Common question: What’s the difference between a Sloan Fellow and an MSx’er?

Well, the Stanford GSB rebranded the Sloan Fellows Program to the MSx Program (Masters of Science in Management for eXperienced Professionals) mid-way though the Class of 2014. So, we are the last class officially designated as “Sloan Fellows” and we’re also the first class that identifies with the MSx moniker.

Here’s an earlier blog post with details:

Stanford has rebranded the Stanford Sloan Masters program as the Stanford MSx – Masters of Science in Management for eXperienced professionals. It is certainly more descriptive, but I think their primary goal was to eliminate confusion of the Stanford Sloan program with MIT’s venerable business school.

With the new branding, students will still be known as Sloan Fellows – to carry forward the heritage of the Sloan vision of training mid-career executives. But the program will still be a full-time immersive experience, instead of the typical nights / weekend approach of the typical EMBA.

I still think the MS in Management is confusing – it will certainly not address all the questions for future students if the MSMgmt is equivalent to an MBA in future employers’ eyes. But in reality, I don’t think it matters. Since most of the accepted students probably have 10+ years experience, having “Stanford GSB” on your resume and being able to talk about the experience is certainly more important than the reader immediately understanding the difference between an MBA and the MSMgmt.

If you’re expecting to get your next job from a Monster.com posting, little things like this might be really important to you — but I think we’ll all be in a different league after this experience.