Students who come into Tepper with a technology background can also pursue the school’s Technology Leadership MBA Track, a joint partnership between the Tepper School and Carnegie Mellon’s top-ranked School of Computer Science. One of the most popular offerings in the MBA program, the Technology Leadership MBA Track trains students in the specific strategic and management issues facing companies developing cutting-edge software technologies. This serves to prepare them for success in senior technology roles ranging from product manager to CTO, CIO or CEO. To enroll in this MBA track, students must have an undergraduate degree in computer science, computer engineering, management information systems or comparable work experience to ensure that they can keep pace in the School of Computer Science’s rigorous, technical classes.
Finally, Tepper also offers a three-year, dual-degree MBA/Master of Software Engineering program, also in partnership with the School of Computer Science. Designed for “exceptionally strong candidates who have engineering and science backgrounds or appropriate experience,” this program equips MBA students with the advanced engineering skills they need to advance to the most senior technology strategist roles.
Beyond academics, Tepper also features several student clubs that help prepare students for tech careers. With 249 members, the Business and Technology Club (B&T) is one of the largest groups on campus and serves as a hub for recruiting, case competitions, treks and other events with technology and e-commerce companies at Tepper. Each year, the B&T Club helps sponsor the Tepper Tech Innovation Challenge—a case competition built around applying business techniques to the development of emerging technology products—as well as numerous networking events drawing representatives from some of the most innovative tech companies in the world.
Recent Tepper grads headed off to work for top tech firms including Amazon, Apple, Cisco, Expedia and Google, reporting a median starting salary of $117,000 and a median signing bonus of $25,000.
UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business
The Haas School of Business’s proximity to the tech industry’s Silicon Valley seat—coupled with its focus on innovation—make it a front-runner in terms of grooming grads for technology careers. Haas sent almost the same percentage of its Class of 2015 into tech jobs as Tepper did—37.8 percent. Here, too, consulting was a distant second, drawing 25 percent of the class.
Unlike peer business schools, which send students on Silicon Valley treks to explore tech firms, Haas dispatches its students in 15-week stints to help those very companies tackle real business challenges. As part of the Haas@Work Applied Innovation project course, student teams have worked on site for clients including Abbott Diabetes Care, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, PayPal, SAP, Sunpower and Yahoo, to name just a few.
As part of a second experiential learning program, Cleantech to Market (C2M), Haas MBA students join teams comprised of graduate students from across Berkeley’s many schools to commercialize promising cleantech inventions selected from leading universities, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and other Department of Energy labs, as well as existing startups.
