In 1938, the Carroll School was founded as the College of Business Administration. At the invitation of Boston College president Father William J. McGarry, S.J., more than 30 prominent businessmen and bankers from Boston and New York City provided counsel to the school as members of an advisory committee. Seventy-two student candidates were selected from over 100 applications to begin study. Classes began on September 16, 1938 in a building, which housed other graduate programs, at 126 Newbury Street in downtown Boston. The business school's enrollment was about 330 by the time 52 students first graduated in June 1942. CSOM's home, Fulton Hall, is named for Father Robert Fulton, the first dean and twice president of Boston College. It was designed in the late 1940s in the collegiate gothic style by the Boston firm of Maginnis and Walsh. In addition to the James J. Byrnes Library, the building housed an industrial management laboratory in the basement that was considered innovative in the era of the "efficiency expert" and time-and-motion studies. In 1993, Fulton Hall underwent a major renovation by Svigals & Associates, a New Haven, Connecticut-based firm. The school was renamed in 1989 in honor of industrialist and alumnus Wallace E. Carroll of Katy Industries, whose $10 million donation was the largest private grant to the university at the time.
Undergraduate program
Admissions
Prospective Carroll School students apply directly to the school during their senior year of high school, either through the Early Decision or Regular Decision process. The acceptance rate for the CSOM was 25% for the Class of 2012, and the total of undergraduate business applicants was 6,729. 28% of admitted CSOM applicants chose to enroll in the school.
Academics
The Carroll School's undergraduate program offers a balance of both a liberal arts education and a general management curriculum. In addition to coursework for a student's declared concentration, undergraduates are expected to fulfill the university's core curriculum and CSOM's curriculum in general management, which encompasses courses in accounting, finance, operations management, marketing, and economics. Beginning with students of the Class of 2013, the school required its incoming freshmen to enroll in a course called "Portico." This course, while serving as an introduction to CSOM for new undergraduates, also serves to teach new students about business ethics through the readings of Plato, Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, and Ayn Rand. This course will supersede the previous version of the course, which was known as "Introduction to Ethics." Students may dual-concentrate within CSOM, pursue minors in either the Lynch School of Education or in the College of Arts and Sciences, enroll in the pre-med program, or even pursue a full major in the College of Arts and Sciences while enrolled as a student in CSOM. CSOM offers concentrations in accounting, accounting information systems, business analytics, corporate reporting, computer science, economics, entrepreneurship, finance, general management, information system, management leadership, marketing, and operations management.
Graduate program
Admissions
The admissions rate for the Carroll School's Class of 2019 was 39%. Applicants are required to take the GMAT exam. Of the admitted applicants, the median score was 637 and the middle 80% of scores ranged from 580 to 700.
Academics
The Carroll School's graduate program include: a Master of Business Administration, a Master of Science in Finance, a Master of Science in Accounting and a Doctor of Philosophy in Business Administration. All full-time M.B.A. students are required to complete a specialization area, such as Asset Management, Corporate Finance, or Global Management. There are more than 34,000 Carroll graduates working around the globe, and some of the notable alumni include Ronald Logue, chairman and former CEO of financial services firm State Street Corp., and Denis O’Brien, chairman of mobile phone network provider Digicel.
The Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College is a membership-based research and education center in the Carroll School of Management. The center provides knowledge and learning opportunities designed to help executives, managers and employees advance positive corporate citizenship from wherever they sit in the organization. It offers research, tools, conferences, networking, and executive education programs pertaining to issues of corporate citizenship/corporate social responsibility to corporate members worldwide. Much of its research is freely available to the public, and can be downloaded from its . The Center for Corporate Citizenship facilitates interchange among corporate responsibility thought leaders, "people who have been working within the system to create new institutions to put pressure on corporations to behave in ways that account for their core values." Its activities have been reported on by The New York Times,The Boston Globe, and the Boston Business Journal, as well as by online journals, such as CSRwire,Ethical Performance, and SocialFunds. The center also helped develop and launch the Journal of Corporate Citizenship, which focuses explicitly on integrating theory about corporate citizenship with management practice. Its sponsorship includes film festivals, international conferences, and research.
Boston College Chief Executives Club
The Boston College Chief Executives Club is a premier business forum program, in partnership with the Carroll School, that attracts chief executives from various fields as keynote speakers to address their peers. Among past speakers are Disney’s Bob Iger, Nike’s Mark Parker, IBM's Virginia Rometty, and home décor entrepreneur Martha Stewart. The club is governed by a Board of Governors drawn from Boston's business leadership. Club membership is exclusive to corporate membership.
