When most people think of business school graduates, they think of young men in brown suits and big briefcases walking to their rows of desks decorated with post it notes, coffee cups and cluttered whiteboards in the background. Business Schools are now actively setting out to change that perception in the hopes they will attract new kinds of business school students and create a more diverse graduating class that is appealing to prospective employers and their ever growing expectations for more innovative, creative, fresh business leaders.

Harvard Business School launched a new admissions program in the Fall of 2007 called the HBS 2+2. The idea with this program is to target students that wouldn’t typically even consider Business School as an option. The press release issued for the program states that the program is primarily targeted to undergraduate juniors in an array of fields including “science, engineering, healthcare, government, public service”, and more. The idea of the program is to remarket the MBA and show students that a business degree can be useful and adaptable no matter what your undergraduate major is and does not confine you to a typical business career.

A lot of other schools are getting in on the game as well. Schools like Washington University in St. Louis are even adding programs to their business school course offerings. The Washington University’s Olin Business School recently added sports management classes to their menu in the hopes to not only provide more diverse courses for their existing student body, but to also attract students to a growing and popular niche of business.

In a response to the growing number of schools making over the MBA programs, the Educational Testing Service (ETS), who administers the GRE test, have been going through their own marketing re-haul in order to get in on the changes. Through outreach programs, test re-structuring, and good old fashioned PR, the ETS is trying to show schools how they can help increase not only applicants to schools, but also the diversity of applicants. Their push has been to primarily drive schools to accept both tests as a means of admission instead of one or the other. The ETS says that more women and undergraduates are more likely to take the GRE, as opposed to students who have been out of school and working for a while who are more likely to take the GMAT.

If you ever thought about returning to school and getting your MBA, now may be just the right time!