Top 3 things that CEIBS should improve on its MBA programme

Hi CEIBS alumni and friends,

I just read some critics about CEIBS lately in this forum. I would say there are quite a few fair points. Although I do believe that overall the school is the best in China based on its international exposure, academic standard and alumni network, I also believe there are significant space of improvement. Instead of having some meaningless argues with those who have hidden agenda, why dont we share our own perspectives on what could be improved as high priority. This could help the school to better understand the perception (and even reality) and help potential candidate to set the right expectation (rather than over-promising and under-delivering). What do you think?

Here is my list:

1. GCP

Rationale: Let's face the fact, it IS a joke...very few people could secure a job after GCP or even learn anything valuable. I personally was lucky enough to get a internship but I've heard and seen enough about its limitation. Let's admit that it doesn't work.

Action: It is true that not all 180+ students might be able to find an internship in the summer. But GCP is not the solution, at least not all of it. The school can help the students prepare internship starting from the 1st term, pro-actively connecting to future employees, and so on. Some GCP programs could still be kept, but with more commitment from the companies as well as the faculty to really making some impact -- to both students and companies.

2. Participation - classroom discussion

Rationale: Yes, we are Chinese and we don't feel comfortable speaking about pre-mature ideas in public. This also happens to a lot of Chinese studying in top US/Europe b-schools as far as I know. But participation is such a core element of MBA that you force yourself thinking logically and creatively, sharing ideas with friends with articulation and receiving honest feedback, all of which is so valuable in learning experience. To certain extent, it is the classroom discussion that reflects the true quality of an MBA program. The school has been emphasized a lot on this, but based on my experience in both CEIBS and international exchange it could be further improved.

Action: Pls forget about how much GMAT score an applicant could get -- my personal bias is that a threhold of 600 is good enough...Instead, pls make sure that the applicants do have the basic English skills, basic business sense and strongly willingness to participate. Don't exchange this with working experience -- someone has rich experience but doesn't want to share it with others adds no value to others in the programme...And then adjust the scoring system to put more wieghts on partcipation. One extreme but good example is a course I took in IESE -- 70% class participation with another 30% on a one-page story -- it turned out to be very valuable experience.

3. Participation - team projects

Rationale: Have I tried my best on all team projects? Definitely not. Was I the lousiest student in my class? Unfortunately, no, either. In my current industry, management consulting, it is critical to work as an effective team member (and leader as well). But when I reflect on what I could bring in from my experience in MBA in team projects, sometimes I am confused... We were busy, in reading cases, searching jobs, and having team dinners, etc, so we often counted on some "experts" in the team to work on certain subject. Ex-account worked on accounting projects, ex-marketers worked on marketing , and ex-consultants worked on strategy. Was it good team work? Maybe. Did you learn a lot from it? Probably not. Retrospectively speaking, I believe what we worked on as a team might be less important than how we worked, from which we could brind into our future career...

Action: I'm not sure what the school could do here. Some prof used the system of mutual rating as part of final score and I think it's a good idea. But more importantly, the school needs to emphasize and encourage effective team work and the students themselves need to define "team norms" in advance. BTW, I've remember that our class had defined our "value" in the orientation week as an exercise but we nenver mentioned that again during the next 18 months, if I remember correctly...

great post.

写的很好  只有一点我想替所有的亚洲学校澄清

那就是....GCR区域真的很少有企业提供summer intern, MBA level的更少.这应该是真正大家找不到intern的主因,因为真的太少了

一流IB/MC不算的话,industry提供MBA summer intern的数量每年应该低於五十吧,要让中欧 港中大 港科大的人去抢根本不可能每个人都有. 科大也有类似GCR的东西...这点科大同学都知道 我就不提了. 中大则有business practicum做, 不同点是BP是二月做到六月,而非暑假作.

GCP是中欧校方找了很多企业(应该是外企为主),请他们提供project给中欧ft MBA的学生来做.时间是暑假,所以也是另一个形式的summer intern

“没落实工作的数以十计”这么惨啊，就业没有保证，读mba似乎。。。

好的MBA就几家，不过500人，你是不是认为只有中欧，长江和北大BIMBA算是好的。那北大光华，清华，复旦，交大毕业的上千号人非跟你急不可。

大部分人读MBA本身的目的就是IB,MC,MT，或者获得原先有经验职位的提升，这并没有什么问题啊。MBA读完到底有多大作用是因人而异的，跟他先前的能力和工作经验息息相关。

Mba目前在中国的认同度不高，被很多企业认为是眼高手低的代名词。象LZ说的由于中国人先天比较含蓄些，在中国MBA课堂上讨论氛围一般，这样学习的效果大打折扣，这点跟美国TOP的mba相差很远。