From the Assistant Dean for Admissions: Opportunities to Connect

With a little less than two months until the Yale SOM MBA Class of 2023 arrives on campus for the start of orientation, the application cycle for the Class of 2024 is already underway. We’ve held a number of virtual events to date and have many more planned for the coming months. And just this week, we announced the application deadlines and essay question for the upcoming cycle. The application itself will launch in July, with a weeklong open house to follow, which will kick off in earnest our 2021-2022 recruiting season. The open house will include a range of events, including a program overview, conversations with students, and a walkthrough of our application in advance of our Online Application Tips Panel on Friday, August 6.

We’re excited that Yale expects to return to a fully residential experience this upcoming academic year—there is something unique and important about the residential nature of the program. That said, as of right now, all of our recruiting efforts will continue to be completely virtual. Although we look forward to the time when we will be able to travel around the world to meet you all and also welcome prospective visitors to campus, one thing we’ve come to appreciate over the past year is how many people we’re able to connect with virtually whom we would not be able to meet otherwise. A year of fully virtual recruiting has had a true democratizing effect in terms of access to the Yale SOM community, and even when we return to in-person recruiting we will continue to maintain a robust virtual presence for those of you who are not able to meet us in person.

One other thing worth emphasizing along these lines is that, while we feel that meeting in person and in particular visiting campus has a positive effect in terms of learning about the school, it has absolutely no effect on your chance of being admitted to Yale SOM. We open up our campus to visitors as an opportunity for you to learn more about our community and determine whether Yale is a place where you might want to study for your MBA, but we do not factor whether you’ve visited campus (or attended any events) into our application review in any way. These activities are purely for your benefit.

We look forward to connecting with you wherever you are, and through whatever medium is best for you. We hope that you will join us for our open house next month (registration information coming soon) and for the other programming we have coming up in advance of our September 14 Round 1 application deadline. And, as always, please feel free to reach out to us at mba.admissions@yale.edu with any questions you might have.