Kellogg School of Management – Northwestern University
The Kellogg School of Management’s MBA program is headquartered at Northwestern University’s 240-acre main campus in Evanston, Illinois, 12 miles north of downtown Chicago. Kellogg offers six full-time MBA options in addition to part-time and Executive MBA programs. Hallmarks of the Kellogg MBA program include an emphasis on teamwork in and out of the classroom, a general management focus throughout the curriculum and a high level of student involvement, as evidenced by the school’s 100+ student-run clubs.
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FAQ
What is the tuition for Kellogg’s MBA program?
The tuition for the 2024-2025 academic year for Kellogg’s Two-year MBA program is $83,610 per year. The total cost of the Kellogg MBA program is $125,191 per year; this includes budgeted living expenses.
How hard is it to get into Kellogg’s MBA program?
The acceptance rate for Kellogg is 33.3%. It is important to consider the acceptance rate in the context of the student profile of those who are admitted. For example the average GMAT score is 733.
What is the average GMAT score for admission to Kellogg’s MBA program?
The average GMAT score for the incoming class at Kellogg is 733. The GMAT range is 640 to 780.
Does the Kellogg MBA program accept the GRE?
Yes. The Kellogg MBA program accepts GRE scores from applicants. Kellogg has no preference between a GMAT or GRE score from applicants. They do not convert GRE scores to GMAT scores. The school says that they look at performance on each section of the test, and just like the GMAT, they are looking for balanced performance – typically in the 80-90th percentiles or above.
What is the average GRE score for admission to Kellogg’s MBA program?
The median GRE of the class of 2026 was 163 for Quant and 162 for Verbal.
What is the minimum number of years of work experience required for admission to Kellogg’s MBA program?
Kellogg’s prefers at least 2 years minimum number of years of work experience.
What is the average number of years of work experience for admission to Kellogg’s MBA program?
The average number of years of work experience among students in Kellogg’s MBA program is 5.17 (62 months).
What is the median starting salary for graduates of the Kellogg MBA program?
The median starting salary for 2023 Kellogg MBA class was $205,000, which includes a median base salary of $175,000 and a median signing bonus of $30,000. The salary will vary by industry, with consulting and finance jobs generally commanding the higher salaries.
How long is Kellogg’s full-time MBA program?
Kellogg offers a traditional 2 year MBA program, which begins in August, and ends in May, approximately 22 months later. This includes a summer period when students pursue internships. Kellogg also offers a 1 year MBA for those with a business background. This begins in June and ends in June the following year.
Kellogg also offers two full-time dual degree programs: an MMM (MBA from Kellogg and an M.S. in Design Innovation) with Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering, and a JD-MBA with Northwestern’s Pritzker School of Law. MMM students begin in June and graduate in the Spring after 2 years of study. The JD-MBA program is three years long, beginning in the Fall.
What are the application deadlines for Kellogg’s MBA program?
The Round 1 MBA application deadline is September 11, 2024. The Round 2 application deadline is January 8, 2025. The Round 3 deadline is April 2, 2025.
What percent of Kellogg MBA students are women?
The percentage of the class at Kellogg that are women is 50%.
What type of interview does Kellogg use for MBA admissions?
Kellogg currently offers only virtual interviews. Applicants will receive an email regarding the status of their interview and scheduling instructions. Because the interviewer will not have read the application prior to the interview, it is a resume-based interview.
Admissions
The Kellogg Class Profile
The Two-Year MBA Class of 2026 at Kellogg is comprised of 524 students. Among the first-year entrants in 2024, the average GMAT score was 733. Those who took the GRE earned median scores of 162 Verbal and 163 Quant. The average undergraduate GPA was 3.7, which is based on U.S. schools that graded on a 4.0 scale. Forty-nine percent had studied business/economics during their undergraduate years. Thirty-nine percent had pursued STEM majors and 24% majored in humanities. Double majors are counted across multiple categories, hence the total for undergraduate majors is over 100%.
Students in the incoming class have an average of 62 months of work experience. Thirty-two percent came from consulting and another 18% each had worked in financial services or tech. Another seven percent had worked in healthcare before matriculating.
Forty percent of the class comprised international students at the time of acceptance. Finally, women make up 50% of the first-year class at Kellogg, and 31% of students identify as U.S. students of color based on Federal reporting guidelines.
