Set in an international city with strong ties to government, it’s not surprising to find students at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business drawn to both of those aspects. More than a third of the class—34 percent—is international, and far more bring international experience of one sort or another. More than three quarters of the 276 students who make up the full-time MBA Class of 2019 have lived, worked, or studied in another country, and 67 percent speak more than one language.
Women are not as well represented this year as they have been in recent years. The Class of 2019 is 30 percent women, a backslide from last year’s 34 percent. But the school reports that 36 percent of the class are U.S. minorities, up from 28 percent the year before. McDonough received 1,742 applications for the 276 seats it ultimately filled—both numbers down slightly from 1,890 and 287 the year before.
In terms of past education, there was a strong business bent, which doesn’t come as a huge surprise. Thirty percent of the class studied business as undergraduates, and another 15 percent studied economics. But a full 13 percent of the class studied international relations/government, matched by the 13 percent that studied math and physical sciences. Another 12 percent studied engineering.
Professionally speaking, the Georgetown McDonough Class of 2019 boasts significant diversity, with just 21 percent drawn from finance. Consulting and government followed, at 15 percent and 12 percent, but the rest of the students were dispersed in small pockets across more than a dozen other industries, including technology and new media (8 percent), consumer and retail goods (8 percent), healthcare (7 percent), non-profits and social sector (6 percent), entertainment and media (4 percent), manufacturing (4 percent), and real estate (3 percent). On average, students in the class have 5.4 years of prior work experience before starting their MBA programs.
For as different as their prior experiences may have been, many of Georgetown McDonough’s MBA students say they were drawn to the school in large part for its Jesuit values and emphasis on service. Through coursework and activities outside the classroom, an ethos of equality, respect, and education of the whole person pervades. The Class of 2019 is also the first to start under a new dean. Dean Paul Almeida took over as dean in August. Almeida, an expert in international business and strategy, is by no means a stranger to the school. He’s been a respected member of the faculty for more than 20 years, served as senior associate dean for executive programs for seven years, and conceived, launched, and ran the Global Executive MBA program.
But since we know that stats and scores alone do not make a school, we’ve continued in our Real Humans tradition and caught up with several members of the Georgetown McDonough MBA Class of 2019 to learn more about who they are and what they bring. We hope you’ll enjoy getting to know them as much as we did.
