On April 9, the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego announced a new $100 million gift from philanthropists Evelyn and Ernest Rady—one of the largest donations ever to a US business school, and especially significant given the small size of the program, which was founded only a decade ago. The Rady Family Foundation has previously made several large gifts to the school, including $30 million in 2004, which helped establish and grow the business school at UCSD.
According to Robert Sullivan, the Dean of the Rady School, the new gift will go towards attracting top faculty, endowing scholarships and fellowships to bring in high achieving students, developing institutes, and creating a new master’s program in “Big Data.” The school hopes to continue capitalizing on UCSD’s strengths in innovation and the health sciences.
The Rady School is a small program (only 57 entering MBA students in 2014), with a high proportion of international students. For the most recent class, the median GMAT score was 680 and median GPA was 3.4. Tuition for California residents is $44,000, and $49,000 for out-of-state students. In addition to the full and part-time MBA programs, the school also offers a PhD and Master of Finance, and will soon launch master’s degrees in Business Analytics and Accounting. The most recent Rady gift will help develop these programs as well.
Evelyn and Ernest Rady are active in the San Diego community and have funded many organizations, including the Rady Children’s Hospital, Scripps Health and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.
The Rady School has been steadily rising in the rankings—placing 51st overall in BusinessWeek’s B-School rankings in 2014, and 1st for Intellectual Capital. With this substantial gift, the university and the Rady School will have the means to grow their young program and continue to build their reputation.
Related Resources:
• Best MBA Program: A Guide to Selecting the Right One
• Business School Zones for Top Programs
• MBA Rankings: What You Need to Know