Application Procedures
Applicants can elect to apply to Kellogg during one of three admissions rounds that usually occur in September, January and April. The application solicits data on an applicant’s personal background, academic honors, and work history. It also calls for applicants to submit Kellogg’s essays, a résumé, GRE/GMAT and TOEFL/IELTS/DET scores, transcripts from all collegiate and post-collegiate institutions attended, and two letters of recommendation from supervisors. Finally, the program requires applicants to submit an application fee of $250.
Application Checklist
- Data Form
- Résumé
- Application Fee
- Recommendations
- Scanned transcripts
- Test score updates
- Essays
- Interview
Essay Topic Analysis
Recommendation Questions
Northwestern / Kellogg Q&A's
Northwestern / Kellogg LiveWire and DecisionWire
Academics
Faculty
Kellogg employs over 200 tenure-track and clinical faculty members across seven academic departments and two professional programs. This group of scholars and practitioners directs Kellogg’s 20+ research centers, which cover a spectrum of topics from family enterprise and nonprofit management to healthcare and real estate, and support the four other research centers at Northwestern University.
Curriculum
Like most MBA programs, Kellogg employs a variety of teaching methods. The school reports that professors rely on team projects, case studies and lectures as well as experiential or simulation-based instruction. First-years at Kellogg are divided into sections of 60-90 students and then into small study groups for their courses.
Orientation for the full-time MBA program is held in early September. MBA classes typically begin in late September and end in early June, with convocation taking place in mid-June. Kellogg works on a quarter system; full-time students take classes during the fall, winter and spring terms with most pursuing an internship during the summer term. Those enrolled in the One-Year program take courses during all four quarters. Within the academic year, Kellogg students have short breaks between quarters and for holidays such as Thanksgiving.
During the first year of study, Kellogg students take nine core courses out of the minimum 20.5 course credit required for graduation. The core covers foundational business principles in accounting, strategy, finance, marketing, economics, operations, and management. Students are allowed to waive classes that overlap heavily with previous coursework or relevant work experience; a waived course is exchanged for an elective. During the second-year pre-term orientation period before classes start in the fall, all students are also required to take Leadership and Crisis Management, a half-credit course based on case studies and exercises in crisis simulation.
Kellogg students meet the remaining credit requirements with elective courses, including a one-credit global management option fulfilled in any quarter by taking one of several courses or participating in a study abroad program. Moreover, all students may complete at least one major; doing so requires taking at least four electives within the major topic in addition to the major’s core course. There are eight major areas of study from which students can choose, including Accounting, Economics, Finance, Managing Organizations, Operations, Strategy, Management Science, and Marketing. Specific requirements vary for each major; if a major is not selected, then General Management is noted on the transcript.
Other MBA Degree Options
In addition to its 22-month full-time MBA program, Kellogg offers a one-year accelerated MBA degree, a three-year JD/ MBA program with Northwestern Law, and a dual-degree Master’s in Design Innovation (MMM) program with the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. Also through a partnership with McCormick Engineering, Kellogg offers students an MBAi degree: a 1.5 year MBA program with a focus in artificial intelligence. Part-time options include Evening MBA and Weekend MBA programs in Chicago and Executive MBA offerings in Evanston and Miami, with opportunities to study abroad in Germany, China and Canada.
Majors at Kellogg
- Accounting
- Economics
- Finance
- Managing Organizations
- Marketing
- Operations
- Strategy
Degree Offerings at Kellogg
Full-time MBA Programs
Two-Year (2Y), One-Year (1Y), MMM, MBAi, and JD-MBA
www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/Programs/FullTimeMBA.aspx
Part-Time MBA Programs
Evening and Weekend
www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/Programs/PartTimeMBA.aspx
Executive MBA Programs
Miami, Evanston
www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/programs/executive-mba.aspx
Dual Degrees
JD/MBA
https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/programs/full-time-mba/jd-mba-program.aspx
MBA from Kellogg and an M.S. in Design Innovation from the Segal Design Institute at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science (MMM) https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/programs/full-time-mba/mmm-program.aspx
Joint Degree
MBAi – a joint degree between Kellogg and the McCormick School of Engineering in business and science
https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/programs/full-time-mba/mbai-program.aspx
Campus Life
Clubs, Conferences & Competitions
Students at Kellogg enjoy many opportunities for extracurricular involvement. Full-time MBA candidates have over 100 full-time club offerings to choose from across a fairly balanced range of affinity, athletic, cultural and professional organizations. Kellogg Worldwide Experiences and Service Trips, commonly referred to as KWEST, have remained one of the most popular activities year after year. KWEST takes place the week before pre-term orientation and connects incoming students with second-year student trip leaders for a week of international exploration. Past destinations have included Malaysia, Japan, Chile, Turkey, Iceland, Peru, Alaska, and Hawaii. Second-year students may study at one of Kellogg’s 25 international partner schools in their fall or winter semester. Kellogg also offers more traditional clubs such as the Investment Management Club, Kellogg Marketing Club and the Adam Smith Society In conjunction with the schools’ clubs, several conferences are regularly hosted by Kellogg faculty and students. These cover numerous topics, including healthcare, tech, private equity and more.
