Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management

20. Vanderbilt University

Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management

401 21st Ave South

Nashville, TN 37203

Admissions: 615.322.3120

Email: emba@owen.vanderbilt.edu

Website: http://www.owen.vanderbilt.edu/vanderbilt/programs/executive-mba/

Apply Online: http://www.owen.vanderbilt.edu/vanderbilt/admissions/executive-mba-admissions/

The Vanderbilt Executive MBA is a two-year, full 60-credit-hour MBA program designed for professionals already in or approaching senior management.

Vanderbilt students begin their Executive MBA experience with a one-week residency in New Harmony, Indiana. The first year of the program is designed to provide a solid foundation of management essentials, theory, and application. The second year of the program elevates these topics to CEO level by focusing on strategic aspects of managing the entire organization and its functional areas. In the second year, the curriculum also provides Capstone Courses that help synthesize all that has been learned.

During the spring of the program’s final year, each Executive MBA class participates in a group immersion experience outside the United States. This week-long International Residency is an integral and final part of the program’s three-part Global Enterprise sequence.

The school also launched a new global EMBA program in 2011 called the Vanderbilt AmericasMBA program which features four international residential immersions in Brazil, Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. Three other business schools—Fundação Instituto De Administração (FIA Business School) in Sao Paulo; Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) in Mexico City; and Simon Fraser University’s Beedle School of Business in Vancouver, British Columbia—are Vanderbilt’s partners in the program. The four partner plan to cap the total for every class at 60.

Latest Up-to-Date Executive MBA Rankings:

2012 Poets&Quants: 20

2011 BusinessWeek: 32

2011 U.S. News & World Report: NR

2010 The Wall Street Journal: 25

2011 Financial Times: 49

Rankings Analysis: Vanderbilt’s Executive MBA program showed the biggest improvement of any top 20 school in PoetsandQuants’ 2012 ranking of the best. The major reason: BusinessWeek, which didn’t even include the program in its “second-tier” in 2009, ranked Owen’s EMBA program 32nd in the world in 2011. The Financial Times, which hadn’t ranked Owen at all in 2009 and in 2010 had the EMBA program in 72nd place, moved the school up a remarkable 23 spots last year to 49th in the world. Those two advances made a very big difference to the school, essentially putting its MBA for executives on the map. Though still unranked by U.S. News and World Report, the Wall Street Journal had Owen’s EMBA program at a very impressive rank of 25th in 2010, the last time the WSJ looked at EMBA programs.

BusinessWeek, which ranks EMBA programs on the basis of graduate satisfaction and a reputation poll among EMBA program directors, generally found favorable reviews for the program. But there was some static in the comments left by the Class of 2011. As one grad put it, “Several of the faculty could have been timelier in providing responses/feedback. The fact that students were balancing family, work, and academics was lost on a couple of the professors.” Added another graduate of the program, “As someone looking for career advancement with no company sponsorship, I believe more effort to introduce students to executive recruiters and direct career placement services would be most beneficial.”