MBA applicants can get carried away with rankings. In this series, we profile amazing programs at business schools that are typically ranked outside the top 15.
Benefitting from the reputation of its parent university, and with a class consisting of 94% international students, Oxford’s Saïd Business School has built up considerable global brand recognition for such a young program. Among the school’s noteworthy offerings is the opportunity to supplement a standard business and leadership education with a more specialized, cross-disciplinary focus. Whereas most dual degree programs in the United States can take more than two years, Oxford’s 1+1 MBA program allows students to complete the one-year MBA curriculum at Saïd in addition to a year of masters’ course work from a wide menu of programs in the broader university.
Numerous approved MSc degree programs are available from the university’s Centre for Criminology, the Department of Education, the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, the School of Geography and the Environment, the Oxford Internet Institute, the Department of Computer Science and the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies. For example, a student with a special interest in sustainable business might supplement his/her MBA experience with an MSc in nature, society and environmental policy. Alternatively, a student with an interest in global business might pursue an area-focused Msc, such as public policy in Latin America. The 1+1 MBA program offers students twice the networking possibilities across disciplines, while honing expertise in a specialized field.
The Pershing Square Foundation announced just this past spring that it will be making a £4.5M gift to fund up to five scholars per year in Saïd’s 1+1 Program, with the purpose of educating social entrepreneurs. Bill Ackman, a founder of the Pershing Square Foundation and signatory to The Giving Pledge, recently spoke to the Financial Times about his interest in the program: “The idea of the scholarships is we don’t want someone to be forced to work for an investment bank when they graduate, the idea is that we subsidise someone’s education so that they can afford to pursue a career which can have a meaningful social impact. I like the 1+1 programme because it delivers a graduate with more specific knowledge.”