Yale School of Management Welcomes the Class of 2007

New Haven, Conn.—The Yale School of Management welcomes the Class of 2007. The 212 students arrived on campus on August 15 to take part in Orientation Week activities.

The newest class is comprised of 34% women, 12% U.S. under-represented minorities, and 20% international students. The talented group includes a professional lacrosse player, a schooner captain, a jewelry designer, an Olympic sailor, an anesthesiologist, a member of the Canadian Ski Team, the Big Brother of the Year of Massachusetts, a trapeze artist, and an opto-mechanical systems patent holder.

Dean Joel Podolny kicked-off the week with a welcome address. He spoke to the class about the school’s mission of creating leaders for business and society, the many Yale SOM alumni who embody the mission, and about committing to the idea of management being a profession that serves society.

“You are the next link in a chain of meaningful managerial aspirations that began a little over 30 years ago,” he said. “You and I arrive here at an inauspicious time for management and management education. It’s a time when the prevailing view of managers is that they are motivated by little else than their own narrow self-interest, and there is an increasing belief that management schools, far from curbing this tendency, are in fact accentuating it by fostering cultures that venerate individuals who embody a highly self-interested ethic. I was drawn here because I believe that the Yale SOM community is uniquely positioned to change those perceptions. We are a community that is defined by the very noble mission of fashioning leaders for business and society. Regardless of the career that the graduates of this school pursue, there is a public-spiritedness that guides the way that they lead.”

The students then moved on to a day of team building exercises with Outward Bound of New York City (photos at left). Other activities that the students will participate in include receptions with the faculty and staff, Career Center training, Math Camp, a Career Development Office open house, and workshops on presentation skills and professional communication.

All class profile data mentioned above is preliminary.