Kellogg also sponsors a variety of competitions for its students. A particular hallmark of the program, the Annual Kellogg Marketing Competition, takes place over the course of three elimination rounds spanning two months, during which entrants compete in pitching a product to the Kellogg community. Meanwhile, the annual Biotech & Healthcare Case Competition is open to teams of students from MBA programs across the globe. In this contest, students present innovative solutions for a case created by a Kellogg professor that examines a problem in the medical industry.
Campus Space
In March of 2017, Kellogg opened its Global Hub, a 415,000-square-foot home for the business school perched alongside Lake Michigan just north of Chicago. The building took over classroom and collaboration space for the MBA students from the Donald Jacobs Center. The Global Hub is comprised of a 6,000-square-foot central atrium, a two-story faculty area with seminar rooms, and a 350-person capacity auditorium. The classrooms are designed to be flexible, with the ability to change seating arrangements from tiered to flat, as well as to expand. Finally, the 7,800-square-foot Galvin Family Design Wing and Conference Center, is dedicated to hands-on experiential learning across four design studios.
The majority of students choosing to live on campus take up residence in the McManus Living-Learning Center, a 20-minute walk away from the Kellogg Global Hub. The James L. Allen Center, which sits on the edge of Lake Michigan, is the heart of activity for the Evanston Executive MBA and Executive Education programs.
MBA Careers
Career Services
The Kellogg Career Management Center (CMC) offers a wide range of career counseling services, including one-on-one strategy sessions, self-assessment workshops, videotaped mock interviews, résumé reviews, networking events and an online job posting system. In addition, the CMC organizes a busy schedule of internship and full-time recruiting events on campus, with four weeks dedicated to second-year recruiting in October and four weeks for first-year students beginning in mid-January and ending in early February. Kellogg students have the opportunity to meet company representatives year-round through corporate presentations, networking nights, and club-sponsored guest speakers and career treks.
Career Statistics
Ninety-five percent of Kellogg’s Class of 2023 had secured job offers three months after graduation. The median starting salary for Kellogg MBAs after graduation was $175,000.
The most common industry choice for Class of 2023 graduates was consulting at 42%. Twenty-two percent of students joined financial services. Tech firms employed 17% of Kellogg 2023 graduates, while 7% of students took jobs in the consumer products industry and 3% went into health care.
U.S. Midwest placement landed at 32% while 28% settled in the Northeast. Twenty-three percent headed to the U.S. West. Eleven percent headed South, which also includes the Southwest U.S. Six percent headed abroad.
Financing
The tuition for the Two-Year MBA for the 2024-2025 academic year is $83,610. However, Kellogg estimates that with additional expenses such as rent and textbooks, students will pay $125,191 total per year. Both merit- and need-based scholarships are offered by the school to finance the MBA. Except for Finance Fellows, accepted students are automatically considered for these awards. Many of the scholarships available at Kellogg are offered for students inclined towards certain industries. For example, the Charles J. Schaniel Scholarship is given to a student interested in accounting. Students should complete the FAFSA form to determine federal loan eligibility. There are a variety of loan options available to Kellogg students, including federal loan programs for U.S. citizens and private loans for international students such as the NU Loan, which one can apply to with an international co-signer.
Cost of Attendance 2024-2025
- Tuition $83,610
- Food & Housing $21,150
- Books & Supplies $2,052
- Travel $1,548
- Personal $2,700
- Health Insurance $5,571
- Computer Equipment $1,200
- University Health Services Fee $828
- Student Activity and Experience Fee $1,400
- Student Association Fee $390
- First Year Fee $2,000
- Loan Fees $2,742
- Total $125,191
Recent News
Contact
Mailing Address:
Kellogg School of Management
Northwestern University
2211 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208
Phone: 847-491-3308
Fax: 847-491-4960
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.kellogg.northwestern.edu
News: https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/news/topics.aspx
X (Twitter): @KelloggSchool