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Thursday, November 03, 2005

International MBA

BYU is a small school, with only about 130 students each year. With such a small class the actual % varies quite a bit year-to-year. As I think I mentioned, the number seems to be done a bit because of visas. I don't know the first year students well, but I know second year students from Switzerland, Ghana, China(4), Mexico, Korea(3), Uruguay, Jamaica, Finland, Brazil(3) and Bulgaria. I know a couple of first year students from Romania, Chile, and Brazil and a few MPA students from Tonga, Japan, Romania, Mexico, Italy, and Ecuador.

Although the majority of the students are from the US, the global awareness of BYU MBA students is (IMHO) unrivaled. Most students have spent two years as Mormon missionaries in foreign countries and some of us look for every opportunity to return. A few months ago I met an executive MBA student here who is not Mormon and is from Brazil. He said he was shocked to find that half his classmates spoke Portuguese.

When I was looking at schools I attended an international language class sponsored by the Lauder program at the Wharton School. There were two people in the class, a 2nd year student who had traveled to Latin America with the military and a 1st year student who had served a Mormon mission to Chile. The class was basically a conversation between the Spanish professor and the 1st year student; it was pretty obvious the 2nd year who hadn’t the same exposure was lagging behind. It was then that I started realizing just how strong BYU’s international connection is because of all the missionary experience. Unfortunately, the school doesn’t exploit it much, but I honestly think that with some effort BYU could dominate the international MBA scene. Since the international connection is primarily due to Mormonism, most of the international students are members of the church and you’re much more likely to run into someone speaking some obscure Filipino dialect than Hindi since we have lots of Mormons in the Philippines, but not so many in India – so it is a bit skewed.

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