The Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management is the graduate business school of Cornell University, a private Ivy League research university in Ithaca, New York. Established in 1946, Johnson is one of six Ivy League business schools and offers the smallest full‑time MBA cohort of all Ivy League MBA programs, fostering an intimate and collaborative academic environment while also maintaining the third lowest acceptance rate. The Cornell Master of Business Administration (MBA) also offers a one-year Tech MBA at Cornell Tech in New York City, as well as the Cornell 1+1 MBA program, combining one year in Ithaca followed by one year at Cornell Tech. In 1984, Samuel Curtis Johnson Jr. and his family donated $20 million to the school, and in 2017 Herbert Fisk Johnson donated $150 million, the third largest gift to a business school in history. The endowment gift resulted in the school's renaming in honor of Johnson’s grandfather, Samuel Curtis Johnson, Sr., the founder of S.C. Johnson.
Johnson Graduate School of Management consistently ranks among the top 10 MBA programs in the United States based on average total starting salary. Graduates of the Cornell MBA earned a median first-year salary of $175,000, in addition to a signing bonus of $38,826, with 77.9% reporting a sign-on bonus— ranking as the second highest total compensation among MBA programs in the United States in 2023. With more than 70% of graduates receiving a sign-on bonus on average, the Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management consistently ranks among the top 10 business schools in the United States based on average total starting salary and job offer success rate prior to graduation.
Cornell Johnson is known for its elite consulting placements, strong finance and investment banking outcomes, One-Year Tech MBA in New York City, immersion learning, and tight-knit cohorts. Johnson is especially recognized for its collaborative community and strong alumni ties across industries. With an acceptance rate of 27.1%, the Johnson Graduate School of Management is the seventh most selective business school in the United States, and one of the most selective business schools in the world.
The Johnson School is housed in Sage Hall and supports more than 80 full-time faculty members. There are 600 students in the full-time, two-year Master of Business Administration program in Ithaca, as well as 40 Ph.D. students, all advised by Johnson faculty. The Johnson School is known for its rural setting and small class size — with close proximity to New York City. As such, both factors, combined with Johnson's commitment to the two-year MBA program in Ithaca and one-year MBA at Cornell Tech, contribute to its high giving rate of 1 in 4 among the 15,000 global Cornell MBA alumni, the third highest alumni giving rate of all Ivy League business schools.
In 2017, Cornell University officially consolidated its two undergraduate business programs— the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management and the Nolan School of Hotel Administration — into the Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management, forming the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. The merger followed a $150 million donation from Herbert Fisk Johnson III, chairman and CEO of S.C. Johnson, accompanied by a 3:1 matching grant for a total contribution of $300 million to Cornell Johnson. Upon capitalization, this donation will raise Cornell Johnson's endowment to $692 million, ranking the Cornell MBA third in endowment per student within the Ivy League, and seventh in the world.
History
The Johnson School traces its beginnings to the university's founding in 1865. University co-founder Ezra Cornell proposed a Department of Trade and Commerce for the new university, which was "a radical departure from the day's conventional notions about higher education," as this proposal was made "sixteen years before Joseph Wharton endowed the nation's first collegiate business school at the University of Pennsylvania." At a university faculty meeting on October 2, 1868, Cornell co-founder and first president Andrew Dickson White, suggested the creation of a professorship in bookkeeping in the context of a larger proposal: the creation of a "commercial college." In the meantime, the Agriculture College continued to have a Department of Agricultural Economics that was established in 1909.
Formal movements towards a graduate business school began in 1914 when faculty in the NYS College of Agriculture convened the first meeting of the "Committee on a Commercial College". Led by economics professor Allyn Young, the committee recommended the creation of a "two-year graduate course leading to the Master's degree" in both business and public administration. Young had been trained at Harvard University, and the influence on the committee's discussion of its business school's creation only six years prior was apparent, as the committee's recommendations included instruction for graduate students only, selectivity in admissions, and integration into the larger university community.
The idea of a business school took a backseat to World War I and its effects on the Cornell population. Following the Armistice of 1918, third university president Jacob Gould Schurman called for the establishment of such a school, which he estimated would require $1 million of initial funding. However, financial difficulties surrounding the Great Depression would further delay its creation.
In 1941, the university faculty recommended the creation of a School of Business and Public Administration, and it was unanimously approved on December 10, 1941, three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Cornell courted Paul M. O'Leary, who earned his doctorate at Cornell and was a member of Franklin D. Roosevelt's "brain trust," to be dean of the new school. O'Leary leveraged an offer to be dean of the business school at the University of Minnesota in negotiations for the Cornell position, ultimately signing for a salary of $9,000.
