Average age of MBA applicants in the US

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Average age of MBA applicants in the US

older aged MBA applicants

List of average ages of MBA applicants in the US

After going through the statistics from the top 50 mba programs we can tell you that the average is now about 28 years old as of 2020.

Interestingly, the average age of MBA students has increased about a year over the last decade. That is, at the start of the 2010's the average age was closer to 27. This would suggest that schools are giving a bit more priority to students with a little more work experience than they did at the beginning of the decade since students now average 5 years of experience. However, we should take this information with a grain of salt since average age varies from school to school. Indeed, European schools like ESSEC and IMD often have a slightly higher average age. This is partly because many students in Europe start their careers a year or two after their American counterparts since Europeans often get a masters degree before they join the work force.  

Besides the average age of students, another important consideration is the age range that schools generally accept. While this information used to be publicly available, many schools stopped publishing this data after the graduating class of 2017. However, given the fact that most schools didn't change their age ranges much between 2015 and 2017, it's probably safe to say that the large majority of students are within 2 years of the average. That is, if the school average is 29 years old, most of the accepted students (about 80%) will be between the ages of 27 and 31.

Chart showing Average age of MBA applicants in the US

Finally, there's the question of "am I too old or too young?" for a certain MBA program. Generally speaking, if you're on the outer range, you'll have a better chance of getting accepted to a school that has a large class size. Schools like Harvard that have nearly a thousand students tend to accept outliers more readily than schools that only accept a hundred students. Furthermore, one of the big keys to getting accepted into a program is showing that you're going to fit in and contribute. Thus, if you're an older applicant, you'll need to show in your application that you're not going to be aloof, but rather be an active classmate that other students will enjoy having around. If you want help with your application you can check out our mba application coaching or look at our other blog articles in the links at the bottom of the page.

 

Most of the below statistics come from the official school websites for classes dating between 2017 to 2020.

American University (Kogod)

Average age of class of 2019: 31

 

Arizona State University (Carey)

Average age of class of 2019 : 29

 

Babson

Average age of class of 2018: 28

 

SDA Bocconi

Average age: 29

Age range from 25 to 34 

 

Boston College (Carroll)

Average age: 27

 

Boston University

Average age: 28

 

Brigham Young University (Marriott)

Average age for class of 2019: 29

 

Buffalo University

Average age : 25

 

Carnegie Mellon (Tepper)

Average age: 28

 

Case Western University (Weatherhead)

Average age: 27

 

China Europe International Business School

Average age: 29

 

Claremont Graduate University (Drucker School of Management)

Average age: 27

 

Columbia University

Average age : 28

 

Copenhagen Business School:

Average age: 30

 

Cornell University (Johnson)

Average age: 28

 

Dartmouth (Tuck)

Average age: 28

 

Duke University (Fuqua)

Average age: 28

 

Emory University (Goizueta)

Average age: 29

 

ESADE Business School

Average age: 29

 

ESSEC Business School

Average age: 30

 

Florida International University

Average age: 30.5

 

Fordham University

Average age: 28

 

George Washington University

Average age: 28

 

Georgetown University (McDonough)

Average age: 28

 

Georgia Tech

Average age: 28

 

Harvard Business School

Average age: 27 

 

Howard University

Average age: 25

 

Hult Business School

Average age: 31

 

IE business School

Average age: 30

 

IMD business school

Average age: 31

 

Indiana University (Kelley)

Average age: 29

 

INSEAD

Average age : 29

 

Indian School of Business (ISB)

Average age: 27

Ages range from 22 to 46

 

Johns Hopkins University (Carey Business School)

Mean age: 32

 

Michigan State University (Broad)

Average age: 28

 

MIT (Sloan)

Average age: 28

 

Northeastern University

Average age: 26

 

Northwestern University (Kellogg)

Average age: 27

 

NYU (Stern)

Average age: 28

 

Ohio State University (Fisher)

Average age: 28

 

Oxford (Said)

Average age: 29

Age range : 23 to 40

 

Penn State University (Smeal)

Average age 2018 : 28

 

Pepperdine University (Graziadio)

Average age 2018 : 29

 

Purdue University (Krannert)

Average age: 27

 

Rice University (Jones) 

Average age: 28

 

Rochester (Simon) 

Average age 2018 : 28 

Middle 80% range age (years) : 

From 25 to 32 

 

Rutgers University 

Average age 2018 : 29

 

Southern Methodist University (Cox) 

Average age 2017 : 30

 

Stanford University 

Average age 2019 : 27

 

Syracuse University (Whitman) 

Average age 2019 : 26

 

Texas - Austin 

Average age 2019 : 29

 

Texas Christian University 

Average age 2019 : 27

 

Thunderbird (Garvin) 

Average age 2019 : 30

 

Tulane University (Freeman) 

Average age 2019 : 27

 

UC Berkeley (Haas) 

Average age 2019 : 28

 

UC Davis 

Average age 2019: 29

 

UC Irvine (Merage) 

Average age 2019 : 28

Middle 80% range age (years) : 

From 24 to 40

 

UCLA (Anderson) 

Average age 2017 : 24

Middle 80% range age (years) : 

From 21 to 30

 

UNC - Chapel Hill (Kenan-Flagler) 

Average age: 28

 

University of Arizona (Eller) 

Average age 2019 : 29

 

University of Chicago (Booth) 

Average age 2019 : 28

 

University of Connecticut 

Average age 2018 : 27

 

University of Florida 

Average age: 27

 

University of Georgia (Terry) 

Average age 2019 : 26

Middle 80% range (years) : 

From 21 to 34

 

University of Iowa (Tippie) 

Average age: 34

Middle 80% range age (years) : 

From 26 to 44

 

University of Maryland (Smith) 

Average age 2019 : 28

 

University of Michigan (Ross) 

Average age 2019 : 28

 

University of Minnesota (Carlson) 

Average age 2019: 29

 

University of Notre Dame (Mendoza) 

Average age 2019: 29

 

University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) 

Average age 2019: 28

 

University of Pittsburgh (Katz) 

Average age 2019 : 26

 

University of South Carolina (Moore)

Average age 2017 : 31

 

University of Southern California (Marshall) 

Average age 2019: 29

 

University of Tennessee at Knoxville 

Average age 2019 : 27

 

University of Virginia (Darden) 

Average age 2019 : 27

 

University of Washington 

Average age 2019: 29

Middle 80% range age (years) : 

From 24 to 40

 

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Average age 2019 : 28

 

Vanderbilt University (Owen) 

Average age 2019 : 28

Middle 80% range age (years) : 

From 21 to 36

 

Wake Forest University (Babcock)

Average age 2019: 28

 Middle 80% range age (years) : 

From 25 to 32

 

Washington University (Olin) 

Average age 2018: 28

 

William and Mary (Mason)

Average age 2019 : 27

 

Yale University 

Average age 2019: 28

 

 

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