Average Age and Work Experience at Top Business Schools

Work experience is a very important factor that business school admissions committees consider while selecting candidates for their upcoming classes. They consider not just the length of your work experience but also its quality. So, when you decide to apply to a business school and you are doing your research, average age and work experience are important criteria to look at.

In other words, If you want to get an MBA, work experience is one of the most important requirements.

Many schools have a minimum number of years of work experience that applicants must have. If you don’t have enough years under your belt, your application won’t even be looked at.

Even if you have the minimum amount of experience for a top program, you may not get in because admissions teams tend to give more weight to candidates with more experience.

One of the most important parts of applying for an MBA is figuring out how much work experience you need.

So, before applying to a business school always check if they have a minimum work experience requirement or if your work experience is near the average work experience of the last incoming class.

Do top business schools ask for minimum work experience?

There are a few business schools that ask their applicants to have minimum work experience. Most business schools don’t have an official guideline. However, the average work experience of almost top business schools is around 5 years.

For example, the cohort at INSEAD has an average of five and a half years of work experience. Despite the fact that the school recommends a minimum of two years of experience before applying,

Similarly, London Business School (LBS) recommends three years of work experience before applying to its MBA program, despite the fact that the typical LBS cohort has five-and-a-half years.

Fuqua Business School at Duke University, CEIBS, and HEC Paris all have more experienced cohorts with a greater average number of years of job experience. The majority of their cohorts have six years of experience.

Some business schools also need a minimum of two years of work experience and will not accept applications with less than this amount. Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, CEIBS, HEC Paris, and Dartmouth University’s Tuck School of Business are among these.

Let’s take a look at the average age and work experience of top business schools in the US, Europe, and Canada.

Average age and work experience at US business schools

The average age at top US business schools is 28 years and the average work experience is 64 months which is 5 years and 4 months.

Here is the average age and work experience of the latest incoming class of a few top business schools in the US:

S. No.	Business School	Average age (years)	Average Work Experience (months)
1	Chicago Booth	29	63
2	Wharton	29	60
3	Northwestern Kellogg	28	59
4	Stanford GSB	28	58
5	Harvard Business School	28	60
6	MIT Sloan	28	60
7	Yale SOM	27	53
8	Columbia	28	63
9	UC Berkeley Haas	29	66
10	Michigan Ross	27	64
11	Dartmouth Tuck	28	65
12	Duke Fuqua	29	71
13	NYU Stern	28	61
14	Virginia Darden	27	63
15	Cornell Johnson	28	65
16	CMU Tepper	29	65
17	UCLA Anderson	28	63
18	UT Austin McCombs	29	66
19	UNC Kenan Flagler	29	65
20	USC Marshall	29	64
21	Emory Goizueta	28	71
22	Georgetown McDonough	29	63
23	Indiana Kelley	30	77
24	Washington Foster	29	71
25	Notre Dame Mendoza	27	65
26	Vanderbilt Owen	29	69

Average age and work experience at top European business schools

European business schools tend to have slightly older students as compared to US business schools.

The average age and work experience at European business schools are 29.3 years and 5.6 years respectively.

Business School	Average Age	Average Work Experience
INSEAD	29	5.5
HEC Paris	30	5.8
London Business School	29	5
University of Cambridge Judge	29	6
University of Oxford Said	28	5
IMD (Switzerland)	31	7
University of St. Gallen (Switzerland)	30	6
Mannheim Business School (Germany)	30	6
SDA Bocconi (Italy)	29	5.5
IESE Business School (Spain)	28	4
Esade Business School (Spain)	29	5
Copenhagen Business School (Denmark)	30	6

Can I get into business schools without work experience?

Most schools will just suggest a minimum number of years of experience before you can apply, but some will turn down your application if you don’t have the right number of years. So, can you get an MBA with less than average work experience? Or even none at all?

Technically, you could apply to programs that don’t have a strict rule about how much work experience you need to have before you can apply for an MBA. There are no specific experience requirements at schools like NYU Stern, University of Washington Foster School of Business, and Yale School of Management.

MBA admissions committees will also look at your application as a whole, taking into account your GMAT score, GPA, and how well you do in the interview process, among other things. This means that you might get in even if you don’t have experience.

A deferred MBA program is another option, though it will require you to get some experience in the end. These let seniors in college or master’s students apply before they graduate and have any work experience. Schools will let people in as long as they have work experience before starting the course.

The Harvard 2+2 program is an example of this kind of plan. Those who are accepted must work full-time for two years before they can start the two-year MBA program.

Admit Expert Advice

If you want to go to a top school, you should get the experience you need first. This will give you the best chance of success.

MBA programs prefer to accept candidates with four or five years of work experience. This is because these students are likely to have had some leadership experiences, which sets them up well for further leadership development.

So, if you want to apply to a top MBA program, the first thing you should do is get some work experience. Only then should you worry about application rounds, essay questions, and everything else that goes into an MBA application.