Coding Becoming a Priority for Columbia Business School MBAs
Like every other elite business school worth its salt, Columbia Business School (CBS) has seen a huge surge in student interest in programming and analytics courses.
It started three years ago when Costis Maglaras, the chair of the Decision, Risk & Operations division of CBS, oversaw development of a new analytics curriculum with the goal to ensure that students were being trained in quantitative, data-driven decision-making.
Maglaras couldn’t help but notice a major gap: There were few courses in computer programming, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.
He took it upon himself to help develop a series of MBA-level programming that included analytics-focused classes to give MBA students the digital tools they needed to become tech-savvy managers. In tandem with Maglaras’ efforts, the student-run Technology Business Group helped develop courses around the programming languages of SQL and Python.
Now more than a dozen elective programming courses have been launched across CBS, helping MBA graduates land management positions at Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft. And the popularity of these courses is only growing.
“Taking those classes gave me a lot of confidence for my interviews,” says Neha Bansal, MBA ’18. She credits the new curriculum for helping her land a job at Google as a product manager due in small part to her Python expertise.
Bansal is far from the only student who’s reaped the benefits. There are now more than 300 MBA students at CBS who have signed up to learn Python—a highly marketable skill. The only problem: The classes have now become almost too popular.
More than a dozen coding language programs have recently launched for business school students at CBS, thanks in part to the student-run Technology Business Group.
The division hired additional faculty and to figure out how to integrate the new analytics programming more intricately into the overall curriculum. Across the board, CBS is seeing more MBA students interested in programming because, simply put, it’s what employers want.
For example, Citigroup recently announced it would train all incoming analysts in Python. Goldman Sachs has asked its traders to learn how to code. According to a recent Financial Times survey, “understanding digital impact on business” is one of the most important skills for an MBA and one of the most difficult skills to recruit.
“The reality is we’re living in a very data-centric world, and whether we like it or not it’s going to be an important factor in any decision-making process down the road,” Hardeep Johar, of the CBS Engineering School, says. “We need people to be savvy about how to use data analytics and artificial intelligence on all the important decisions of today.”
To read the full article and all about what Columbia Business School is doing to help prepare MBA students to embrace data analytics, visit the CBS website.
This article has been edited and republished from Clear Admit.
Orientation: NYU Stern One-Year MBA Programs in Tech, Fashion
As it prepares to welcome students for orientation next week, NYU Stern School of Business has shared preliminary class profiles for its two new specialized one-year MBA programs—the Andre Koo Tech MBA and the Fashion & Luxury MBA. Stern announced the launch of the new May-to-May programs one year ago. The inaugural classes will each be made up of approximately 30 students.
Though designed for students from different backgrounds targeting diverse post-MBA career paths, the two programs do share several things in common. Each pairs traditional core curricula and specialty and elective courses with real-world projects to provide hands-on experience for students interested in careers within tech/entrepreneurship and fashion/luxury industries. They also “represent a new category of MBA and have been developed in partnership with the business community to address a talent gap,” the school notes.
Real-World Immersion
Both programs prioritize experiential learning opportunities that connect students and faculty with top companies to address real business issues. Each features two immersion experiences pairing students with companies to work on projects related to consulting, product management, brand strategy, supply chain optimization, and financial forecasting.
As part of their first term, students in the Fashion & Luxury program will participate in visits to New York companies to work on live cases with industry partners. The goal of these, the school notes, is for students to emerge from their summers with a “strong foundation of problem-solving tools.” The Fashion & Luxury program also features a second international immersion in the winter term.
Students in the Andre Koo Tech program will take part in summer term immersions with New York area tech companies. They will then spend their winter terms in the San Francisco Bay area as part of an immersion designed to allow them to explore the West Coast tech ecosystem and work on high-impact projects with Silicon Valley tech companies.
Preliminary Class Profile Highlights
The preliminary class profiles for each program’s incoming Class of 2019 include a wealth of information about student demographics, background, experience, class sizes, and more that offer incoming and prospective students a sneak peek at what to expect.
The incoming class for the Tech MBA program is 42 percent women, making it “comparable to two-year MBA programs with the highest percentages of women,” Stern notes. International students also make up 42 percent of that class. Perhaps most notable, 87 percent of students in the tech-focused MBA program will be entering with previous coding experience, many with skills in multiple programming languages.
Like the Tech MBA, the incoming Fashion & Luxury MBA Class of 2019 is also capped at 30 students in an effort “designed to maximize industry engagement…for high-touch learning and built-in ‘live case studies’ with companies year round,” the school notes. Women make up 88 percent of the incoming class. More than half—54 percent—brings previous experience in consumer products. In terms of undergraduate study, the class includes equal percentages of former business and humanities majors, at 35 percent each.
Incoming Students Share Hopes and Expectations for the Programs
Clear Admit caught up with incoming students in each program to learn more about their backgrounds and what attracted them to the Stern one-year MBA offerings.
Nicole Imbriaco, NYU Stern Tech MBA Class of 2019
Nicole Imbriaco, an incoming student in the tech program, graduated from Rutgers in 2016 with a B.S. in finance and business analytics. She has experience with HTML/CSS and SQL, among other coding languages.
“I believe it will afford me the opportunity to merge my strengths within business and technology and expand my skill set equally within both disciplines,” Imbriaco said. She added that she hopes the specialized MBA degree will facilitate a drastic career pivot, allowing her to focus more intensely on professional interests that have shifted since she graduated from college.
The loss of her mother during her senior year at Rutgers inspired a newfound interest in healthcare, she shared. After graduating from college, she worked at Goldman Sachs, which she says was a valuable experience that helped her redefine her career goals. “Being around some of the most intelligent people I have ever met, I realized I was being drawn towards better utilizing technology within the health/wellness industries,” she shared.
Imbriaco believes the Andre Koo Tech MBA will give her a skill set that she can apply to a variety of industries. She hopes upon completing the program to use “the combination of business, analytics, and technology-focused skills to contribute towards making a difference in the fields of cancer research,” she said.
Incoming Fashion & Luxury Class of 2019 student Christian Trautwein is a 2012 graduate of Brown University with a B.A. in political science. Since graduating he has worked as a merchandise manager with Walmart E-commerce. Trautwein was attracted to the one-year MBA program by the “promise & opportunity” it offers to graduates. NYU’s proximity to the fashion industry was also a draw. “My desire to build a fashion brand paired perfectly with the robust program NYU Stern has built,” he said.
More details about Stern’s new one-year MBA programs, including how to apply, can be found here. In their inaugural application cycles, these programs featured slightly earlier application deadlines than the two-year MBA program, with a September 15th first deadline, a November 15th second deadline, and a January 15 third deadline. Deadlines for the 2018-19 application season have not yet been posted.
