Within international students’ community STEM accredited MBA programs are increasingly becoming the preferred choice. With stricter immigration policies in US, the shift seems natural hedge for international students after a significant investment in a business school. In this article we try to cover all the things related to STEM accredited MBA in US and colleges which currently offer the same.
STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. So all the fields of education which cover these areas of study fall under a STEM degree category. A student graduating from one such degree gets 12-month of initial OPT (Optional Practical Training) which is then extendable to 24-month period. For details on OPT visit official site here. In case of a student graduating from a non-STEM degree the period is not extendable beyond 12 months. MBA historically didn’t fell under STEM category and as such bore a huge risk for students having to fly back to their home countries after the one-year period with significant debts.
To counter the problem business schools started offering STEM MBA programs which focuses heavily on business applications in STEM scenarios. Business schools in collaboration with their engineering or science departments created course works such as Masters in Business Analytics, Masters in Financial Engineering and similar other concentrations in response to market and international student’s needs. These programs benefitted students directly by extending their stay to US for 3-year period creating a hedge for their investment.
As such there is no special eligibility requirement for these programs, although a fair bit of exposure to technical coursework does help in navigating the program rather easily. Most of the universities offer some sort of boot camp to help incoming class with analytical foundations. Although not a requirement it is important to have a good grasp of fundamentals otherwise it eventually will become difficult to outshine peers of the cohort. Also some universities do require specific undergraduate coursework and so eligibility would need to be checked on different university basis.
While the number is increasing every day below is the list of top 10 MBA programs which are currently STEM accredited:
- Stanford GSB
- Columbia Business School
- Booth School of Business
- Northwestern Kellogg
- UC Berkeley, Haas
- Yale School of Business
- NYU Stern
- Duke Fuqua
- CMU Tepper
- USC Marshall
STEM accredited MBA offers a very good chance for international students to plan their long term career in US. In terms of employment opportunities too, STEM MBA helps students to gain foothold in areas which were earlier difficult to reach like career in analytics, product management, data science which are all upcoming fields and promise a bright future. For more information or free profile evaluation you can write to us by visiting our website link.