Cornell University: Johnson

Johnson Cornell University, also known as the Samuel Curtis (SC) Johnson Graduate School of Management is the graduate business school of SC Johnson College of Business at Cornell University, a private Ivy League university headquartered in Ithaca, New York.

Established in 1946 as the School of Business and Public Administration, the school gained its current name in 1984 after a $20 million donation from S.C. Johnson & Son founder Samuel Curtis Johnson. At the time this was the largest gift ever given to any business school in the world.

The school is housed in a 19th century high Victorian Gothic building known as Sage Hall, central to Cornell’s main campus. Sage includes a trading floor, an executive lounge, a management library, a cafe, student and faculty lounges, a parlour, 38 breakout rooms, two phone booths, showers, shoe shining, and a dry cleaning out-service. Each doctoral student is provided their own office and MBA students are given a locker.

The Boas Trading Room provides real-time stock quotes, international data feeds, and financial analysis software valued at more than $1.8 million.

The two-year full-time MBA programme sees students complete their compulsory core models early, in an intense first semester, before specialising in the second semester.

There is a week-long maths boot camp before the course for those who do not have a business background. Orientation involves a two-week leadership course ending in the Johnson Outdoor Experience (JOE), two-days of adventure activities in the foothills of the Finger Lakes, a group of lakes in Central New York.