Experiential learning from day one differentiates you in the marketplace.

In conjunction with our corporate partners, we provide our students with the immediate opportunity to put their business education to work through a live consulting project during the first year of study. This innovative approach provides both real-world experience and an opportunity to combine the knowledge and skills learned in their first year classes with their pre-program professional experience.

The Application of Core Teaching (ACT) Project is a unique year-long experiential learning project spanning the first year of the MBA program. Students generate and develop ideas for improving performance for one of several sponsor companies. Through course assignments focused on the company, students work in teams to generate several ideas and develop a synthesized proposal for one of them. At the end of the year, students present their final proposal in a competitive presentation format.



KEY BENEFITS FOR STUDENTS

• Provides immediate practical experience by applying what you are learning in the classroom to a real business, which significantly differentiates you from candidates from other schools for internship and job opportunities.
  
  
• Project components are integrated in course assignments, rather than in a standalone course, so deliverables are connected with your coursework and enable you to consider a business from multiple perspectives across courses as you take them.
  
  
• Helps prepare you for the rigor of unique experiential learning accelerators available to you.



DETAILS AND TIMELINE

When you arrive in the fall, you will be assigned to a learning team and will work together to bid on which of the ACT companies your team will focus on.

In the fall semester, you will work on course assignments focused on understanding and assessing your organization, customers, industry and market context. You will use this to develop an initial proposal for two ideas for improving performance over time, from categories like the ones shown on the right.

In the spring semester, you will use assignments involving deeper analysis and valuation tools to decide which idea you will focus on for your final project. You will then develop and present an implementation plan and a projected project valuation.

Final project presentations by all teams occur in early May at either UConn or the company facility.