Class of 2017 Arrives at the AGSM MBA in Sydney

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The Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM) at UNSW Business School welcomed the latest cohort of full-time students to its MBA in Sydney this week.

The new AGSM MBA recruits will be the first to experience the outcome of a program review described by the school as the most extensive since its inception. New initiatives include a greater emphasis on innovation and entrepreneurship in the curriculum as well as the introduction of various technologies designed to enhance the student experience, such as the use of iPads.

“The incoming students will benefit from this new content and new approach,” said Julie Cogin, AGSM’s director, adding that the new cohort was “broader”. By contrast, appraisals on the AGSM MBA offered in Hong Kong last year culminated in a decision to close the program because student numbers were thinning, thereby downgrading the offering’s effectiveness with regards to in-class learning.

Female enrollment in the AGSM MBA rises to 32%

Around 60 students are now entering the 16-month AGSM MBA in Sydney to comprise the class of 2017, of which around 32% are female – a moderate rise on the 28% proportion seen among the class that graduated in 2015. While this ratio must be placed into its local context (the class of 2015 at Monash Business School was also 28% female, for instance) a number of leading business schools in the US have now managed to set a new benchmark by surpassing the 40% threshold in their programs’ female representation, after years in which a third was the approximate norm. In the other principal sense of the word ‘diversity’, a spread of students from 16 countries, including Australia, will be represented in the program at AGSM this year.

“We were greatly impressed by the quality of students who chose AGSM and our base-line GMAT entry requirements have increased as a result,” said Cogin. The class of 2015 enrolled in their MBA in Sydney with an average of 635 in the all-important admissions test; a rising average will bring the standard closer to that of the class of 2016 at Melbourne Business School, for which an average of 687 was recorded. 

AGSM’s MBA in Sydney ranked second among full-time program options in Australia, behind Melbourne Business School, in the most recent edition of the QS’s regional MBA rankings, based on the opinions of those who hire MBA graduates and of academics in the fields of business and management.