Student Experience
Life as a Sloanie
Although there are required courses to insure that every student is well-grounded the the basics of finance, the MFin at MIT Sloan is a highly customized program. Action learning, along with our culture of empowerment and student initiative, results in a unique and intense year for every individual. Every student experience will be his or her own, tailored to her or his interests and goals.
Transformative Experiences
However, The dominant impressions of life here are of down-to-earth people and our culture of working together, of ownership, and of transformative experiences. The level of energy, the quality of the faculty, knowledge imparted, and entrepreneurial spirit, all contribute and surprise even students who expect the very best. But it is the people – the community – most talked about by students here, even by prospective students who have visited.
A Culture of Working Together
One student put it this way: “The students I interacted with at MIT Sloan were obviously incredibly smart, accomplished, and driven. That is common among top business schools.
“What struck me as truly unique about MIT Sloan was how down-to-earth, humble, and genuine they were as well. I could tell that the students here weren't concerned about flash and image but were concerned about showing up, working hard, increasing their impact, and doing what it took to achieve their goals..”
Expanding on the same idea, one MFin student amplifies that impression:“A crucial feature of MIT Sloan: teamwork. Trying to solve those problem sets entirely alone is an option, but certainly the whole experience is enriched by the possibility of spending a Saturday afternoon discussing ideas with friends who have the most varied points of view and skills. What I have learned from my friends is priceless, something that is way beyond classes. Seemingly impossible problems will always exist. Hard work and cooperation can change this picture."
Meet some MIT Sloan Students Here
On these pages, you’ll meet some of our students, both newly admitted and experienced. Please, take the time to read what they have to say about the many aspects of life, learning, and leadership here at MIT Sloan. Then, come visit us, either on campus or at an event near you. We look forward to meeting you.
“For 35 years, we’ve been studying how companies get value from information. … We try to help organizations take a more holistic view of what they are trying to do.”
“I can honestly say that when I was planning on coming to business school I never thought that witnessing the birth of a child would be included in the education. It was definitely an experience.”
“At MIT Sloan you have a lot of opportunities to explore entrepreneurship. Especially in a place like Kampala where you have a lot of development, entrepreneurship can be very exciting.”
“I love being in a place that is such a nexus of people and ideas — people coming to learn something new and to define themselves. Being a part of that process is a real honor and a real gift.”
“Because of the diversity of our backgrounds, when we hit the ground in Tanzania it almost was a natural play where different people assume different roles.”
"The relationships that we forged helped us to turn out a better project. We were able to test our hypotheses with the people that we spoke with every single day. And really, I think the friendships that you develop really propel the work that you’re doing."
"The classroom itself is filled with so much collective brain power . . . it's obvious that I'm caught up in a room full of 124 of the brightest, most curious people from around the world."
“I knew about American business, but not enough about what’s really become a global economy. … You can read about it all you want, but there’s no substitute for being there and seeing the context and seeing how completely different these [other countries] are.”
“We’re very interdisciplinary. Among the faculty in the group are an economist, a political scientist, a sociologist, and an industrial relations specialist. We’ve always made a big effort to be open to a variety of perspectives, but also to go beyond being open to them, to want to bring them in, because it makes for a richer environment.”
“It was really rewarding that they wanted to know what we thought. We left there being fairly certain that they will do some of the things that we suggested.”
“We are very much an action-learning environment. The way to learn leadership is not only through reading cases, not only through learning theory — in fact we don’t want people to regurgitate the theory. We want people to take theory and to live it, use it.”
“The conditions in the neighborhoods we were visiting were different than what we realized before getting there. Beyond that, what was surprising was that there weren’t surprises!”
“You could talk about watershed management and conservation of energy all you want. But until you put numbers to it and financial analysis to it, you’re not going to get much done. I came to business school to speak that language, speak with people in terms of numbers, financial numbers so that I can get projects done.”
“One of the reasons I came to Sloan was because I wanted to be at a top MBA institution worldwide. But I also wanted access to working with the latest innovations and the highest technology that was coming out of the MIT labs.”
“These companies are really excited to work with MIT students.They reach out to the community to set up these projects and are great to work with. They give us access to all their resources and are very open to us.”
“We’ve always made a big effort to be interdisciplinary and to be open to a variety of perspectives, but also to go beyond being open to them, to want to bring them in, because it makes for a richer environment.”
