How to Apply to the MIT Sloan Fellows MBA Program

This global leadership development program is a 12-month, full-time MBA program designed to prepare an elite group of global mid-career managers with the management skills necessary to magnify their impact as leaders and innovators. Our guiding principles are to help you develop critical skills essential for future leaders; to instill a spirit of innovation through exceptional opportunities at Sloan and across MIT; to foster a deep spirit of community among Fellows; to provide a breadth of electives and depth through one-on-one relationships with senior faculty; and to offer a flexible curriculum to allow you to tailor the program to meet your specific professional objectives. We accomplish this by maintaining a foundation in our three pillars of: leadership, innovation and global perspective.

Taking the above into consideration please submit a cover letter seeking a place in the MIT Sloan Fellows MBA program. Your letter should conform to a standard business correspondence, include one or more examples that illustrate why you meet the desired criteria and be addressed to the Admissions Committee (300 words or less).

Please submit a resume (no more than two pages) to help us track your academic and career path. Try to focus on your work results, not just your title or job description.

Here are some pointers on formatting:

• Two-page limit
• Times New Roman font
• Size 10 font
• Word or PDF formats only

Provide the following information in reverse chronological order:

• Education: Please include relevant awards, scholarships, and professional societies.

• Work Experience: Please include company name, title, results-oriented bullets that demonstrate your skill set, and dates.

• Additional information: Please include extracurricular activities/community service, technical skills/certifications, special skills/interests, and languages spoken (if applicable).

Introduce yourself to your future classmates. Here’s your chance to put a face with a name, let your personality shine through, be conversational, be yourself. We can’t wait to meet you!

Videos should adhere to the following guidelines:

• No more than 1 minute (60 seconds) in length
• Single take (no editing) 
• Speaking directly to the camera
• Do not include background music or subtitles

All SFMBA applicants will be prompted to respond to a randomly generated, open-ended question. The question is designed to help us get to know you better; to see how you express yourself and to assess fit with the MIT Sloan culture. It does not require prior preparation. 

Video Essay 2 is part of your required application materials and will appear as a page within the application, once the other parts of your application are completed. Applicants are given 10 seconds to prepare for a 60-second response.

The following are examples of questions that may be asked in the Video Question 2:

• What achievement are you most proud of and why?
• Tell us about a time a classmate or colleague wasn’t contributing to a group project. What did you do?

A detailed recommendation can tell us a lot about you. Make sure you select an individual qualified to speak about your results as a professional and your potential as a leader.

Some important details:

• SFMBA applicants must submit one letter of recommendation.
• A recommendation from a professional contact is preferred, ideally a manager or supervisor.
• We do not accept recommendations from family members.
• Your letter of recommendation must be received by the deadline date for the round you are applying (see above for our deadlines.) It is your responsibility to remind your recommender to make sure it is submitted on time.

Please choose a recommender who is able to provide specific answers to the following questions:

How long and in what capacity have you known the applicant?
How does the applicant stand out from others in a similar capacity?
Please give an example of the applicant's impact on a person, group, or organization.
Please give a representative example of how the applicant interacts with other people.
Please tell us anything else you think we should know about this applicant.
Describe the most important piece of constructive feedback you have given the applicant. Please detail the circumstances and the applicant’s response.

We want to make sure we give you the best chance to show us your strengths. You must provide contact information for two additional professional references. If we still have questions after reading your application, we might reach out to your additional references. Similar to your recommender, these additional reference contacts should be able to speak to your professional and/or academic background. These two individuals should be different from your recommender.

To help us better understand your current role and the impact that you have on your team and department, please submit an organizational chart. We should be able to clearly understand the internal structure of your organization, where you sit in your organization, and your line of reporting.

Organizational charts should not be more than two pages and keep the following in mind:

• Give us as many details as possible (names, titles, etc.) but it’s okay to redact names if you need to.
• Please circle your role in red so that your position is easily identifiable.
• Make sure we can easily identify where you are, to whom you report, and if applicable, who reports to you.
• If your recommender or references are on your organizational chart (they may not be, and that’s okay!), please highlight them for us.
• If you are a consultant, entrepreneur, or affiliated with the military, review our FAQs for suggestions on how to approach the organizational chart.

Click here to view a sample organizational chart.

Please scan and upload your transcript(s) from all colleges and universities you attended or are currently attending. If you are currently earning a degree, please upload your most up-to-date transcript. We review transcripts carefully; please double check that what you have uploaded is legible; if you can’t read it, neither can we!

Some important details:

• All applicants to the program must hold a four-year undergraduate degree or three-year equivalent undergraduate degree from outside of the U.S, by time of matriculation.
• Do not mail any hard copies of official academic records or transcripts.  
• If you received an undergraduate degree as part of a master's program, please include an undergraduate entry in addition to your master's degree.
• If your transcripts are not in English, please scan and upload both the original and the certified translation.
• We cannot accept “digitally signed” or encrypted transcripts. If you’re having difficulty uploading your document, this may be the reason. Print out your transcript, scan it, and upload the PDF.
• We do not accept transfer credits. Any MIT classes taken pre-matriculation cannot be counted toward your degree at MIT Sloan.

