Meet the MBA Class of 2024

As fall officially arrives and we in Admissions look ahead to the upcoming application season, I want to take a moment to look back and recognize the wonderful students who have completed that journey and who just began their MBA studies here at Yale. We were thrilled to welcome the 347 members of the Yale School of Management MBA Class of 2024 to New Haven last month. August 15 marked the beginning of orientation for the Class of 2024, with classes beginning on August 22. Despite the lingering pandemic, life in Evans Hall continues to return to normal day by day.

The class that has arrived is special in a variety of ways. Roughly three-quarters of the class speaks two or more languages, and more than 30% speaks three or more. In all, the class speaks 50 different languages, including Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish, Japanese, French, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Palembang Malay, Toba Batak, German, Korean, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Nepali, Hindi, Tagalog, Portuguese, French, Mandinka, Dutch, Polish, Swedish, Thai, Arabic, Urdu, Tamil, Kiswahili, Russian, Punjabi, Bengali, Italian, Tamil, Hebrew, Afrikaans, Malayalam, Lao, Twi, Urhobo, ASL, Gujarati, Macedonian, Estonian, Ewe, and Belarusian.

This is a very musical group; class members play instruments such as piano, trumpet, organ, guitar (acoustic, electric, and bass), violin, ukulele, cajon, kalimba, bassoon, drums, flute, and even the bagpipes. Many others are interested in singing, listening to music, and dancing.

There is no doubt that the class is also extremely athletic, with the majority of students listing one or more sports on their résumés, including yoga, Muay Thai, football, tennis, swimming, golf, table tennis, scuba diving, boxing, wall climbing, hiking, kayaking, running, acrobatics, Krav Maga, hockey, Pilates, karate, skiing, mountain biking, bouldering, sailing, weightlifting, ultimate frisbee, windsurfing, badminton, snowboarding, rope skipping, lacrosse, kitesurfing, rugby, volleyball, wrestling, figure skating, cricket, and snowboarding; Others get their exercise through Bollywood dancing, pole dancing, salsa dancing, ballroom dancing, or ballet.

This group has quite a few long-distance runners, including several half-marathon and marathon finishers. One member of the class noted that they have completed a 100 kilometer ultramarathon in 12 hours in addition to 10 full marathon finishes, and another mentioned that their biggest running accomplishment was finishing their third marathon while 35 weeks pregnant!

On top of their full-time careers, members of the class have found time to establish themselves as professional stage performers, translators for TED Talks, sound design and music producers with Spotify verification, organizers of large-scale stem cell registration campaigns, private pilots, certified bartenders, and professional catch and release fishers.

Their hobbies include solo exploration (with one student travelling to more than 50 countries), Legos (“recently brought to life a Star Wars Imperial Star Destroyer—all 4,784 pieces of it”), sustainable fashion, finding the best ice cream flavor in every travel destination, raising chickens, beekeeping, impressions and impersonations from Mickey Mouse to Al Pacino, baking cakes, visiting Disney theme parks as often as possible, listening to podcasts (thank you for all of your great recommendations by the way), Chinese sword dancing, novice carpentry, freestyle rapping, and skydiving—just to name a few.

By the numbers, 48% of the Class of 2024 holds passports from a country other than the United States, with 48 different countries represented overall. Women make up 43% of the class. Fifty-four percent of the U.S. students are students of color, and 24% are underrepresented U.S. students of color. The average GMAT for the class is 723 (the average GRE is 165Q/164V, a 720 equivalent), and the average GPA is 3.65 on a four-point U.S. scale. Students come from a range of academic institutions and backgrounds (167 different schools are represented), from engineering to the arts. Seventeen percent are first-generation college graduates, while 10% have earned a previous graduate degree. Another 12% are pursuing a joint degree here at Yale at one of eight other Yale schools. Thirty-nine are members of the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management (our highest number ever), and six are members of the inaugural QuestBridge Graduate Match program. They’ve received various academic awards and honors, from summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa to Fulbright Fellowships and Rhodes Scholarships.

Their professional credentials are equally diverse and impressive, covering all sectors and a range of industries and companies. Seventy-five percent of the class comes from the private sector, while 25% comes from the nonprofit and public sectors. Employers range from A.T. Kearney to ZS Associates. In all, more than 200 different employers are represented, including Boston Consulting Group, Alibaba, Samsung, Goldman Sachs, Clinton Health Access Initiative, Google, the Los Angeles Chargers, Palantir Technologies, Sumitomo Bank, Unilever, Boeing, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Shopee, and Teach for America. The class includes 16 veterans of the United States military, as well as 30 Silver Scholars.

What brings these incredibly diverse members of the Yale SOM Class of 2024 together is their aspiration to embody the school’s mission of educating leaders for business and society. We are so excited for them to begin this journey!