User:Omnibus/Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management

The Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management is the business school of Rice University, and the sole school of Rice that exclusively teaches graduate students. Founded in 1974, the school did not award its first Master of Business Administration until 1985 and did not offer an Executive Education program until 1999. Facilities were lacking at the Jones school until 2003, when it moved into a new 167,000-square-foot, $60 million state-of-the-art building. It is over three times the size of the old faciility.

Located in Houston, there is great access to internship and full-time recruiters, and the cost of living and real estate in is roughly 1/3 that of New York City or San Francisco. Despite the buyout of Compaq and collapse of Enron, Houston remains a business and financial center and the fourth-largest city in the United States. The school recently achieved a 100% employment rate for its graduates, at an average salary of over $80,000 per year. Coupled with the 0% state income tax of Texas, the low cost of living living, and the low cost of housing, this means that it is likely that Rice MBAs go home with more money after graduation than those at better known schools such as Harvard Business School and The Wharton School.

Small in size with approximately 180 students per class, the Jones School has a very intimate culture. Each student knows each other and the faculty get to know the students. The low student-to-faculty ratio of 9:1 provides this environment of close working relationships.

The Jones School is best known for its Action Learning Project, instituted in 1999. Each January, first-year students bid on projects submitted by potential host companies. Halfway through the semester, students meet the rest of their 4-to-6 person team and find out which company they will be working with. There is no classwork for the last five weeks of the year, and this time is spent on-site at the sponsoring firm. The projects offered are a good mix, with good representation from airlines, energy, health care, nonprofits, and other industries.

Jones is the primary home of the Rice Business Plan Competition, also begun in 1999. This competition awards over $100,000 in cash and prizes, or roughly twice that of the MIT $50k Challenge. In 2004, the Rice Business Plan Competition became the largest intercollegiate business plan competition in the United States, based on the number of teams that competed on a single campus. It was in this year that it passed involvement levels at similar competitions at MIT and Duke University.

Recent top employers include Duke Energy, ExxonMobil, Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan Chase, Credit Suisse First Boston, BP, Shell, Conoco, Phillips, and Pantellos.