Darden alumni kicking back in front of their alma mater.
MBAs love formulas and models. In theory, they furnish clarity and consistency, a means to prune and parade data. However, there are always factors that will defy precision and certainty. In business, they involve fundamentals like culture and strategy – variables that are difficult to quantify…let alone execute.
That’s one reason why you won’t find one template for creating a business school that produces far more raves than rants. Take the University of Virginia and Stanford. On the surface, you won’t find two programs that are more different. Darden, for example, can be described as old school, a case-driven plan of attack that relishes academic excellence and intensive preparation.
STANFORD AND VIRGINIA DEMAND EXCELLENCE
“Teaching matters here a lot,” says Ron Wilcox, who serves as the senior associate dean for degree programs at Darden, in a recent Q&A with Poets&Quants. “We expect teaching excellence of every single faculty member. If they aren’t excellent, it is not a comfortable environment for them to be in long-term. That is part of our culture that has paid dividends over the years.
Yossi Feinberg
On the opposite coast, you’ll find the Stanford GSB, a program that embraces experimentation and teamwork like few others. “The learning experience is very collaborative here, explains Yossi Feinberg, the school’s senior associate dean for academic affairs, in a separate interview with P&Q. “A lot of experiential learning happens in teams and we have an environment where you learn not to be afraid of failure. Having this strong, effective, and supportive team helps the learning experiences.”
It would be a mistake, however, to conflate the Stanford program, which rests heavily on self-discovery and collegiality, with a cakewalk. “[Our curriculum] enables you to challenge people much more because if they compete they must work together – then their ability to go further is much higher,” Feinberg explains. “We can challenge students much more academically because they rise to the challenge, but they rise cooperatively.”
Robust offerings, academic rigor, and supportive communities are just a few of the virtues shared by Stanford and Darden. While they may approach the classroom differently, they ultimately arrive at the same destination: a transformative general management education that prepares them for the exhausting demands, terrifying uncertainties, and brutal tradeoffs inherent to modern business.
NYU STERN EARNS HIGHEST SCORE IN STUDENT SATISFACTION
These results may explain why both Darden and Stanford rank among the most popular MBA programs according to the annual survey conducted by The Economist. Targeting current students and the most recent graduating class, The Economist asks respondents to score their school satisfaction on a scale of 1-to-5 (with 5 being the highest mark). Not surprisingly, Darden has traditionally earned the highest marks from students, with Stanford slotted among the top schools. The 2017 survey was no different – with a caveat.
In an upset, New York University – which was profiled along with Northwestern in last year’s analysis of The Economist survey results – snagged the top spot, edging out IESE and the University of Chicago by a statistically insignificant .03 and.05 of a point respectively. Stanford and Darden rounded out the Top Five tied at 4.54.
Overall, 21 of the 25 top MBA programs pulled by P&Q received lower scores against the 2015 survey – which included a completely different sample. Overall, IE Business School suffered the biggest drop, losing .35 of a point. U.C.-Berkeley (-.31) and the University of North Carolina (-.31) trailing close behind. At the same time, HEC Paris gained .15 of a point over the past two years, with Stanford producing a .06 gain.
STANFORD’S EXPERIMENTAL MODEL STEMS FROM SILICON VALLEY ROOTS
Bicycling near the Stanford GSB
If you conducted a word association on Stanford with MBA applicants, “experiential learning” is bound to be among the first terms choseen. While it is a program strength, a better descriptor might be “experimental learning.” According to Feinberg, the Stanford faculty is incessantly tinkering with the curriculum – always testing new content and delivery and always on the lookout for ideas that might resonate with students and enrich the classroom experience.
“The modalities used by GSB – there’s a lot of variation,” Feinberg shares. “It’s not everyone doing case method, experiential learning, lecture, or guest lecture. You have all of them and you have huge variety in each one. When we have the case method, for example, it is used in dramatically different ways between faculty members. What does that mean? It means there is a lot of experimentation and innovation in the classroom.”
This creates a major opportunity for Feinberg, where he is able to harness and share the best classroom practices across the program. This dynamic approach also fits the ethos of Stanford and its seat in Silicon Valley, which prizes risk and independence and fears complacency and limits.
“By the nature of it, we don’t have one production model for all of the classes,” Feinberg adds. “Essentially, we have many dozens of startups; we want to preserve the entrepreneurial spirit to preserve best practices across the school.”
Go to Page 4 to see student and alumni survey scores given to 25 top MBA programs on student satisfaction.
Stanford Graduate School of Business students celebrate capturing the No. 1 spot in the Financial Times global MBA ranking.
SECRET TO DARDEN’S SUCCESS: FACULTY AND STUDENT BUY IN
Darden professors enjoy a degree of freedom as well. However, the curriculum is rooted deeply in the case method. That’s fine with the faculty, who value teaching and consider Darden the ultimate destination to test their classroom prowess, says Wilcox. However, these teaching abilities are amplified by a team teaching model in the core curriculum, which require faculty sit down together regularly to develop plans.
