Get to know some new members of the Columbia Business School (CBS) MBA Class of 2024 in this edition of our Real Humans: MBA Students series.
844 students comprise the new CBS class in Manhattanville, with 629 starting in August and 215 beginning in January. Forty-four percent of the new class are women and 51 percent are international students. CBS reports minority representation using both federal guidelines and multi-dimensional reporting guidelines. Under federal guidelines, students who identify, for example, as Hispanic and any other race are represented as Hispanic only, and students who identify as more than one race are represented as multi-race only. Under the federal reporting guidelines, Black/African American students make up 11 percent of the class, Hispanic students 11 percent, Asian Americans 17 percent, and multiracial students five percent.
During their undergraduate years, CBS MBA students earned an average 3.6 GPA. A third of students pursued a degree in business before joining the MBA program. A fifth had studied economics followed by 16 percent earning degrees in engineering. Twelve percent had majored in social sciences and eight percent in sciences. Six percent earned undergraduate degrees in the humanities. When it came time to take the GMAT, members of the CBS MBA Class of 2024 landed an average score of 729.
As a class, they averaged five years of work experience before matriculating. Financial services was the most popular pre-MBA industry, at 29 percent. Consulting followed at 22 percent. Eleven percent had worked in marketing or media. Another nine percent came from the tech industry, and five percent each joined CBS from healthcare, military/government, or real estate.
Meet some new students behind the class profile in the following pages.
