MBA Tracks
Designed to support your career goals
Many MBA students pursue completing a Track certificate as part of their MBA experience. The Tracks are intended as a deep dive for students committed to careers aligned with these areas. Participation in a Track does not preclude you from taking courses in other areas, and with the exception of the first semester ProSeminars, the Silicon Valley and Finance Trips, and the Enterprise Management Capstone Course, all other courses and activities that are part of the Track curricula are electives that are open to the greater MIT Sloan MBA community.
MIT Sloan offers three optional academic Tracks within the MBA program that are designed to meet the internship and career interests of their participants. The Tracks have been designed to make our graduates successful the first day of work and as they advance their careers. Each Track builds on the expertise and research of our renowned faculty and provides students with theoretical and practical applications of the different functional areas covered in each Track.
Participation in a Track will provide you with:
- A clear signal about your career interest to prospective employers
- The opportunity to learn with a cohort of like-minded classmates
- A road map for career changers and deeper learning for career enhancers
- Involvement in one or more action-learning experiences
Detailed descriptions of the three Tracks — Enterprise Management (EM), Entrepreneurship and Innovation (E&I), and Finance follow.
Enterprise Management (EM)Track Brochure Entrepreneurship & Innovation (E&I) Track Brochure Finance Track BrochureEnterprise Management (EM)
The goal of the Enterprise Management (EM) Track is to develop your capability to apply integrated management perspectives and practices in your role within large organizations, using innovative classroom and project-based activities. Skills in Marketing, Operations, and Strategy will be developed into a coherent perspective to support cutting-edge performance. To enhance your skill building, the Track will use MIT Sloan’s signature action-learning curriculum to promote an integrated mindset towards viewing and addressing business issues. During your first semester, you’ll participate in a tightly scoped team project focused on marketing, operations, and/or strategy for an external client. Your experience across the program will be integrated in a second-year workshop, where student teams will compete to address issues in live integrative client projects using a holistic perspective.
As part of the Track, you may choose to further focus your education on particular skills, topics, or industries to prepare for specific careers. These requirements can be satisfied by completing a recommended set of courses from a long list of electives. The recommended sets of courses, linked to specific careers, are intended to guide you and to act as a signal to potential employers.
The Track prepares you for career paths related to large organizations, in the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors, including:
- Consulting, including large strategic management and boutique consulting firms
- Functional and cross-functional positions, including leadership development programs, rotational management programs, marketing, supply chain, and operations management
- Product development and innovation management
Entrepreneurship & Innovation (E&I)
The MIT Entrepreneurship faculty offers the Entrepreneurship & Innovation (E&I) Track for MBA students who are already committed to a future entrepreneurial life. The classes and related activities focus on launching and developing new companies, especially those that are based upon the emerging technologies for which MIT is famed. E&I students explore the hotbeds of entrepreneurship and build their network through immersive days in Boston and a 3-day study tour to Silicon Valley. They participate in multiple action-learning projects through Entrepreneurship Lab (E-Lab), and/or Global Entrepreneurship Lab (G-Lab), plus Innovation Teams (i-Teams), or similar new product-oriented subjects, plus required membership in an MIT $100K Business Plan Competition team. The Track:
- Immerses you in an intense curriculum led by a faculty of academic thought leaders and successful practitioners of entrepreneurship
- Includes multiple required and elective courses providing depth of information and experiences
- Builds a strong cohort of like–minded entrepreneurial classmates
Finance
The Finance Group offers the Finance Track, which consists of required courses, electives, and extra-curricular activities designed to prepare MBA students for careers in the finance industry. During your first year, you’ll have the opportunity to explore the world’s major financial markets through on-site visits in New York and/or London and/or Asia. You’ll also participate in an action-learning experience through completing the Proseminar in Corporate Finance/Investment Banking, Proseminar in Capital Markets/Investment Management, or the Finance Research Practicum. Designed for career changers and experienced finance professionals, the Finance Track:
- Exposes you to the institutions and practices of the financial world
- Grounds you in the principles of finance theory and in the application of theory to real problems
- Provides an overview of professional opportunities in finance
- Creates a cohort of students and alumni in financial careers
* Students may only pursue one Track at a time but may pursue a Track and a Sustainability Certificate concurrently. There is enough flexibility and overlap that the latter is more than doable.
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