“You’re in a room for 3-4 hours at a time in a teaching meeting,” Wilcox details. “So there is a certain Intensity and bonding to that among the faculty. There are also meetings across the areas so we can coordinate what marketing is teaching and how that relates to what finance and operations are teaching at the same time. Because of that, we get to know each other very well. This faculty is a tight knit group among ourselves and we learn from each other a lot, so I think basically we have a culture of reinforcing the excellence. If you’re not quite doing it right, you have colleagues right there helping you.”
That translates to a high level of satisfaction for the second years who leave the program each spring. “We don’t graduate a lot of students who regret coming here – very few do,” Wilcox says. “That is due to long-standing norms we have around here, where we evaluate faculty very seriously on the teaching dimension. We hold up that standard and what develops over the years is a cadre of faculty who self-select to come to Darden because of that and it produces outstanding results in our classroom and also very loyal alumni.”
DARDEN STUDENTS CAN’T MISS CLASS FOR EXTRACURRICULARS
Ron Wilcox
Making the case method work takes more than stellar faculty. It also requires top notch students. For Wilcox, that is the special sauce behind Darden’s success. Like the faculty, students self-select into Darden, buying into the heavy demands and high expectations because they understand what is on the other side.
“We have a reputation for being a hard-working place. That’s true. It’s not true that we are rough and students are not cutthroat competitive with each other. In my mind, a student who chooses Darden is usually the same type of individual who is going to add a lot of value to a company right off the bat because they have the type of psychological makeup where they just want to dive in and start working.”
That’s because Darden students are conditioned to high expectations for faculty. Notably, the faculty expects intensive case preparation before class – a time treated so sacred that students cannot miss class even for extracurricular activities.
“When you come into a classroom, you’re going to have a faculty member who is going to call on you whether you have your hand in the air or not,” Wilcox notes. “However they will also tell you the classroom experience is very good. A lot of that classroom experience was derived from their own preparedness. We do that differently because we hold our students to really high standards on preparing for class.”
EXPECTATIONS SET EARLY ON AT STANFORD
Feinberg also credits students for being a driving force within the program – calling them “principled leaders” who can “do it all and bring it all.” However, he adds, they bring that something extra to the Stanford community. “They are all in. They are going into jobs and career choices where they are fully invested in choices for impact. That’s what they’re after.”
Like Darden, Stanford sets high expectations – and sets them early on. On the first day, Feinberg joins Dean Jonathan Levin and senior administrators on stage to send a clear message to the “future leaders” who comprise the incoming class’ ranks. Notably, they remind first years that there were many applicants who didn’t make it to where they are sitting – and the class owes a certain responsibility to live the values and fulfill their potential for them, Feinberg notes.
“We have an expectation for behavior that is respectful, humble, and welcoming to everybody and giving them a place that will help them be authentic and grow.”
A CULTURE OF AUTHENTICITY
Stanford GSB’s Knight Management Center
It is a culture that demands involvement, ranging from participating in class to supporting each other and the community at large. And it is one that sweeps across the Stanford GSB top-to-bottom. It starts with student selection – a demanding process designed to ferret out cultural fit that begins with Stanford’s famous “What matters to you and why” essay. From there, the tone is set in “Week Zero.” The first week of school, Week Zero heavily infuses team dynamics that help first year experience the true value of their classmates’ diverse backgrounds and experiences. Such wrinkles form the bedrock of the Stanford GSB experience, which is defined as much by support as self-discovery.
“I think the beauty here is the alignment. When you have all the pieces aligned and working together, the culture will be the strongest. Look at the faculty, staff, administration, 2nd years, and alumni – we’ve all internalized the culture and believe in it. It is so much easier because everybody is talking about the same thing. You gravitate to it. It’s not a struggle to maintain every year. To the contrary, it’s very natural to maintain.
Feinberg calls it a “culture of authenticity” – where being who you are and valuing what others bring fosters a deep cohesiveness in and out of the classroom. “You may hear this from other schools, but our student love each other because they learn so much from each other,” Feinberg adds. “Classes facilitate that. Your experience and background is a huge component in the educational experience.”
Go to Page 4 to see student and alumni survey scores given to 25 top MBA programs on student satisfaction.
The University of Virginia Darden School of Business
LOWKEY NOTES EVENT GIVES ASSOCIATE DEAN “GOOSEBUMPS”
This experience also hinges on several signature events at the school. For many Stanford GSB alumni, arduous quant classes, such as Peter DiMarza’s Corporate Financial Modeling or the late Jack McDonald’s Investment Management and Entrepreneurial Finance served as the hallmark of their experience because they stretched them. Others will point to “Touchy Feely” or H. Irving Grousbeck’s Managing Difficult Conversations as turning points, where a supportive community helped them gain self-awareness and develop soft skills. In Feinberg’s experience, students often come away truly transformed from LOWkey Notes.
