While many college students or recent graduates dream of attending a prestigious US business school, they face a serious feasibility issue because MBA programs (the main programs of all business schools) require applicants to have at least two years of full-time work experience before matriculation.

As a result of this requirement, specialized master’s programs have become the main option for fresh graduates. This article will list all the full-time specialized masters programs in the top 30 business schools in the US News Best Business Ranking. We hope you are able to find one of these programs suitable for your academic and professional expectations.

1. University of Pennsylvania – The Wharton School

Wharton does not provide any full-time specialized master’s program.

2. Stanford Graduate School of Business

The MSx program is open to business professionals with at least 8-years of work experience.

3. Harvard Business School

Harvard Business School does not provide any full-time specialized master’s program.

4. MIT – Sloan School of Management

Sloan provides two specialized master’s programs that do not require any work experience: Finance and Business Analytics. Please note that Sloan has rather high expectations of applicant’s prior quantitative and computational knowledge.

5. University of Chicago – Booth School of Business

Booth does not provide any full-time specialized master’s program.

6. Columbia Business School

CBS provides three research-themed specialized master’s programs in Financial Economics, Marketing, and Accounting respectively. These programs are highly selective with single-digit admission rate and fewer than 20 students in each program every year.

Concurrently, CBS and Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science have recently collaborated on a Business Analytics program.

7. Northwestern University – Kellogg School of Management

Kellogg provides a Management specialized master’s program only for college students graduating from Northwestern University.

8. University of California – Berkeley – Haas School of Business

In Haas, applicants with work experience and solid quantitative education background can earn a Financial Engineering master’s degree.

9. Yale School of Management

For applicants who have studied or will earn a Management master’s in HEC Paris, HKUST, or UBC Saunder, they can apply to study the M2M program at Yale School of Management in their second year.

Regulatory bodies all around the world can nominate young professionals to study a unique System Risk master’s at Yale SOM.

10. Duke University – Fuqua School of Business

Fuqua runs two Management master’s programs at Durham campus and Kunshan campus respectively. In recent years, they also started offering a Quantitative Management program. The new program has a relatively higher standard of applicant’s quantitative background.

11. University of Michigan – Ross School of Business

Ross offers a prestigious Master of Accounting program, which has a stringent set of prerequisite courses related to accounting. Applicants who have not studied a business major at college can study a Management master’s degree at Ross. Thirdly, Ross also provides a niche degree in supply chain management.

12. Dartmouth College – Tuck School of Business

Tuck does not provide any full-time specialized master’s program.

13. New York University – Stern School of Business

Similar to Ross, Stern also provides an Accounting master’s degree that has a list of prerequisite courses.

Additionally, Stern New York and Shanghai are co-offering two master’s programs in Data Analytics & Business Computing and Quantitative Finance. Both of them have high requirement for quantitative and computational skills of applicants.

14. University of Virginia – Darden School of Business

Darden does not provide any full-time specialized master’s program.

15. Cornell University – Johnson Graduate School of Management

Johnson provides a Management and an Accounting specialization programs, although both have limited number of international applicant acceptances and prefer Cornell’s own college graduates.

16. University of California – Los Angeles – Anderson School of Management

UCLA Anderson provides two master’s programs: Financial Engineering and Business Analytics. Both expect solid quantitative foundation and work experience.

17. Carnegie Mellon University – Tepper School of Business

Tepper offers a prestigious specialized master’s program in Computational Finance, which expects all applicants to have outstanding computing foundation. Also, Tepper collaborated with CMU’s famous School of Computer Science to offer a Product Management master’s program for professionals working in the IT industry.

18. University of Southern California – Marshall Business School

Marshall offers a wide range of specialized master’s programs covering Business Analytics, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Finance, Marketing, Social Entrepreneurship, Global Supply Chain Management, Library and Information Systems, and Medical Management. Please note that for applicants from Australia, Marshall only recognizes four-year Honours degrees.

19. University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill – Kenan-Flagler Business School

Kenan-Flagler provides an Accounting specialized master’s program for students with any undergraduate major.

20. University of Texas – Austin – McCombs School of Business

McCombs runs specialized master’s programs in Accounting, Business Analytics, Energy Management, Finance, Marketing, Information Technology Management, and Technology Commercialization. While there are plenty of choices, McCombs only accepts four-year Honours degree graduates from Australia, and has a fairly limited number of international students.

21. Emory University – Goizueta Business School

Goizueta offers a specialized master’s program in Business Analytics.

22. Indiana University – Kelley School of Business

Besides the famous Accounting master’s program, finance and information system programs are also available at Kelley.

23. University of Washington – Foster School of Business

Foster has four specialized master’s programs. The Professional Accounting program has a list of prerequisite courses, the Entrepreneurship program prefers applicants with work experience, and the Information System program only accepts students with a relevant college level major. Business Analytics is the only program with more lenient requirements.

24. Georgetown University – McDonough School of Business

McDonough offers a Management master’s program for applicants with less than three-years of work experience.

25. University of Florida – Warrington College of Business

There are six specialized master’s programs that Warrington offers: International Business, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Information System, Management, and Real Estate. The Finance program is only available for UF’s own college graduates and the Management program is for non-business background students.

26. Rice University – Jones Graduate School Of Business

Jones has a very small Accounting specialized master, which does not have any background restriction.

27. University of Notre Dame – Mendoza College of Business

Mendoza offers full-time master’s programs in Accounting, Business Analytics, Management, and Nonprofit Administration. Its Accounting program is very popular but its international student ratio is only 3%. Its Management program is designed for students with little prior business education.

28. Washington University in St. Louis – Olin Business School

Olin has four specialized master’s programs: Accounting, Business Analytics, Finance, and Supply Chain Management. Its Finance program has four distinct specializations designed for students with diverse backgrounds.

29. George Institute of Technology – Scheller College of Business

Scheller, capitalizing the strength of computing of Georgia Tech, offers Analytics and Finance master’s programs, which set a very high standard for applicants’ background knowledge in computer science.

30. Vanderbilt University – Owen Graduate School of Management

Owen has two Accounting master’s programs, Assurance and Valuation respectively. However, these two programs are only available for applicants who have lived or studied in the United States. Other than these, Owen also offers Finance and Marketing specialized degrees; both only accept four-year Honours degree graduates from Australia.

Summary

The above is the whole list of specialized master’s programs of the Top 30 business schools according to US News. Overall, the choices are limited because of the stringent requirements on work experience and academic background. This is the reason why many young applicants turn to other countries for graduate-level business education.