Second-Year Curriculum

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mba second year student writing on white board

You’ve set a path toward your goals, established a foundation, and broadened your worldview. This next year, deepen your knowledge and define just what kind of leader you’ll become.

The second half of our program will push you further and expand your mindset beyond what you imagined. You’ll take all electives to round out your general management education, apply core concepts to practical problems, and pursue your interests and passions.

This is your time to test yourself and think boldly. After completing a combination of core and elective courses, you’ll possess the analytical and intuitive skills you need to lead with confidence and truly make a difference.

Electives

We add new electives and revise existing topics every year to reflect changes in the business world, social sector, and faculty’s interests. You’ll explore new subjects and strengthen your areas of expertise, so you’re ready to lead wherever you go.

Featured Courses

Courses by Academic Area

Explore Classes at Other Stanford Schools

This is about your potential, your goals, your path. We encourage you to take advantage of all Stanford University has to offer. Find areas of study and academic disciplines that will keep you energized toward your future — how you see it.

Go beyond the business school and take courses at any of Stanford’s six other schools: Education, Engineering, Humanities & Sciences, Law, Medicine, and Sustainability. You may also apply these units toward a joint or dual degree, specific to your desired expertise.

Yukiho Ishigami
MBA ’24

Design for Extreme Affordability made an impact. It’s offered at the design school, co-hosted by the GSB. You learn social entrepreneurship by design thinking. It really built a different way of thinking in my head and heart. I trained myself to see things from a macro point of view. But with design thinking, we start from empathy. We acknowledge the biases we have and all the aspects that have shaped our perspectives and try hard to understand the needs of users. It was very powerful and resonated with me and my own experience, and made me realize how I want to make changes in the world.

Ndirangu Bryan Maina
MBA ’25

Mergers and Acquisitions, co-taught by Safra Catz, the CEO of Oracle, was phenomenal. First of all, how can the instructor be the CEO of a large global company and still come to class every Friday and distill decades of knowledge for us? It’s such an honor. The course culminates in a negotiation between two teams, and by the time you get into this simulation, you’ve learned a lot about negotiating. She’s just brilliant. Her EQ, her IQ, everything. Very inspirational.

Based on 2024–2025 course offerings and subject to change.