management.
“Over the past decade, employers worldwide have emphasized the need for today’s young professionals to possess more than a deep disciplinary knowledge of a single subject or skill. Rather, they want employees with the ability to collaborate and operate across the multiple disciplines of their organizations, with depth of developed skills in more than one area,” Rachel Lee Cherry, Communications Editor at the Broad College of Business, told us. “With Broad’s T-shaped curriculum, students learn to use and apply information in new contexts, not just memorize facts and repeat them for a test.”
Broad’s required core curriculum is quite comprehensive with courses in writing, mathematics, integrative studies, basic disciplines and functional fields in business, and electives. To keep its curriculum up to date, the B-school recently updated the core curriculum to increase the focus on analytics, systems, and statistics.
All students who apply to Broad are now required to take a new course, “Algorithmic Thinking and Programming,” which focuses primarily on Python programming. Additionally, students are required to take a statistics course that teaches basic fundamental statistical techniques and two modified courses on analytics.
These updates help keep the Broad curriculum up to date and ensure that its students are being trained in the latest, in-demand skills — a good sign that the B-school is continuously looking for ways to offer an innovative, forward-thinking education.
LEADERSHIP PROGRAMMING
Broad has a number of programs dedicated to leadership development. One of the cornerstone programs is the Residential Business Community (RBC). RBC provides a combined living and learning experience to promote, enhance, and support students’ academic, personal, and professional growth as business leaders.
The program is designed around three parts: living in a residential community, learning in the classroom, and leadership outside of the classroom. RBC first-year students live in the same residence hall, attend leadership retreats together, have priority enrollment in the prerequisite Broad courses, and attend workshops focusing on professional development and career development. In their second year, RBC students engage with Broad’s corporate mentor partners to begin networking, hone communication and presentation skills, research a real-world business case study, and strengthen relationships with one another and the Broad faculty.
In many ways, the program acts as a mini college within the B-school, creating a small school-like environment by bringing together students in the same classes, residence halls, and extracurricular activities. This is a key differentiating factor for Broad given that the B-school is part of a public, state university with upwards of 50,000 undergraduate students. Small, tight-knit learning communities are often the selling points of pricey private universities, but the very fact that Broad, as a public school, can offer a small learning community at a fraction of the price is definitely a big selling point.
THOROUGH CAPSTONE EXPERIENCES
The capstone courses at Broad are the signature learning experience. Regardless of what major they chose, an overwhelming number of alumni we surveyed spoke highly about the thoroughness of their capstone experience.
“Seems relatively rare for undergraduates to have a true capstone project that culminates their entire curriculum of studies that is required for graduation and degree certification,” one alumni told us. “Ours required, research of a complicated case study, team collaboration, analytical reasoning, business case writing, and presentation.”
If you’re looking for a continuously adapting business education that offers the latest in-demand skills, strong leadership opportunities, and thorough capstone experiences, then the Broad College of Business is a solid choice.
Alumni say:
“I am currently completing a capstone project for my masters degree through Michigan State. I partnered with a professor and a social media sampling company to study the effects of social media sampling for online surveys. It opened my eyes to a new and technologically innovative methodology in my field, and gave me an opportunity to learn how to lead an end-to-end research project – all extremely valuable for my career!”
“I was able to do an independent study through the Financial Markets Institute which enabled me to further my industry knowledge in the Private Equity and M&A market. This helped provide me further knowledge ahead of starting my career in investment banking.”
“I worked for Citadel as an alternative data analyst. This was a high-intensity high-impact role my last summer in undergrad which shaped my interests for further education. I now attend UC Davis as a PhD candidate, and plan to research financial markets, such as bond liquidity pricing schemes and so on. This research interest is a direct result of my time with Citadel due to a sponsored trip through the Econ department.”
“My capstone with Trane Technologies was one of a kind and a great ‘practicing my knowledge’ experience. I was able to work with my group members to discover potential areas for improvement within the supply chain on a product line inside Trane Technologies. Not only was Trane very willing to share and help, but also our efficient and creative group made this project one-of-a-kind.”
“Professors were exceptional. There were a lot of opportunities to meet professionals to obtain a job offer. I was also a part of the residential business program/community my freshman year of college and reaped many benefits from the program.”
