Simon 2nd year Chinese student take questions - hope it will not be late

Hi,

I used to get a lot from this forum, so I would like to make my contribution now.  Just hope it is not too late.

For your information, I came to Simon school, University of Rochester in 2003.  I am major in finance and corporate accounting, did my internship at Bausch & Lomb (headquarter at Rochester) last year, and will graduate this June.  After that, I am goning to work at New York City for Barcalys Capital.

About Simon or MBA, something now in my head are:

1.  You should know your strength, weakness, and objective clearly.  MBA is expensive and not for everyone, so think twice before go ahead.

2.  If you want to move forward in your profeesional career, US MBA in TOP schools are definitely very rewarding, and In my opinion, much better than Chinese B-schools.  My reasons are:

a.  What you learn here is the front edge knowledge of various business fields, and what you learn is what you can use in Wall Streeet or Fortune 100 right now.

b.  the language improvement is very important.

c. You have much more chances to get job opportunities in Wall Street or  Fortune 100 companies.  And, if you want o go back to China, just so you know, most Fortune 100 companies fill their MBA associates/managers in China at US, which means they hire people at US schools and send them back.

d. Simon is an excellent school in finance and accounting.  Its academic strengths in these fields are actually underestimated by its rankings because the general rank of the University is relatively low (about 40, close to NYU).  But, if you do some research, you will find the truth.  Two top journals in finance and accounting ( J of financial economics (top 1 or 2 in finance), J of financial accounting (top 1 in accounting)) were founded and now are still at Simon.  I picked more than 20 finance and accounting courses, and every professor and course was great.   

e.  Simon used to ignore the rankings.  But the new dean is very aggressive in terms of developing the school's networks and strengths, which has driven its USNEWS rank to jump from 36 to 23.  I believe the trend will continue, becuase the school does have potentials.

f.  Timing is very important for MBAs.  In good time, everyone finds good job.  But, the most important is yourself.  Chinese students at Simon almost all found jobs in 2003 and 2004 in US (even better than US locals), but they all did a lot of hard work.  Actually, in nowdays, no school can ensure you a job.

Ok, that is all now.  Questions are welcome.