Once admitted to the program, you will be required to provide an official signed and sealed transcript(s). Any discrepancies between the scanned transcripts and official transcripts may result in a candidate’s rejection or a withdrawal of our offer of admission.

Submission of a standardized test, such as GMAT (Focus Edition or 10th Edition), GRE, or EA, is optional when applying for the SFMBA program. If you have a GMAT (Focus Edition or 10th Edition), GRE, or EA score, you are encouraged to submit it as an additional data point to be considered by the Admissions Committee. Those without a test score will be reviewed as is, with no negative inferences.

We will accept self-reported test scores by the application deadline and welcome either traditional or online versions of exams. Test scores should be valid by the application deadline. Official scores should also be sent using the following school codes:

• To share your GMAT score, please enter Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - MIT Sloan School of Management
• GRE: 3536
• EA: X5X-QS-71

We welcome applicants from many types of academic backgrounds and do not have any academic prerequisites. That being said, we want to understand what relevant coursework you have already completed in order to assess how you might handle our core SFMBA courses.

In the application, we ask you to tell us which courses (if any) in the following subject areas you have taken. We’ll also ask what grade you received in each course.

• Calculus
• Communications
• Linear Algebra
• Microeconomics
• Organizational Behavior
• Probability
• Statistics

Additionally, if you earned special certifications or took professional development courses in your spare time, please tell us about them! Feel free to submit academic evidence not already on your transcripts, such as: professional certifications CFA, CPA, ACCA, among others; non-degree coursework such as MITx MicroMasters, CORe, edX, MBA Math, or any other non-degree coursework you completed.

Applicants will be required to reply to the following two professional questions. Responses are limited to 200 words.

1. Please share your immediate and long-term professional objectives and how the SFMBA program will help you to achieve them.

2. General Managers are often responsible for strategy, budget, and/or work output from individuals and teams for at least one function of an organization with the ability to see the big picture across functions. General Managers are part of short-term and long-term strategy discussions and work cross-functionally to achieve a goal or specific strategy. Please describe your General Management experience.

Applicants are required to respond to the following 250-word short answer question:

How has the world you come from shaped who you are today? For example, your family, culture, and community, all help to shape aspects of your life experiences and perspective. Please use this opportunity if you would like to share more about your background.

The non-refundable application fee of $250.00 USD must be paid online prior to submitting your application.

In addition to the list below, attendees of some recruitment events and conferences where MIT Sloan is present may qualify for an application fee waiver. If you are in attendance at one of these events, you will be notified at the conclusion of the event and the payment section of your application will reflect the waiver automatically.

Please note that we cannot grant retroactive fee waivers if the application fee has already been paid online. If you are submitting a request, please wait to hear back from us.

You may be eligible for a fee waiver if any of the following apply:

• Current Teach for America Members or Alumni
• Veteran or Active Duty U.S. Military Personnel
• Paying the application fee will result in insurmountable financial hardship

Participants from the following list of programs, conferences, and fellowships are also eligible for an application fee waiver:

MIT Sponsored Programs

• MIT Summer Research Program (MSRP General)
• MIT Summer Research Program (MSRP Biology/BCS/CBMM)
• On-Campus MIT ACCESS Program
• MIT Media Lab Open House Travel Grant Recipients
• MIT OME Laureates and Leaders
• MIT OME The Standard
• MIT Emergent Behaviors of Integrated Cellular Systems (EBICS)
• Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology (HST) Summer Institute

Fellowship Programs

• APSA Diversity Fellowship Program (APSA DFP)
• Emergent Behaviors of Integrated Cellular Systems Research Experience for Undergraduates (EBICS REU)
• Gates Millennium Scholars Program
• Leadership Alliance Summer Research Early Identification Program (SR-EIP)
• Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP)
• Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC)
• McNair Scholars Program
• Mellon Mays Minority Undergraduate Fellowship Program (MMUF)
• Morehouse College Dr. John H. Hopps Jr. Defense Research Scholars Program Hopps (HOPPS)
• National Association of African American Honors Programs (NAAAHP)
• Questbridge
• Ralph Bunche Summer Institute (RBSI)
• Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement Program (RISE)
• The National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering and Science (GEM)
• University of Baltimore Maryland County Meyerhoff Scholars Program
• Woods Hole Partnership Education Program

Events and Conferences

• ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing
• American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES)
• Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS)
• California Forum for Diversity in Graduate Education
• Emerging Researches National Conference in STEM (ERN)
• FIU McNair Scholars Research Conference
• Grace Hopper Celebration Conference
• Howard University Research Month
• Institute on Teaching and Mentoring (SREB)
• Ivy Plus Puerto Rico
• MC-STEMP Graduating Engineering Minorities (GEM) GRADLab
• National Association of African American Honors Programs (NAAAHP)
• National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE)
• National Organization of Minority Architects
• National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE)
• National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP)
• Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS)
• Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE)
• Society of Women Engineers (SWE)
• Spelman College Research Day
• The National GEM Consortium