At business school it’s often said that students, who are highly ambitious and successful, learn as much from each other as they do from the esteemed faculty. And while online learning may make it difficult to recreate the interactions of a physical environment, who you study with remains of vital importance to Online MBA students.
Those who enroll in these online courses tend to have substantial work experience across a wide range of industries and they bring their working knowledge to bear in the classroom by amplifying the content and enriching the quality of the discussion.
But perhaps even more importantly, they form a powerful alumni network spread across the globe. In terms of Online MBA programs, the traditional measures of the quality of the class profile include standardized test scores such as the GMAT and academic track record as measured by undergraduate GPA.
But it’s also important that students come from as broad a range of backgrounds as possible and diversity of gender, race and ethnicity is also prized by business schools. We have taken all this into account and picked out 10 of the best Online MBA programs with the strongest class profiles.
The average GMAT score of the Online MBA students at the UK’s Warwick Business School is 690. About 400 participants enroll every year from around the globe, with the average student 37 years old. There are 63 countries represented with 28 percent of the class being female, coming mostly from the finance, technology, consulting, healthcare and energy sectors.
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Online MBA students at University of Michigan Ross School of Business are raising the bar, with an average of seven years of full-time work experience, an average GPA of 3.5 and a third of students holding advanced degrees such as a master’s. They also come from a wide spread of sectors from aerospace to construction, consumer packaged goods, energy, finance and healthcare. The average GMAT is 677.
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The University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School has a strong class profile with the average GMAT being 677 and GPA being 3.2. Some 35 percent of the cohort are female and 21 percent are US minorities with four percent coming from abroad. The school enols 699 Online MBA students each year from a wide array of industries, functions and geographical locations.
View School ProfileAt the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Online MBA class is among the strongest nationally. A third of the cohort are women, 36 percent are US minorities and nine percent are LGBTQ. The average GMAT score is 674 and the average GPA is 3.39. A large proportion of the class, 50 percent, come from engineering backgrounds.
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The Global Online MBA at IE Business School in Madrid, Spain, draws an intake from diverse professional academic backgrounds, industries and functions. The class also represents more than 50 different nationalities. The average age is 33 and students come from some of the world’s leading employers including Amazon, McKinsey and Boeing.
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Online MBA students Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business in Bloomington have a 650 median GMAT and 3.44 average GPA. Some 28 percent are female and another 28 percent hold advanced degrees. They represent 29 non-US countries and all 50 US states with 90 percent living outside Indiana. Moreover, 64 percent received a promotion will still enrolled and they earned a $122,000 mean base salary on graduation.
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Students on the Online MBA at the University of South California’s Marshall School of Business have an average GMAT score of 629 and GPA of 3.23. A third of the cohort is female and 37 percent are US minorities. The average age of the cohort is 33, and the school has a 30 percent acceptance rate.
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Online MBA students at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University are talented indeed. They have more than seven years of work experience, a 3.36 average GPA and 617 average GMAT. Nearly 30 percent of the class is female and nine percent are from outside the US. A third come from a business background but 32 percent are engineers by training.
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The Global Online MBA at Imperial College Business School in London attracts high caliber students from around the world. They represent 53 nationalities and have 11 years of work experience, on average. Most of the students (23 percent) come from the Asia Pacific region. Most come from banking and finance but also energy, pharma, consumer retail, the government and public sector.
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At the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington in Seattle, Online MBA students have 8 years of work experience on average and 18 percent had an advanced degree before they enrolled in the MBA. An impressive 40 percent of the cohort are women, with the average GMAT score across genders being 619 with the average GPA at 3.4.
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