Babson College Top Questions

The largest class Babson offers has 40 students. Professors always know your name. If you skip class, expect them to make a comment, because they WILL notice -- classes are really that small. Required classes are a burden for most students, and you can really only start taking classes of your choice during your junior year. Required classes include finance, two economics classes, two accounting classes, marketing class, and more. Accounting/finance majors will love all of the help Babson provides in terms of internships and job-seeking. Other majors may have a harder time.

Academics are definitely challenging, but nothing that the average student can't handle. The foundation and intermediate curriculum provides an excellent background no matter you are interested in majoring in.The professors are very approachable and willing to help you in any way possible. They also often have real-world experience that can be extremely helpful in the understanding of various ideas and concepts. There is a lot of group work which can be challenging at times but it also gives you the opportunity to learn from multiple diverse perspectives.

The academics at Babson are exceptional and have given me a lot of confidence in my ability to think critically and problem solve. Since Babson is such a tight knit community, all of my professors know my name. I have loved taking law and philosophy classes while at Babson since they have really challenged my view of the world. I have also truly enjoyed my coursework in negotiations. While students can be competitive, I think that most of the competition is internal, with students looking to best themselves and constantly improve. I have great relationships with many of my professors from past classes with one professor helping me to find an internship and writing me letters of recommendation for law school.

The academics at Babson are fantastic, especially once you get out of freshman year. The student-professor ratio is absolutely awesome, and your ability to network with professors (many of them founders and CEOs in the biz world) is probably better than most schools. They'll know your name, and many other things. Just this past summer, one of my liberal arts professors from freshman commended me on the progress I had made and that she was glad I had really come into my own, despite not having her for a class since then. You will have many opportunities to get to know your professors, and virtually all of them are open to having lunch with you. Many of the students are super competitive, for good reason. Babson is a tough school. You will need to work extremely hard, putting in hours upon hours of work to get great grades. There will be clear grading separation between the average and the fantastic students. You are expected to participate in classes, and it's usually worth 20{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} of your final grade. Evenmoreso, participation in classes is often vital to the success of the class as many of our classes rely on vibrant class discussions. I'm taking a class now called Negotiations, and participation is necessary. Often we will have three-hour negotiations with others based off of prior negotiations (such as a famous virgin airlines vs. Boston negotiation). I'm a strategy and marketing major, and I love both. Strategy is one of the most popular majors, and marketing is close as Babson is considered #6 in marketing education. Finance, however, is our most popular major. I've really enjoyed all my classes in my majors and the atmosphere at Babson has led me to believe that i've grown here far more than I would have at any other school. If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask!

Babson is a competitive school to get into, so naturally the students that go here are extremely intelligent and competitive themselves. However, there is so much group work involved in classes at Babson that you learn to get along with your classmates and do not compete with them for grades, but instead with yourself to do better for everyone. Babson prides itself on taking the learning experience to the next level by making it unique and hands-on. I have found that that statement is completely accruate. Babson really tries to incorporate what you learn in class and apply it to the real-world. This is done your first year by starting a business as part of a class with 30 other students, called FME. Then it is continued sophomore year, when you take intermediate business classes. Your sophomore year, you take a company and basically consult for them. What you do is work with your peers and go on a tour of the company that you choose. On the tour you learn about their operations by physically seeing it and by hearing from the companies CEO and department vps. After that, you are given a month and you research a problem the business is having in their operations and present the solution to the CEOs and deparment vps. That class was one of the most valuable educational experiences I have ever had, and it is one that every Babson student most take.

Professors are very involved with students. But they are not only professors. They are hired for their experiences; which means, these are very successful people in their field that decided to teach and pass their knowledge on. We have professors that own several companies, or that have started and sold many of them, and we have others that were VC`s, etc...

Babson academics are amazing while very challenging. Don't come to Babson expecting an A on your essays or a 4.0 GPA. Its basically impossible. Class participation is HUGE. If you're not a talker, you'll get marked down. I've loved the professors for the most part and they will remember you after that class ends. They make themselves available for help and love to even give out their cell phone/home phone numbers. They live on their email and will answer any question all hours of the day. Babson does gear their education towards entreprenurship even if it isn't your concentration, but hey, that can't hurt for the real world.

It seems as though half the students really care about their GPA, while others seem to think they're going to own their own business anyway and their GPA isn't going to matter. Everyone is inherently smart, those that don't care about their GPA are really there for the classes and writing stellar papers isn't always on their agenda when they're trying to run their business out of their dorm rooms. There is always intellectual conversations going on, they may not be about philosophy and literature like some schools, but we discuss what is pertinent to us. We debate about politics, discuss the economy, stocks, etc. With such a diverse campus heated debates happen easily. In almost every class you take, you are almost guaranteed to have a group project. As big of a pain in the ass it tends to be, the reality is in the business world we're constantly going to be working in groups, so we might as well get used to it now.

Hours upon hours of studying on a daily basis. There isn't much free time at Babson, so the little amount of free time is cherished by the students.

I'm a finance/accounting major (concentration IM SORRY). Honestly, we learn a lot in class. The education we get here really is second to none. But I can't help but get unnerved by the classes I'm in: we're getting some of the best instruction from the some of the best professors in the entire world, and nearly everyone in the class is on their laptops, jerking off to facebook or stumbleupon or what have you. Then there's the whole competitive aspect, you know, the "I only studied for 10 minutes but I got an A" type attitude.... by some kids. Not everyone is like this, but you know the type and it makes you want to punch them in the face. Oh yeah, you'll be studying all day. For better or for worse. My professors are wonderful. They all know everyone's name, and they actually care.