University of Virginia
Darden School of Business Interview

The University of Virginia's Darden School of Business welcomed the largest MBA class in its history this fall. 338 first-year MBA students reported to orientation and classes this August, making the Class of 2008 almost 10 per cent larger than Darden's usual MBA cohort of 300 to 310 students.

Darden officials cited a growing economy, a more active outreach program, and a rebound in international students' interest in U.S. study as likely reasons for this growth in enrollment. They would be justified in adding Darden's ever-rising national profile to that list.

Darden has always enjoyed a a fearsome reputation for putting MBA students through a tough, two-year curriculum that produces some of the best management talent in the nation. Now it seems that a growing number of b-school applicants are catching on to the many other attractions Darden has to offer: an idyllic small town setting, a strong sense of community, excellent family support, and an invigorating intellectual and cultural environment.

Here is our August 2006 interview with Everette Fortner, Interim Director of Admissions and Director of Career Development at Darden.

How would you summarize the Darden experience overall?

The Darden experience is transformational. It is a comprehensive two years, with many building blocks that make up a comprehensive two-year experience.

Our Dean tells our incoming first year students to: "Trust the process," because the case method, at Darden in particular, is somewhat like a mosaic. You have over 500 different pictures of companies and experiences that managers have faced, and you have different course titles and sometimes courses and cases don't feel like they go together or that you are learning what you need to learn, but as time unfolds, you start to see how everything fits together and the repetition reinforces the lessons.

And at the end of your first year, and then again at the end of your second year, you can step back from the program and you can actually see the big picture. But when you're in it day to day, it's a rigorous, high-speed, intense, high-octane program. And it's hard to see the forest for the trees.

Can you talk about Darden's core values?

The Darden program is a "high-touch, high-tone, high-octane" MBA program and environment.

The high touch part speaks of the high level of engagement of the various constituents at Darden. There are a lot of interactions between students, faculty and staff, more than you'll see in most business school programs.

This high level of interaction is seen in many places: the Learning Teams that you're assigned to in your first year, the First Year section you're assigned to that lasts most of the first year, the faculty/student interaction at Darden's "First Coffee," these are just a few examples. At Darden we build a collaborative team environment. Our faculty doesn't have office hours; they are always available. Students interact with faculty here more than just about any other school. Our faculty doesn't have teaching assistants or graders, so your exams will be graded, and you'll get feedback, directly from your faculty member. So that's all under the umbrella of high touch.

This notion of high tone refers to the "pitch" at which Darden operates, in a number of dimensions. Darden is "high tone" in its approach to ethics. The honor code at Darden is a critical part of how we operate, and has a long tradition here at the University of Virginia. For example, all student exams are take home exams, which allows all students to work in the environment in which they do their best work, and not have to worry about how others are taking their exams. Also, there is a strong sense of ethics that Darden has had since its founding. Darden houses the "Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethic," which is comprised of leading CEOs in America. It's run by one of our professors, Professor Ed Freeman, a renowned ethicist. Further, Darden was one of the first programs to have a required, graded ethics program in the first year, and while many schools have added an ethics curriculum in their first year, most of them are not rated. Darden's is.

The other part of high-tone is we're not just a "technocrat trainer." We do dive deep into functions—great financial skills, great marketing, operations, quantitative skills—but we're a leadership program bolted on top of that. In every class, from the very beginning, we teach what's called the "leadership point of view." We teach students to take a leader's point of view for this situation, and that makes a difference in how we approach every business situation. You're not just looking at, in a finance class, whether or not you should make an acquisition, but what should a leader be looking at when making this acquisition, not just the financials, but the people and all the other ramifications involved.

The last part of that is high octane. Darden is a rigorous program. We have over 500 cases in just two years, and we don't apologize for that. The people we are seeking are really seeking to stretch themselves. We believe students learn best when they stretch themselves. So we do that in this high-octane environment.

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