In the past three years, STEM-accreditation has been one of the hottest trends among MBA programs as they compete to attract international students and keep up with fast-moving analytical and technology trends. From a practical perspective, STEM-accredited MBA programs offer a blended business and technical education that prepares students for specialized and emerging roles in areas such as accounting, data analysis, finance, economics, information technology, marketing, management, and strategy.
The United States launched this accreditation option for schools as a way to combat a projected shortage of more than one million STEM workers by 2024 and to boost international applications, which have been in decline for years. Many top companies have responded by partnering with universities to offer internships, mentorships, case studies, and other relationships that give the companies an inside track to hiring STEM MBA graduates. These new programs present robust curriculum and work experience opportunities, but the greatest benefit the STEM programs offer students is an extended visa after graduation. A traditional MBA grants an international student a twelve-month Optional Practical Training (OPT) visa, but for STEM MBA programs, the visa is extended to 36 months, which makes hiring these graduates much more cost-effective for employers who have concerns about sponsoring work visas. Learn more about the OPT STEM Extension on this helpful page from the University of Michigan.
When Considering a STEM MBA, Consider Both Your Background and Your Future Goals
If you are interested in earning an MBA degree with a STEM designation, it is important to understand that each program has its own requirements, ranging from less-technical to very-technical. The curriculums of some schools are flexible, while others are rigid; some programs require a double-degree; some require the completion of a concentration/track. Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, for example, is a popular program for applicants who don’t have STEM backgrounds, and is gaining a reputation for its Management Science & Technology Management track, targeted toward people with cross-disciplinary experience and career goals. When it comes time to consider which schools to apply to, you will want to do a deep dive on all the programs that interest you to identify those that match with your skill-acquisition and career goals.
The list below features many of the STEM-accredited MBA programs at top US business schools with a short note about each school’s STEM-certified offerings. If you know of a program we have omitted, please leave us a note in the comments.
Arizona State (W.P. Carey): Full-time MBA is STEM-designated.
Babson College: Two MBA concentrations are STEM-designated – Quantitative Finance and Business Analytics and Machine Learning.
Brigham Young (Marriott): Management Science and Quantitative Methods—STEM Management specialization is available to all MBA students, regardless of their chosen tracks of study.
Berkeley (Haas): All three of Haas’s MBA programs are STEM-designated.
UC Davis Graduate School of Management: MBA is STEM-designated; Graduate School of Management students have unique access to other electives offered at UC Davis.
UC Irvine (Merage): The STEM-designated FTMBA Analytics in Digital Leadership Concentration is designed for students interested in deepening their knowledge of specific coding languages and analytical tools such as Python, SQL and Tableau.
UC San Diego (Rady): Full-time + Flextime MBAs are STEM-designated.
Carnegie Mellon (Tepper): Full-time MBA is STEM-designated. The increasingly interdisciplinary Tepper MBA blends foundational business disciplines and incorporates expertise in technology, engineering, and science from across the Carnegie Mellon campus.
Chicago (Booth): All MBA concentrations at Booth are now STEM-designated.
Columbia Business School: Both MBA + Executive MBA are STEM-designated.
Cornell (Johnson): Three STEM-designated options – Two-Year Management Science MBA, One-Year Management Science MBA, Tech MBA.
Dartmouth (Tuck): STEM-designated Management Sciences and Quantitative Analysis MBA option designates a portfolio of courses across the curriculum from which students can select to deepen their knowledge of analytics.
Duke (Fuqua): Duke’s STEM MBA allows students to focus on a chosen business area.
George Washington University School of Business: Global MBA is STEM-designated.
Georgia (Terry): UGA’s STEM MBA can be taken in just one year, saving students on tuition and fast-tracking the path to employment.
Harvard Business School – Both Master of Science in Engineering Sciences and Master of Business Administration (MS/MBA) and MS/MBA Biotechnology – jointly operated degrees – are STEM-designated.
Indiana (Kelley): Five STEM-designated degrees – Business Analytics, Finance, Marketing, Strategic Analysis of Accounting, Supply Chain Management.
UCLA (Anderson): Full-time and Executive MBA are both STEM-designated.
MIT: Full-time MBA is STEM-designated.
Michigan (Ross): The specialization in Management Science is STEM-designated.
NYU (Stern): Full-time MBA is STEM-designated.
North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler): All full-time, part-time, and online MBA programs are STEM-designated.
Northwestern (Kellogg): Management Science Major and MMM Program are STEM-designated.
Notre Dame (Mendoza): MBA/MS in Business Analytics focused on social impact is STEM-designated.
Ohio State (Fisher): STEM MBA is a specialization within the Full-Time MBA; half the 60 hours of total coursework must be STEM content. Core coursework offers 18 hours of STEM content and students select 12 or more hours of coursework from a set list of approved STEM electives.
Penn (Wharton): Six of 19 MBA concentrations are STEM-designated – Business Analytics; Business Economics and Public Policy; Business, Energy, Environment and Sustainability; Operations, Information and Decisions; Quantitative Finance.
Purdue (Krannert): Full-time MBA is STEM-designated.
Rice (Jones): STEM designation for all MBA programs.
Rochester (Simon): A long-time leader in quantitative subjects, Rochester now runs a STEM-designated option for every MBA specialization.
USC (Marshall): Students have the option to apply for the STEM-designated Management Science MBA specialization after their first semester in the full-time MBA program.
Stanford Graduate School of Business: MBA and MSx (one-year) Programs are STEM-designated.
Vanderbilt (Owen): Two MBA concentrations are STEM-designated – Finance Concentration and Operations & Analytics Concentration.
Virginia (Darden): MBA with Management Science specialization is STEM-designated.
Washington (Foster): Management Science MBA is STEM-designated.
University of Wisconsin School of Business: The first school to offer a STEM-designated MBA Specialization focuses on Operations and Technology Management, bringing together MBA and pharmaceutical students to create solutions to global technological challenges.