In 1946, Cornell University opened the School of Business and Public Administration, holding classes in McGraw Hall and charging $200 for tuition for the first year. The school awarded two degrees—MBA and MPA—and its primary national recruiters included the Guaranty Trust Company of New York, Eastman Kodak, DuPont, General Electric, AT&T, and IBM. In 1950 it gained acceptance of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. O'Leary stepped down as dean of the business school in 1951 to become dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Melvin G. deChazeau was appointed acting dean until 1954, when Edward H. Litchfield became dean. Under Lichfield's tenure, a Ph.D. program was established, the academic journal Administrative Science Quarterly was created, a joint JD/MBA program with the Law School was organized, and the school was renamed the Graduate School of Business and Public Administration. Litchfield left three years later for the chancellorship at the University of Pittsburgh and was replaced by C. Stewart Sheppard in 1957, followed by William D. Carmichael in 1962. In 1964, the school was relocated to Malott Hall, which was specifically designed to house it.
During this period faculty divisions began to emerge, with three distinct groups vying for resources: business management, public administration, and healthcare administration (the Sloan Program). In 1983, the faculty voted to end instruction in the latter two fields and to change the school's name to the Graduate School of Management. The public administration program moved to the NYS College of Human Ecology. That same year, the school began offering a dual-degree MBA/MA in Asian Studies with Cornell's FALCON (Full-year Asian Language Concentration) program, to produce American MBAs with some knowledge of the Japanese language and culture gained through coursework in Ithaca and a required summer internship in Japan. The school also created an MBA/MEng, originally called the Program in Manufacturing Management (PIMM). At the same time, Curtis W. Tarr was appointed the dean of the school.
In 1984, Samuel Curtis Johnson, Jr. and his family donated $20 million to the school, which was renamed the S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management in honor of Johnson's grandfather, Samuel Curtis Johnson, Sr., the founder of S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc. The endowment gift to the university was, at the time, the largest gift to any business school in the world. In 1989, Alan G. Merten was appointed dean of the Johnson School. The year 1995 saw the creation of the Johnson School's first website, as well as the launch of its first 12-month option class. Merten left in 1996 to be President of George Mason University.
In 1998, the school was relocated to the newly renovated Sage Hall which had previously served as a dormitory, the school started the student-managed Cayuga MBA Fund, and the Parker Center for Investment Research was established. In 1999, the Johnson School began offering an Executive MBA. In 2004, the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise was established. L. Joseph Thomas was appointed interim dean in 2007 and eventually the official dean in 2008. In Fall 2010, the school was rebranded in logo and in name: the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University, or simply Johnson at Cornell University or Johnson. In 2010, the Emerging Markets Institute was founded. In 2010, the Emerging Markets Institute was established.
In 2011, Johnson hosted Facebook-sponsored 3-Day Startup (3DS), an event where participants worked to start a technology company over the course of three days. Later that year, a Johnson team consisting of student portfolio managers in the school's $10 million Cayuga MBA Fund won second place in CNBC's "MBA Face-Off" edition of its Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge, a nine-week, real-time fantasy stock and currency trading competition.
In 2012, Soumitra Dutta became dean of the school, followed by Mark W. Nelson after Dutta became dean of the new Cornell College of Business. In 2017, Cornell University officially consolidated its two undergraduate business schools— the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management and the Nolan School of Hotel Administration—into the Johnson Graduate School of Management forming the Cornell College of Business. Additionally, a $150 million donation from Herbert Fisk Johnson III, chairman and CEO of S.C. Johnson, alongside a 3:1 matching grant was given to the school for a total contribution of $300 million, resulting in the formation of the SC Johnson College of Business. As of 2017, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business boasts nearly 3,000 students and 220 faculty – the country's third-largest business school faculty.
Collectively, SC Johnson College of Business counts over 27,000 global alumni (both undergraduate and graduate) and is the fourth oldest of six Ivy League Business Schools. Additionally, Johnson publishes the academic journal Administrative Science Quarterly.
Campus
The two-year MBA program is housed entirely in Sage Hall, a 19th-century High Victorian Gothic building which was originally built as a women's dormitory. It is located near the center of Cornell's main campus, across the street from the Cornell School of Hotel Administration and the four-diamond Statler Hotel. Inside Sage are a management library, a café, an atrium, classrooms, an executive lounge, a trading floor, student and faculty lounges, and a parlor. There are 38 breakout rooms and two phone booths. The building also has showers, shoe shining, and out-service dry cleaning. Offices are provided for all faculty and doctoral students, and MBA students are all assigned a locker.