Darden Graduate School of Business Administration

The Darden School of Business, founded in 1954, is the graduate business school associated with the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Darden School is (in the Dean's words) "high touch, high tone, high octane". It is named after Colgate Whitehead Darden, Jr., a former Democratic congressman, governor of Virginia, and president of the University of Virginia.

Darden MBA

Darden offers a two-year Master of Business Administration (MBA) program that relies heavily on case-based teaching methods (see Case Study Analysis), similar to teaching methods used in many law schools and at Harvard Business School. Darden teaches solely through the case method, one of the few prominent schools to do so. The Darden case method relies heavily on strong preparation (done both on an individual basis and group basis) and deep discussions within Sections.

The school is known for its particular strength in General Management, and it is regularly ranked by Business Week, the Economist Intelligence Unit, Forbes, US News and World Report and other sources as a top business school in the world.

In 2002, Darden expanded the class size by 20% from 250 to over 300. Darden's Dean, as of January 2011, is Robert Bruner, who is also the school's Distinguished Professor of Business Administration.

Darden's top student award is the Samuel Forrest Hyde Memorial Fellowship, which is awarded by the faculty to the first-year student who has contributed the...
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