Full-Time MBACurriculum

In Weatherhead School of Management's full-time MBA program, our curriculum is designed to prepare future leaders for the challenges of today and tomorrow’s constantly evolving business world. Our program offers smaller class sizes that encourage one-on-one interaction with our faculty—academic pioneers and industry leaders who excel in teaching as well as research.

As a student in this four-semester, 60-credit-hour, full-time MBA program, you’ll create a personalized learning plan with distinctive concentrations—choosing electives that comprise half of the program of study to complement our core MBA curriculum. Your learning experience will be rooted in the foundational management principles necessary to lead with confidence, paired with a four-course concentration in your area of interest:

STEM MBA Concentrations:

  • Finance
  • FinTech (New for the fall 2023 semester)
  • Operations
  • Business analytics

MBA Concentrations:

  • Marketing
  • Organizational leadership
  • Healthcare management
  • Design and innovation and entrepreneurship

Combined, our curriculum provides you with the skills you need to establish you as a distinctive, confident candidate ready to succeed on the job upon graduation.

Distinctive Classroom Experiences: First Year

In your first year, you’ll focus on many of the foundational courses that will prepare you for the world of business management, while embarking on your elective area of study.

  • Leading People and Organizations (LEAD): Discover your individual management strengths and weaknesses through a series of self-assessments, experiential activities and case studies on team and group dynamics. Your assessment results will help you develop your personal learning plan, heighten self-awareness and become a more effective leader.
  • Integrative core curriculum: Master the core areas of accounting, finance, business analytics, marketing, operations and supply chain management, statistics and decision modeling, and economics.
  • Business analytics: Learn to transform big data into smart insights and sharpen your analytical skills for application in both operations and marketing.
  • Design and sustainability: Study the principles for building sustainable value and turning the social and global issues of the day into business opportunities, while discovering how to bring together changing technologies, capabilities, relationships, activities and materials to shape an organization’s plans and strategies.
  • Elective option: Earn your concentration in finance, operations, marketing, organizational leadership, design and innovation and entrepreneurship, or healthcare management by completing electives that will prepare you for internships and job market.

Distinctive Classroom Experiences: Second Year

The second year of the program is almost entirely dedicated to your fully customized schedule of electives. Plus, you’ll take a capstone strategy class—the only required course in your second year—in which you’ll address the challenges of developing a business model for a company or organization.

  • Required course, strategic issues and applications: Successfully implement strategy design to align with a firm’s external environment, its internal resources and capabilities. You’ll practice applying an integrative view of a company or organization that spans functional areas such as operations, marketing and finance, while drawing on a number of academic disciplines including economics, psychology, political and management science.
  • MBA electives: You’ll take nine electives to develop a focus and specialization in one of our seven core concentrations. In partnership with our Career Management Office and your world-class professors, you can specialize your education to position yourself for ideal post-MBA employment.
  • Management in practice: Not only will you be able to concentrate in an area of your choice, but you will have the opportunity to experience it through one of our electives such as Business Models; Six Sigma & Quality Management; Quantum Leadership; or Leading Digital Innovation. You will gain distinctive tools and insights through applied projects while also sharpening your management skills.

Sample Curriculum

Year One

Fall Semester (15 credit hours)

Spring Semester (15 credit hours)

Year Two

Fall Semester (15 credit hours)

Spring Semester (15 credit hours)

Total program hours: 60

Note: If you’re enrolled in a dual-degree program, you’ll need to meet with Radhika Ramamurthi for your exact curriculum plan.