The course is based on Stanford GSB’s motto, “Change lives. Change organizations. Change the world.” Similar to the school’s vaunted TALK events, LOWkey Notes is a time where students prep a keynote presentation with the help of coaches on what they’re passionate about – and the struggles they’ve faced along the way to Stanford.
“I was there last week and I had goosebumps,” Feinberg admits. “It was tremendously moving – not only the magnitude of challenges that students are willing and able to confront, but the powerful openness that students had as well.”
WHY DARDEN STUDENTS WANT CLASSMATES TO GIVE THEM “THE BIRD”
For Wilcox, the first year core – a year-long, integrated event – is the signature experience because it builds a camaraderie like no other. At Darden, first years are broken into five sections, A-E. Here, he says, the sections are formulated to balance the experience and diversity within them. However, each section is also assigned a specific classroom, which is used for the entire year.
“They own the physical space of the classroom,” Wilcox explains. “They take all of their courses together with that same group of 60+ students. Professors even come to their classroom. That builds camaraderie among the students, a sense of ownership of the physical space because they stay there. Each section even decorates their classroom and have their own customs.”
What does he mean by customs? One of the most distinct customs is maintained by Section B – the home of “The Bird,” a stuffed animal that bears a strikingly similarity to Big Bird. Think of it as a week-long reward, one that is given to the student who makes the most insightful comment during the week (as voted by the students).
First year Darden classroom
“The bird is much beloved,” Wilcox asserts. “It’s like that gnome. I’m not making this up: People bring the bird to weddings. They take pictures and there’s the bird with the wedding party. Sometimes, other sections try to steal the bird. It has been captured and held for ransom at points. Luckily, no violence has ever occurred.”
STUDENTS RUN EVERYTHING AT DARDEN
That’s not the only ‘bird’ making its home in Section B. The class also houses a Styrofoam finger – think ‘We’re #1’ – that section mates give to the student who didn’t get involved enough in case discussions the previous week. This bird is more of a motivator, not to mention an invitation for professors to cold call the student who possesses it.
Such customs are central to the Darden culture. “The professors just go along because it is a norm set by the section themselves,” Wilcox adds. “These sections develop their own traditions. Because they are in the same physical space and with each other all the time, the emotional connections among the students are quite strong. That’s part of the experience here. When people come back to the reunions 20-30 years later, they sit with their section mates.”
The physical locations of Darden and Stanford also play into their cultures. Located in Charlottesville, home to Thomas Jefferson, the University of Virginia has traditionally leaned towards student self-governance – a staple of the Jeffersonian ideal. The result, says Wilcox, is that Darden students tend to run everything. Notably, student clubs are given wider latitude and authority. For example, the clubs – not the career center – hold the lists of potential candidates for recruiters. Students also fund and govern all of the extracurricular activities and events. “It’s their money and their rules,” Wilcox says.
Such responsibilities prepare students to handle the dirty details of management. This approach, coupled with case rigor, translates into an advantage for Darden students after graduation, says Wilcox. “The case method is, I think, superior for adult learners because it puts them in ambiguous situations and asks them to make a decision, something they practice in their extracurriculars too. At Darden, by the time they go out and get a job, they’ve done this hundreds of times and that’s a different skill set than reproducing the technical details of a lecture. I think it is more real world and hopefully that shows through.”
Stanford University Graduate School of Business – Ethan Baron photo
A PLACE FOR FAMILY
Location also boosts the student satisfaction rate at Stanford too. Palo Alto, for one, enjoys a sunny Mediterranean climate with cool breezes and below average rain. Not surprisingly, their student body is known for being laid back and highly active. The program is also centered in the Silicon Valley tech startup ecosystem. As a result, Feinberg says, the faculty can quickly develop innovative content and attract world class speakers since top leadership and research figures are often a 10-15 minute drive away. However, the California culture also balances this strong individualism with a sentiment that identity should be celebrated in a broader context.
“GSB is the place where you can bring who you are to the experience,” Feinberg says. “It is also the place where you discover what you can be. When students are able to be authentic, bring their passion and be supported by their community – expressing that passion and achieving a goal based on their passion – that’s something that really cuts across classes and experiences.”
For Wilcox, the appeal of Darden comes down to a different word, but a similar virtue: Family. “Everyone knows each other. It is a stretch place; we push people but at the same time, we’re highly supportive. We’ve had tremendous success with students.”
DON’T MISS:
MBA PROGRAMS WITH THE BEST CULTURES AND CLASSMATES
BUSINESS SCHOOLS WITH THE BEST TEACHING FACULTY
Go to Page 4 to see student and alumni survey scores given to 25 top MBA programs on student satisfaction.
University of Virginia, Darden School of Business
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