Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management Dean Sally Blount’s term could not have ended in a better way. On top of record fundraising and academic achievement resulting in the development of new programs and the construction of the 415,000-square-foot Kellogg Global Hub, she can place one more feather in her cap.
Blount departed this past August, but her leadership helped Kellogg welcome the largest-ever percentage of women to campus this fall as part of its most recent incoming full-time, two-year MBA class. The 478-person Class of 2020 will be 46 percent women, which is a 4-percentage-point gain over the Class of 2019 and makes Kellogg one of the leading business schools in the world in this regard.
International students, meanwhile, make up 34 percent of the class, up one percentage point year over year. And underrepresented minorities account for 27 percent of the class, 2 percentage points higher than the previous class. These are great stats and help underscore how successful Kellogg has been in its efforts to create diverse incoming classes.
Diversity means very little if the students are not also intelligent, and that they certainly are. The incoming class has an average GPA of 3.6 and an average GMAT score of 732, maintaining last year’s record-high levels.
The Class of 2020 skews toward economics and business with regard to undergraduate education. Students with this training make up half (50 percent) of the incoming class. Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics undergraduates make up 29 percent of the class, and humanities undergraduates comprise 26 percent.
The class also brings considerable professional experience with them to Kellogg. The incoming students have 5.1 years of professional experience on average. They come from a variety of fields. The three most prevalent are consulting (24 percent), financial services (19 percent), and technology/communications (13 percent).
The incoming class at Kellogg is one of its strongest yet. The students are coming to Evanston, Illinois, with the blend of accomplishment and intelligence Kellogg has become known for. At the same time, women make up a record percentage of this incoming class, promising ever more progress toward gender parity in the larger business world.
In the following five profiles of incoming Kellogg students, we learn their backgrounds and future goals, as well as what drew them to the shore of Lake Michigan and one of the best business schools in the world.
