Orientation

Orientation is the required onboarding week (or days) at the start of an MBA. The school puts the cohort in one place, assigns learning teams, runs honor-code and tool training, and starts the social graph. Yale SOM’s bulletin treats an orientation curriculum as a degree requirement, not a party.

It is easy to dismiss because there is no midterm. The people you meet this week sit next to you in every core.

How it works

Days mix logistics and manufactured bonding: ID cards, case-class norms, a first team exercise, club fairs, a dean’s speech. International students often arrive earlier for visa and housing reasons. Pre-term may overlap the same week for people who failed a diagnostic.

Recruiting talk leaks in immediately. Career services may ban formal OCR during orientation and still lose that fight in the hallway.

Example: a four-day orientation includes a two-hour team simulation on day two. The team that treats it as camp theater learns on day three that faculty are watching process. The team that assigns roles and writes a one-page recap has already started the behavior the core will grade.

How it differs

Pre-term is coursework. Orientation is onboarding. A separate international student welcome is usually logistics. Reunion is the other end of the same community.

Common errors

Skipping required sessions because travel was booked tight. Using the week only to hunt consulting club officers. Missing the honor-code briefing and then being surprised by collaboration rules.

Honor-code briefings are not theater. Collaboration rules in case courses are enforced, and orientation is when they are read aloud. Students who skip that session still signed the code when they deposited. Travel that lands after the required day is a registrar problem, not a club-fair problem. Book the flight to the required start, not to the party.