Hult International Business School placed No. 36 in this year’s rankings, dropping four spots from last year’s No. 32 and four more from the previous year’s 28th-place finish, but still in a relatively good spot. The B-school had a slightly less competitive admissions process this year with an acceptance rate of 40.11% as compared to the Class of 2020’s 37.79%, and average SAT score of 1222, up slightly from last year’s 1217.
Hult’s No. 36 rank is due to its stellar performance in the Alumni Experience category, where alumni rated their experience as 13th-best of all schools ranked.
With five different campuses including Boston, London, Dubai, San Francisco, and Shanghai, Hult offers a truly international degree that aims to provide its students with a global business mindset and a repertoire of in-demand skills.
PRACTICAL APPLICATION-FOCUSED CURRICULUM
The Hult undergraduate business curriculum is designed to teach students practical application of business theory with an emphasis on building soft and technical skills.
The B-school recently launched a set of innovative courses, Nano, that cover different disruptive technologies such as 3D Printing, autonomous vehicles, Internet of things, AI and machine learning, Robotics, and virtual reality. Each course provides an introduction to a different emerging technology, assesses their business significance, considers the range of potential applications and the exposure to critical risks — including legal, regulatory, and ethical.
“As the world continues to change rapidly with the advance of technology, these short one-credit courses are designed to help students think critically about how that technology could impact the future including how consumer behavior may change and what future opportunities may surface,” Lorena Leston, Director of Strategic Initiatives & Institutional Research at Hult, told us.
Students can choose from five majors including Entrepreneurship, Finance, Management, Marketing, and Business Analytics. Each year has a dedicated experiential learning component that allows students to apply their studies to real-world situations.
In their first year, students compete in the Startup Challenge, which gives them an introduction to entrepreneurship and experience in pitching their ideas. Sophomore year features the Social Impact Challenge, a competition that teaches students about corporate responsibility and the power of business in social impact. The third year features the Specialization Challenge, where students complete a challenge in their area of specialization and develop their career-ready skills.
In their senior year, students compete in one of two Capstone Challenges: the Corporate Track or Entrepreneurship Track. The Entrepreneurship Track enables students to work on their own startup ideas, from developing the idea into a viable business proposition to pitching it to executives. On the Corporate Track, students work on a strategic challenge set by the management of a major company. Past clients have included McLaren, Amazon Launchpad, Unilever, and UBS.
“It was a very unique experience because we were able to form our teams based on skills and knowledge needed for the challenge,” one 2018 alumni, whose capstone project focused on McLaren, told us. “We were able to immerse ourselves in an industry that we might normally not even consider to be our cup of tea, however, it turned out to be fascinating. We were able to face a real-life business challenge that helped us grow as professionals, test our interpersonal skills and recognize opportunities as well as realize when we need to ask for guidance. I think we have learned equally as much retrospectively, which helped us recognize traits we could rely on in the future or pay attention to and improve them.”
These types of opportunities are baked into the curriculum at Hult. And unlike many other B-schools, where a capstone project is featured only in the senior year, Hult integrates every year with an opportunity to get real, hands-on learning. In turn, Hult students gain valuable skills throughout their education that prepare them for the real world of business.
FIVE UNIQUE CAMPUSES
Hult offers its curriculum across five different campuses. London and Boston are the home campuses, with Dubai, San Francisco, and Shanghai being summer rotation campuses. The benefits of having such an expansive presence is two-fold: On one hand, students can gain a truly global perspective in their education. Hult is home to students from 136 nationalities, with no more than 8% of students from any one nationality.
“The business program was very open and diverse,” one 2018 alumni said. “We had professors and students from many different areas of the world. This opened my eyes to many different perspectives.”
On the other hand, a global presence makes the Hult degree valuable and recognized. Hult students can graduate with both a U.S. and U.K. degree and the B-school is the only U.S. school to be accredited by the three most prestigious accrediting bodies: AACSB, EQIUS, and AMBA.
Roughly 60% of Hult 2019 alumni that we surveyed reported taking part in a global trip or project during their undergraduate education. “I rotated to China during summer courses,” one 2018 alumni told us. “This experience allowed me to immerse myself in a culture that was unknown to me and to experience life from a different perspective.”
EMPLOYMENT OUTCOMES
Hult graduates have remarkably strong employment outcomes. Some 96.23% of the Class of 2021 secured a full-time position within three months of graduation, just down from the nearly perfect rate of 98.53% for the Class of 2020. Keeping consistent with last year, 70% of the Class of 2021 had a business-focused internship before graduating.
The practical application of Hult’s curriculum and its unique global rotational opportunities are the aspects that make a Hult degree one worth pursuing.
Alumni say:
“In my final year, we had a capstone project also referred to the Hult Business Challenge. That year, our client was Evernote. It was such an important experience because it allowed my teammates and I to put to practice all the things we have learned over the past 3-4 years of our business degree. It was definitely challenging and nerve-wracking since it was for a real world client, but nonetheless, it was probably the highlight of my entire degree at Hult.”
“We had group projects with live clients all the time almost in every class I took. They were extremely beneficial as rather than submitting an assignment to the professors, we were instead proposing a solution/project to real companies. This really made a difference in the learning curve and the motivation to give in 100% at all times.”
“Going to Hult is a global immersion. Students are from all around the world which makes classes even more special. Also, I studied in London and San Francisco which enriched my global experience at Hult.”
“Hult offers seamless campus rotation programs across 5 campuses on 3 continents and encourages all students to participate. I’ve done two rotations (San Francisco – USA and Dubai – UAE) and gained incredible insights on how to do business and understand different cultures in today’s globalized world.”
“I got to take the Hult Founders Lab, Hult’s startup incubator, as my capstone and developed my company. It was a mainly practical class, which helped me a lot at the time and will for sure have a great impact in the rest of my career.”
