SMALL COHORT, HANDS-ON FOCUS
Scheller’s size shapes much of the student experience. Admissions leaders emphasize that students are not competing for access to faculty, career staff, or experiential opportunities.
“Compared to other programs, we have significantly more options for practical classes – the hands-on experiential learning,” Sharkey says. “Students are wanting that, and we can provide it for them.”
The program offers a wide range of applied, project-based courses, often tied to real companies and real problems, and the small cohort allows those experiences to be more individualized.
“They’re not lost in a sea of hundreds in a class,” Friedman says. “The individualized attention they can get is important.”
That structure also influences classroom dynamics and peer relationships, which the school describes as collaborative rather than competitive.
MAKING THE ROI ARGUMENT EXPLICIT
Georgia Tech’s Megan Friedman: “There’s this distinct lack of ego that you might expect from a business school student” at Scheller
Scheller is unusually direct about cost and value. The school publishes an MBA “Salary to Tuition Ratio” tool designed to help applicants compare tuition costs with reported salary outcomes across programs. The No. 1 ranked school currently: Scheller itself, with a median starting salary of $140K and out-of-state tuition and fees totaling $88,672.
The tool helps applicants who “are looking closely at the total cost for the program, the cost of living to be where you are, what is the placement, and what’s the average starting salary,” Sharkey says.
Candidates, of course, are always focused on total cost, cost of living, and post-MBA compensation – but in 2026 they are increasingly more willing to question whether higher-priced programs deliver meaningfully better outcomes. Scheller’s pitch is not framed around being inexpensive, but around being financially rational.
WOMEN, FAMILIES & PROGRAM CULTURE
Women make up 44% of Scheller’s current full-time MBA class, a record for the program. School leaders attribute that outcome to sustained outreach, partnerships such as Forté Foundation, and a community culture that emphasizes access and support.
They also point to Scheller’s reputation as family-friendly for a full-time MBA. Student-led parent networks, web content addressing motherhood during an MBA, and informal norms around accommodating parents are part of that environment. Admissions leaders stress that these features reflect community behavior rather than formal policy.
More broadly, they describe Scheller students as notably low-ego and collaborative – a trait they say the program both attracts and actively looks for during the admissions process.
“There’s this distinct lack of ego that you might expect from a business school student,” Friedman says. “It’s a very down-to-earth, grounded, authentic type of personality.”
A PROGRAM THAT OPERATES QUIETLY
Despite recent gains in rankings and outcomes, Scheller remains smaller and less visible than many peer programs. Admissions leaders acknowledge that the school “flies under the radar” at times, a byproduct of both size and positioning.
The opening of the new tower in Tech Square gives Scheller a larger physical presence, but the underlying strategy remains unchanged: leverage Georgia Tech’s technological DNA, Atlanta’s business ecosystem, and a tightly knit cohort to deliver an MBA experience defined more by access and application than by scale.
For Dean Anuj Mehrotra, the ambition is less about scale or visibility than about steady progress. Asked recently what he hoped the coming year would bring, he put it simply: “Make sure you do something good today. Leave it a better place than what you had earlier.”
DON’T MISS MEET THE GEORGIA TECH SCHELLER MBA CLASS OF 2026
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