Stanford : Business School Guides

General Management Perspectives
Your first quarter will begin with General Management Perspectives, a series of courses designed to give you insight into the perspective of a senior manager and leader. Essential to Perspectives is the Critical Analytical Thinking (CAT) seminar, in which a senior faculty member and 16 students analyze, write about, and debate fundamental issues, questions, and phenomena that arise in many forms in management.

General Management Foundations
Toward the end of your first quarter, you and your faculty advisor (who is also your CAT instructor) will develop a personalized plan for your General Management Foundations courses, which will provide the base for your general management education.
In your second quarter, you will begin General Management Foundations. In most cases, you will complete these courses in your third quarter.

One Size Does Not Fit All
As part of the Stanford MBA Program, you'll learn in a variety of ways, including case studies, role-plays, and simulations. Because we know that no one approach can effectively address the range of challenges you'll encounter throughout your career, this diverse education is designed to give you the breadth and depth of skills and experience you'll need for success.
We choose the most appropriate method for each subject. For example, a strategy course might use case studies while an accounting course might combine discussions and case studies.
We firmly believe in learning by doing. Being a small program enables us to provide our students with intimate, hands-on learning experiences that give you ongoing opportunities to bridge academic theory and real-world practice.

Teaching Methods

Case studies
Discussions
Face-to-face feedback
Learning labs
Problem-solving sessions
Role-plays
Simulations
Team projects
Theoretical overviews

The Global Management Immersion Experience (GMIX) encourages students to gain international work experience by completing a summer project of a minimum of four weeks in an unfamiliar location outside the United States.

Students typically participate in a GMIX between your first and second year of the MBA program, after you have completed your regular eight to ten-week summer internship.
In 2010, we supported 91 students who engaged with 66 organizations in 23 countries around the world, including Australia, Brazil, China, India, Kazakhstan, Mexico, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, and Switzerland.
Company sponsors include organizations in the corporate, government, and NGO settings.
You can find GMIX projects in a variety of industries, including consumer products, international development, energy, finance, healthcare, media and entertainment, technology, and telecommunications.
Following your participation, you will have the option to complete a research paper on a topic related to your GMIX for one or two units of academic credit.
Participation in the GMIX program fulfills the Global Experience Requirement (GER), which you need to complete by the start of your winter quarter in the second year. The GER is a graduation requirement ensuring that every student broadens his/her understanding of the global context of business during the course of the MBA Program through a significant global experience related to the topic of management.

Stanford was the first MBA program to offer a certificate in public management. The GSB has prepared government, nonprofit, and socially responsible business leaders for more than 40 years through the Public Management Program (PMP).

As part of the Center for Social Innovation, the PMP remains the premier program to equip MBA students to apply management skills to social and environmental concerns.

Each year, the PMP offers 20-30 electives in public policy, nonprofit management, social and environmental entrepreneurship, corporate social responsibility, philanthropy, and more. These courses highlight collaboration among government, nonprofit, and business entities and explore various paths to creating social and environmental value.
In addition to taking elective courses in areas such as public and nonprofit management, social entrepreneurship, international development, environmental sustainability, and philanthropy, you can extend your learning outside the classroom through participation in a variety of domestic and international service learning trips, clubs, conferences and speaker events.