The William & Mary Online MBA

Effective leadership in today’s organizations calls for tenacity and creativity, especially when it comes to problem solving. The complex, global problems that define contemporary business resist conventional solutions, and only the most flexibly-minded and resourceful business professionals can approach them in a way that prepares their team for success.

The Online MBA program from the Raymond A. Mason School of Business imparts the essential business knowledge and builds the dynamic mindset necessary to lead in today’s challenging and rapidly changing business environment. It’s no wonder over 96% of our online MBA alumni rate their satisfaction with the online program as “high” or “very high.”1

Online MBA Program Details

  • 49 credits
  • ≈22 Student per Course
  • 12 Courses
  • 7.5 Weeks per Course
  • 1 Weekend Residency

Online MBA by the Numbers

99%
of alumni would recommend the W&M Online MBA program1
$135,686
average salary for W&M Online MBA graduates after graduation1
~80%
of graduates received a promotion either during or upon completion of the program1
18%
average higher salary for W&M Online MBA students over other new MBA graduates1

Join an Expansive Network and Expand Your Own Success

Online MBA alumni also shared various career outcomes after completing the online program themselves. They reported that they held the following professional titles shortly after graduation:

CEO

President

Senior Director

Business Owner

Vice President

Program Manager

Technical Consultant

Financial Analyst

Cherise Newsome
CHERISE M. NEWSOME
MBA '23 CANDIDATE
VIRGINIA PILOT "TOP FORTY UNDER 40" HONOREE, OCTOBER 2021
“Because I was earning my MBA and learning skills that a vice president would need to be able to work effectively across the organization, I got promoted to Vice President for Communications.”

W&M MBA alumni can be found at many notable employers, including:

Microsoft

BMO Harris

Boeing

Accenture

Discover

IBM

Johnson & Johnson

JPMorgan Chase & Co

Pepsi Co

U.S. House of Representatives

Apple, Inc.

Ernst & Young

Amazon

Charles Schwab

Deloitte

Get to Know the Online MBA Experience

Use the three tabs below to review the essential hallmarks of the Online MBA program: the Wicked Problem, the W&M approach to design thinking and our innovative, immersive curriculum.

The Wicked Problem: Your Roadmap to Dynamic Leadership

Threaded throughout your Online MBA program are “wicked problems,” which you will explore in each course.

A wicked problem is defined by the following characteristics:

  • An unknowable set of potential solutions
  • No definitive agreement on the nature of the problem itself
  • No way to know with absolute certainty that a chosen solution is best

By their very nature, wicked problems are best approached through design thinking, as their resistance to clear paths and easy answers demands an approach that seeks neither of those things. Instead, you will work to refine and improve a set of possible solutions, viewing each as a beta test and none as an endpoint.

Apply What You Learn To Your Work—No Waiting!

Don’t wait until graduation to start making an impact on your career and your organization. With the W&M Online MBA curriculum, you can start applying your knowledge of the wicked problem and design thinking to your current work right away.

We found students were able to take this back to the workplace and be a really important change agent in their organizations.
JAMES OLVER
PH.D., ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

Each course of the Online MBA program helps you grow into an adept business leader by adding new skills and knowledge to your management toolkit that you can incorporate into your design thinking mindset, whether they be rooted in finance, marketing, business administration, business analytics or other business disciplines. As you progress through the program, you’ll compile a wicked problem portfolio to track your iterative engagements with your problem. This portfolio is shared with your classmates to provide opportunities for collaborative problem-solving and mutual growth.

This journey concludes with the Revolutionary Leader Practicum in which each Online MBA student delivers a TED-style “Tribe Talk” detailing ways they engaged with their wicked problem across their time in the program. By summarizing the steps you have taken toward unraveling your problem and identifying potential solutions, you’ll demonstrate the growth mindset required to lead with vision, openness and limitless potential.

What Is a Wicked Problem? | William & Mary Online MBA
The wicked problem is great because it taught me to be a problem-finder and problem-solver, which changed my mindset about how I envision business, conduct business and measure the effectiveness of business.
CHERISE NEWSOME
MBA ‘23 CANDIDATE

Six Considerations to Discover, Test and Develop an Idea

Get your copy of our free guide, designed to help you work through your own wicked problems. Learn how to more effectively develop and test ideas to find solutions to complex business problems.

Enrich Your Leadership Development

Every professional can become a leader and every leader can improve. Through the leadership development series from the Raymond A. Mason School of Business, you’ll gain new insight into making an impact through inclusion, strengthening employee engagement, solving big business challenges and cultivating the type of workplace that others will strive to join.

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Give Your Online MBA Degree an Analytics Focus

We recognize that many motivated working professionals today wish to build a set of technical skills that fall outside of our standard Online MBA curriculum’s focus. Likewise, corporate leaders are looking for employees who can work effectively with data to drive key business decisions. For these reasons, we’re excited to offer two options to accommodate student demand for more robust programming and analytics courses.

As an Online MBA student, you may either:

  • Register for BUAD 512A: Probability and Statistics with R and/or BUAD 512B: Business Modeling with Python from our Online MSBA curriculum to augment your Online MBA with knowledge of these languages
  • Complement the Online MBA program with our Online Foundations in Business Analytics Certificate to add hands-on technical experience to your leadership skills and leadership toolkit over a three-course (12-credit) curriculum

Both of these options can be integrated seamlessly into your Online MBA program sequence, allowing you to build these additional skills without extending your time to degree. And, with either of these options, you will graduate with a greater understanding of the language of data and be able to turn patterns into actionable insights. Redefine strategies to enhance agility and better drive profits.

Contact an Admissions Outreach Advisor for more information.

Discover the Value of Cohort Diversity

Our Online MBA cohorts have historically represented more than a hundred undergraduate universities and an impressively diverse student body in terms of ethnicity, career field and professional history. The story these statistics tell is that this program is one in which a variety of voices come together to develop their skills while also contributing to the personal and professional growth of others.

Gain invaluable exposure to a varied group of peers with new and important perspectives, and let their insight help you navigate the challenges and opportunities created by the wicked problems of modern business.

wm-cohort-grid.jpg

The Who’s Who of the Online MBA

A snapshot of the people most likely to be in your cohort

9
average years of work experience
3.2
average undergraduate GPA (on a 4.0 scale)
33%
U.S. minority
46%
Female
18%
From military background

Interested in Our Online Programs?

Feb
16

Priority Application Deadline

February 16th
Summer 2024 Term
Apr
5

Application Deadline

April 5th
Summer 2024 Term
May
6

Next Start

May 6th
Summer 2024 Term
Sources
  1. Retrieved on February 13, 2024, from usnews.com/education/online-education/college-of-william-and-mary-231624
  2. Based on a limited sample of self-reported data from alumni of W&M’s Online MBA program from graduating cohorts between 2019 and 2022
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