Innovation dictates the MBA program at the Boston University Questrom School of Business, which is continuously adapting and expanding program offerings to accommodate student input, industry trends, and rising business sectors. The school sees health and life sciences, digital technology, and social enterprise and sustainability as the linchpins of the global economy, and the curriculum reflects as such. Questrom offers three MBA programs (Full-Time, Executive, and an extremely popular Part-Time program), as well as cutting-edge centers and institutes, including the Susilo Institute for Ethics in the Global Economy; the BUzz Lab, BU’s startup incubator and hub for entrepreneurship; and the Institute for Sustainable Energy. The Questrom MBA centers around the cohort, which “the school works hard to turn into a small community within the larger Boston University.” The quarter system on which the Full-Time program is run is designed to get the required courses through to students as quickly as possible, but “with 3-hour course blocks the schedule can be rough on some days.” There is a “heavy focus on teamwork and collaborative work” and students must complete three projects (one at the end of each core-quarter); these are “extremely engaging educational experiences that integrate course concepts that we have learned throughout that quarter.”
Life here is “intense with academic work but there is great amount of classmate camaraderie and support.” Professors are “business professionals first, which makes the content applicable,” and are “great at fostering meaningful discussions on the curriculum.” “It is not enough to just be smart you need to actively engage in class discussions,” says a student. They are “always accessible” and “our strongest advocates”: “When one person is struggling the whole class pitches in to help.” The administration “clearly cares about the student experience and constantly improving the quality of the program,” and a focus on analytics and several specialized programs (non-profit, health, energy) show the evolving nature of the storied school. It’s also worth noting that BU has lots of evening classes available in the second year for its large Part-Time/professional MBA student population.