Simon School Establishes Direct Admission Partnership with Holy Cross

WORCESTER, Mass. – The Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester and the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., are forming a Direct Admission Partnership to encourage undergraduates to pursue an M.B.A. at the Simon School immediately following their studies.

Under the agreement, faculty and administrators at Holy Cross will recommend top undergraduate students for M.B.A. admission consideration at the Simon School, one of the nation’s top-ranked business schools. The partnership will act as a feeder into the Simon M.B.A. program and coincides with the Simon Early Leaders™ initiative which seeks to recruit exceptionally talented students with less than three years of professional work experience.

“We are delighted to be a Direct Admission Partner of the Simon Graduate School of Business,” says David Chu, Ph.D., director of the Ciocca Office of Entrepreneurial Studies and prebusiness advisor at Holy Cross. “Collaborating with the Simon M.B.A. Program will further enhance the Holy Cross business network by providing our students the opportunity to obtain an excellent graduate business education from a nationally recognized M.B.A. program.”

The Simon School has established nearly 30 Direct Admissions Partnerships with small- to mid-sized liberal arts colleges and universities including Barnard, Bates, Colby, Dickinson, Hamilton, Hobart & William Smith, Lafayette, Lewis & Clark, Oberlin, Spelman, St. Lawrence, SUNY Brockport, SUNY Geneseo, and the University of Rochester.

In a recent paper, “The Simon M.B.A.: Now Versus Later,” Dean Mark Zupan and Professor James A. Brickley estimate that the net present value of an M.B.A. completed immediately after the bachelor’s degree is approximately $170,000 higher than for those who delay entry five years or more.