Curriculum Second Year
In the Second Year (SY), electives and Darden Business Projects take the MBA program in a new direction. Although there are no concentrations at Darden, students create their SY curriculum based on their personal interests and professional goals. Students choose from a diverse selection of over 100 electives, from traditional options such as corporate finance, leading strategic change, and system dynamics, to courses focused on such increasingly important competencies as managing teams and business and sustainability. While learning teams no longer meet officially, members typically remain close and often get together to informally discuss cases.
The Second Year of the MBA program consists of 20 elective courses and is divided into four quarters with one-week sessions available in early January and mid-March. SY students also have the option of taking courses from other schools at the University of Virginia or participating in several overseas exchange programs. All students must take at least one leadership elective during the Second Year. The average number of students per SY class is 37 (ranging from 5 to 120) instead of the usual 60-65 for First Year sections, which allows for greater personal interaction with the professors.
Second Year Electives Video
The following video highlights several Second Year electives. Classes featured include: Managerial Psychology, Social Responsibility & Entrepreneurship, Global Business Experiences & exchange programs, Leadership, Ethics & Theater, Jefferson Reading Seminar, BioInnovation, and Hot Topics in Finance.
Faculty Presentations of Electives
Learn more about Second Year electives by watching the following presentations narrated by faculty area coordinators:
Highlights of the Second Year
Darden Business Projects (DBPs)
Second Years have the option of undertaking a Darden Business Project, which is a targeted program wherein students frame issues, analyze data, and present solutions in a real-world environment. Under the direction of a faculty advisor, DBP students devote between 60-180 hours on a project in one of the following three categories:
- Consulting DBP
Students who choose a consulting project can either select one of the School’s consulting business projects that focus on pressing managerial issues and involve many of the School’s best corporate partners, or they can develop a consulting assignment on their own. The projects engage teams of three to six students in the details of a challenging business issue faced by a company in the U.S. or abroad.
- Venturing DBP
Venturing projects challenge students to develop their own business ideas into proposals for new businesses. These projects generally include feasibility analysis and a plan for the venture’s development and funding.
- Case Development DBP
Case development projects encourage students, under faculty supervision, to produce a case appropriate for use in the MBA curriculum based on their analysis of a specific and significant managerial problem. The work centers on a current issue and usually involves interaction between students and the participating organization’s management team.
Hot Topics
Three very popular courses in the Second Year are Hot Topics in Finance, Hot Topics in Marketing, and Emerging Topics in Technology and Operations Management. These classes bring in industry experts (typically Darden alumni with over 15 years of experience) to discuss current issues in their companies or in the industry at large. The structure of the course is uniquely designed each time the class is offered in order to ensure the relevancy of the content to current and pressing business issues.
Reading Seminars in Management
Several small reading seminars are offered to expose students to a wide range of ideas about the practices of management. One of the most popular reading seminars meets in a pavilion on the University of Virginia’s historic Lawn and examines the life work of Thomas Jefferson by studying the many roles he played in the founding of our country and the parallels of the challenges he faced to business issues today.