UCLA Anderson FEMBA

Last week we welcomed the UCLA Anderson FEMBA Class of 2017, the 27th entering class and the largest-ever entering class!

The highlight of my year is making the opening-day welcome, where I get to give the class profile and share my “diamonds polish diamonds” metaphor. My half-hour speech is only a small part of the whole Leadership Foundations, an intense, five-day immersion taught by some of our freshest-thinking professors, embedding social-connectivity with multiple experiential-learning components.

Below are some of the statistics of our amazing new class of students, as well as some photos of the week.

The FEMBA Class of 2017

• The 27^th entering FEMBA class
• 330 students = most ever. Up 13% from last year.
  FEMBA has more than quintupled since beginning in 1988.
  At over 900 students, FEMBA is poised to be one of UCLA’s largest graduate program student bodies, if not the largest.

• 715 applications, up 19% from last year
• 92 women = most ever
• 23 Military = most ever (to the best of my knowledge)
  
• 8 MDs = most ever
  I don’t know how to confirm this, but my hunch is that this is more than any other part-time and also probably any other full-time MBA program.
• 7 Lawyers
• 3 PhDs (Biochemistry, Electrical Engineering and Experimental Particle Physics!)
• Class includes patent-holders, published authors, CPAs, CFAs, Eagle Scouts, a Peace Corps graduate, a Teach for America graduate, Missionaries, Riordan program alumni
• 2 married couples (both spouses in Class of 2017)
• 3 are married to other Anderson students (2 MBA, 1 FEMBA)
• 5 members of the class have a parent with an Anderson MBA
• 443 SuperSaturday admission interviews were held on-campus.
  100% of all admits were interviewed.
  We’ll surpass 5,000 life-time SuperSaturday interviews November 8th!
• 9% are of Hispanic or African-American heritage
• 36% are married
• 30 average age
• 610-730 middle 80% GMAT
• 3.4 average undergraduate GPA
• 26% hold advanced degrees
• 150 undergraduate universities represented
  UCLA #1, 46 graduates
  USC #2, 23
  UC Irvine #3, 16
  UC Berkeley #4, 13
  16 Ivy League graduates
  9 Military Academy graduates
• 268 total employers represented

• $83,198 is average salary
• 77 are already earning over $100,000/year
  27 nationalities/countries of birth  (the United Nations meets Hogwarts!)
  34 states of birth

• 7% reside outside of California and 1% reside outside the US (see below)
  We have three international commuters (two from China and one from the UK, all into FLEX)
• FLEX grew 11% from last year ( up to 63 from 57 )
  FLEX has students from 13 states and 2 countries (China and UK)

What’s it like to give a keynote welcome to 330 people? A bit intimidating, especially since it takes three shots just to photograph them all.

 

Finally, I want to thank the three team who make my professional life possible, my Admissions Team, Our Alumni Reader Team, and our FEMBAssador team. Thanks everyone! Your efforts created this history-making, largest-ever entering FEMBA Class of 2017!