Toronto – The University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management has admitted the largest Full Time MBA class in its history. The class has 313 students in five sections, up from two sections and 130 students in 1998. Students began classes last month which coincided with the grand opening of a new building. The increase is the first step in a growth plan that will see the class size increase to an annual intake of 400 students
A key part of the growth strategy is to continue increasing the quality of students while the Full-Time MBA program expands. This year, the average GMAT score of the incoming class was 673 (median 680), up considerably from the previous class average of 661. Kevin Frey, Managing Director of the Full Time MBA, believes that “while it is satisfying to have achieved our goals of recruiting the largest and most qualified class in the School’s history, we now have to focus on ensuring that next year’s cohort is both bigger and better than this years.”
The class, which will graduate in 2014, is 48% international with students coming from 32 countries. Thirty-one percent is female and students have an average of 4.5 years of work experience.
“We’re extremely pleased this year with the strong interest in our program and the quality of the candidates who applied to our Full Time MBA program,” notes Prof. Mihnea Moldoveanu, Associate Dean, Full Time MBA Program, who is also Director, Desautels Centre for Integrative Thinking. “Our unique approach to business education, based on Integrative Thinking, is attracting some of the best students from around the world who want to become trans-disciplinary problem solvers.”
Integrative Thinking is the School’s educational platform for developing problem solvers, who synthesize and engage with different perspectives, theories, models and vantage points in real time, in order to achieve superior solutions. Solving real problems requires managers to think across disciplines and domains of knowledge and experience, and across the functional silos that are ingrained into the curricula of most business schools.
The Rotman building expansion more than doubles the amount of teaching, research, study, presentation and special event space available to the Rotman School community. The nine-storey-high project is seamlessly integrated with the Rotman School’s existing five-storey home, which opened in 1995. It contains seven new 70-seat classrooms, a state-of-the-art Event Hall which can seat up to 500 people for a lecture, faculty and staff offices, a ground floor café with seating for 130, four outdoor spaces including terraces and green roofs, as well as over 60 new study rooms.
The Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto is redesigning business education for the 21st century with a curriculum based on Integrative Thinking. Located in the world’s most diverse city, the Rotman School fosters a new way to think that enables the design of creative business solutions. The School is currently raising $200 million to ensure that Canada has the world-class business school it deserves. For more information, visit www.rotman.utoronto.ca.
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For more information:
Ken McGuffin
Manager, Media Relations
Rotman School of Management
University of Toronto
Voice 416.946.3818
E-mail mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca
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