Meet the MBA Class of 2026
Learn about the newest students in Yale SOM’s MBA program from Bruce DelMonico, assistant dean for admissions.
With fall arriving and the upcoming application season in full swing, I want to take a moment to look back at the wonderful students who have completed their admissions journey and just began their MBA studies here at Yale. We were thrilled to welcome the 347 members of the Yale SOM MBA Class of 2026 to New Haven last month. August 12 marked the beginning of orientation for the Class of 2026, and classes began on August 26.
The Class of 2026 is truly global in nature, representing 42 different countries from Australia, Azerbaijan, and Brazil to Uruguay, the UK, and Vietnam. Members of the class speak a variety of languages, including German, Italian, Mandarin, Hindi, Japanese, Spanish, Hungarian, Korean, Cantonese, Arabic, Armenian, Portuguese, Igbo, Hebrew, Urdu, French, Turkish, Russian, Azeri, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, and many others.
This group is a musical one—class members play such instruments as piano, trumpet, cello, bassoon, organ, guitar, violin, viola, ukulele, harmonica, saxophone, sitar, drums, harmonica, euphonium, guzheng, and flute. Many others are interested in singing, listening to and creating music, and different forms of dance. One of them sang in a choir in front of British royalty, another performed solo on the piano twice at Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center, and yet another is a national ballroom dance champion.
The members of this class are also extremely active, with the majority of students listing one or more sports on their résumés, including everything from rowing to scuba diving and powerlifting to figure skating. One of them won four gold medals in Chinese kickboxing as a member of the U.S. national team!
This group is also adventurous. The class includes a number of runners who have finished half and full marathons. One student competed in the Dubai Ironman, another completed two Spartan races, and one is training for a day-long 206-mile bike race. There are triathletes and PADI open water divers, certified ski instructors and alpine guides. Students in the incoming class have backpacked for 100 days in the California mountains and for 10 months through Asia, spent the night alone in the Amazon rainforest, climbed Cape Town’s Table Mountain, and trekked up the Nepalese Himalayas to the Annapurna base camps. One has visited more than 35 countries, while another has traveled to six continents.
Their hobbies include gardening, baking, bartending, and photography. Many play chess. There are pilots and personal trainers, brewers and escape room enthusiasts. One class member is a self-described hot sauce aficionado, while another is a self-proclaimed “moderately talented chef” who is also a classical and medieval history buff. One member of the new class won a competition for reciting the first 275 digits of pi. One founded an animal rescue group, while another co-founded a shelter for stray cats. One has visited almost all of the Disney global theme parks. One collects maps. One writes, directs, and designs sets for plays. One student founded an ed tech startup in Ukraine; another has tamed an alligator. The list goes on.
By the numbers, 48% of the Class of 2026 hold passports from a country other than the United States—with, as noted above, 42 different countries represented overall. Women make up just under 40% of the class. Fifty-six percent of the U.S. students are students of color, and 16% are underrepresented U.S. students of color. The median GMAT score for the class is 730. (The median GRE is 166Q/164V, a 720 equivalent.) The median GPA is 3.68 on a four-point U.S. scale. Students come from 195 different academic institutions, having pursued degrees in subjects from engineering to the arts. First-generation college graduates comprise 20% of the class, while 12% have earned a previous graduate degree. Almost 10% are pursuing a joint degree with another Yale school, a sign of SOM’s deep integration across the university. Thirty-three are members of the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, and six are members of the QuestBridge Graduate Match program. They’ve received various academic awards and honors, from summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa designations to Fulbright Fellowships and other prominent scholarships.
Their professional credentials are equally diverse and impressive, covering all sectors and a range of industries and companies. Among the incoming class, 80% of students come from the private sector, while 20% come from the nonprofit and public sectors. They have worked at organizations from the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab to ZS Associates. In all, more than 250 different employers are represented, including Amazon, BlackRock, DuPont, International Monetary Fund, McDonald’s, Teach for India, National Grid, L’Oreal Groupe, Google, Charter School Growth Fund, DiDi, JPMorgan Chase, Meta, PIMCO, The New York Times, and SK Innovation. The most common employers are the U.S. military, Deloitte, McKinsey & Company, and Accenture. The class includes 22 veterans of the United States military, as well as 23 Silver Scholars.
But what brings these incredibly diverse members of the Yale SOM Class of 2026 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!