Why IE is #1 Online MBA in the World?

In 2011, after deciding to do my MBA from a top business school, IE Business School was an easy choice for many reasons. As a professional manager working in Northern Minnesota, who could not afford to leave my job and family and join an on-campus school like Harvard or Stanford, the Instituto de Empresa (IE) based out of Madrid, Spain ranked the top of my list because of its consistent #1 rank in online MBA schools, its affordability, its scholarship program and its entrepreneurship focus. It took more than a year of preparation to qualify for the school but the wait was well worth it.

After joining the school, I realized how excellent the school is due to a host of other reasons that I haven’t even considered at the time of joining. This article is meant to highlight some of those great reasons about IE that I believe contribute to its #1 ranking among online MBA schools 4 years in a row.

Diversity: Very few cohorts in our class were from the same country of origin or country of residence. My first team had 6 team members that resided in Singapore, Saudi Arabia, New York, Guatemala, Minnesota and San Francisco. Diversity does not only come from the country of origin but also from gender, industry, years of experience etc. To make diversity an even better learning experience, over the courses of the MBA, IE mixed up the project teams three times so that we could work with professionals from as many different backgrounds as possible.

Truly Global: I have come across several Global MBA programs that are not Global in essence. At IE, you get to meet some amazing professionals from across the world, learn to respect their culture and their approach towards problem-solving. You will also realize that business terms, practices and regulations are not as different as one would think across different countries and continents. I believe that IE consciously compromises merit for diversity in some situations. Today, thanks to IE, I have great friends in various parts of the world, making a difference in their field and region. We also had professors log in from different parts of the world. So, IE tends to live up to its diversity and global nature in more ways than one.

Structure: A typical IE week kicked-off with a mandatory live online session that starts early in the morning in the United States. Right after that, there is usually an individual assignment and a team assignment that is due to the professor by Monday morning Madrid time. There is also a case and some reading assignment to prepare for the online forum that goes from Monday to Thursday. The objective of the forum is the add value to the conversation started by the professor while emphasizing on quality versus quantity. This usually requires careful review of every post and additional research to learn and contribute. Starting Thursday night, team assignments and individual assignments are prepared to be submitted prior to the live session on Saturday. In many ways, this structure created as many opportunities for students to learn from each other as it did from the professor or reading materials. The weeks were jam packed and I rarely remember a day that I spent with my family during those days.

Communication Development: As part of the online forum, we have a simple rule called the 5 lines, 5 posts per week rule. The idea is that students do not post more than 5 posts per week per course and each post should not exceed 5 lines. As weird as this rule may sound, it forced me to learn how to efficiently communicate my point across. In a professional world where 80-90% of people’s communication is done via emails and texts and most executives have less than a minute to read your email, this rule taught me how to be effective in my communication and capture the attention of my audience.

Practical Experience: After doing the blended MBA at IE, I have always wondered how a regular face-to-face MBA can be an effective learning experience. Thanks to the opportunity to still stay in my job, I had the opportunity to immediately apply the concepts I learned at work. There were several situations that came up at work during my MBA where my learnings from the MBA changed the way I approached and solved those business problems. I will not trade those experiences with a face-to-face program where you cannot immediately apply the concepts at work.