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The University of Michigan challenges would-be MBAs to prepare meals for 85 people. The University of Texas offers “boot camps” to help incoming MBA students bone up on accounting and finance. Elsewhere, students are welcomed with ropes courses and case studies, clambakes and lectures, expert panels and talent shows, plus the requisite sprinkling of mixers.
When it comes to orientation for MBA programs, business schools turn on the afterburners to keep new students energized, engaged, and amused. While “fun” is an operative term throughout most orientations, they all have a serious set of purposes. The idea is to help a disparate group of people bond quickly and learn the cultural quirks of the place they now call home. At the same time, intense projects help students gear up mentally for their programs’ intellectual challenges.
This year, for example, prospective MBA students at the Yale University School of Management had hardly unpacked their bags before they were swept into a newly created component of orientation, the Audubon Street Project. Briefed about a vacant storefront in New Haven’s culture and arts district, student teams were given 24 hours to outline a concept for how the space might be used. Apart from having to be economically viable, the plans also needed to reflect Yale’s mission of educating leaders for business and society, as well as the university’s desire to have a positive impact on the New Haven community.
According to Joel Podolny, dean of the School of Management, Yale’s MBA orientation seeks to help students “understand in a deep way important aspects of the school—our mission of educating leaders for business and society, aspects of our culture, and the way in which the school is connected to our local community and then the broader community.” In starting the Audubon Street Project this year, Podolny says, the school “wanted to create a set of exercises that would make the connection to mission and community even more explicit.”
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