Shall I quit IVEY?

jkmbe

agree, finish off your msf and try to get a good grade might help you in 2 ways, first it might land you a decent job, second with the master degree you might be able to apply for the best business schools, that being said, i still have one more question for you, how are you going to support yourself through an expensive mba on top of a master?

dingrhan

One of my friend, a Chinese guy, got offer from Ivey and INSEAD. He took offer from Ivey for he wanted to get his PR in Canada.  However, after 2 months trial, he quit Ivey and go to INSEAD next year. He spent one year in Canada for French and Spanish learnning...

As he said, Ivey was sucks...

jkmbe

i guess this thread can have explained the question earlier, whether it is important to visit the campus, ivey does not suck, it just might not be that suited for chinese students, i am really looking forward to raise all those issues at the world mba tour this sunday when i have a chance to meet their reps

watdahell

Well, Canadian Business Schools at the graduate level just are not that great. The ranking of Ivey has been slipping like crazy (They have been having issues getting high quality applicants). The only reason the ranking for Rotman and Schulich is going up is because their dean is good at marketing, not because they offer surperior education (most students/faculty will attest to that statement). I'll put it in simple terms: in Canada, we don't have crappy schools, but we do not have outstanding ones either. So, if you believe you'll be able to get into one of the top American schools (top 25), I would seriously recommend you to pursue ur degree in the US. If you land in stop the top 100s,then you may want to finish ur degree at Ivey first.

jkmbe

i am hoping you are not suggesting that ivey, rotman and york are not better than the 99th us business school, a lot of people can be offended by your statement, may i ask, which one the above three school have you attended in the past? who told you that those three schools can not attract top applicants?

jkmbe

At Rotman, a Job Is in the Script

Play-acted interviews and an emphasis on personal focus help MBAs find real-world jobs, says career-services director Karen Theriault

Karen Theriault is the director of the Corporate Connections Centre at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management (No. 5 in BusinessWeek's 2002 rankings of non-U.S. B-schools) at the laceType>UniversitylaceType> of laceName>TorontolaceName>. Theriault, who joined Rotman in 1998 after working with both private and nonprofit companies, says her goals as head of the center are simple: "We put every effort into ensuring that our students feel as though we're partnering with them, that we're on their side. Theriault recently spoke with Francesca DiMeglio, BusinessWeek Online's B-school project assistant. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation:

Q: If you had it your way, what are three things new MBAs would do before arriving at school?
A: I don't think it's rocket science: Develop your focus, and figure out how you can differentiate yourself from the MBAs around the world by finding your competitive advantage in the marketplace. Give some thought to what your next steps will be to connect with those who can help you get that job.

Q: How do you help students with their job search?
A: We're encouraging students to reach out on their own for jobs. That doesn't mean we don't have on-campus recruiting, of course. But we're lucky to be in Toronto, the capital of Canada's business and financial sector. We give students opportunities to do mock networking sessions to get their confidence up so they can focus on their job activity, and ask [potential employers] for what they want.

Q: How did the school help students overcome the inevitable obstacles that came with the recent economic downturn?
A: We had every student organization, the faculty, and administration actively seeking jobs for our students, especially for summer internships. We put the students' names and pictures on a large board. As they got their jobs or internships, we put the logo of the company beside their name. It gave everyone who came into the building a good idea of where everyone was going. Faculty could say, "This fellow is still looking, and I might be able to find something for him." We hired three MBA students this year to play a sales role for six weeks, after they finished their first year. The idea was to have them create awareness about the school and to get more job posts. We ended up with 40% more job postings this year than we had last year.

Q: How did 2004 graduates fare in the job market?
A: As of July 1, unofficially, about 76% of students had jobs. We're in the proces of...tracking down every single student who graduated to determine the exact figure. Our goal is to hit about 85% this year. It's definitely an improvement from last year.

Q: Are certain MBAs more successful than others? If so, who and why?
A: If you focus strictly on the technical skills, and [you] don't have the personality traits or training that's going to allow you talk yourself into a job and get out there and sell yourself in the marketplace, you're going to be at a distinct disadvantage. Also, students who have a background in the field that they want to go into have an advantage. Those who are trying to change both their industry and their function have difficulty.

Q: Is it possible, despite this tougher market, to change careers with flexibility?
A: If students can stay in the same function or have some readily transferable skills, then it's possible. There are, of course, companies looking for the basic MBA skills of strategic-thinking, decision-making, and risk-taking. Those companies are more amenable to taking people [who lack] previous on-the-job experience. But those [companies] are few and far between.

Q: What's the average starting salary for graduates?
A: Our starting salary, in Canadian dollars, is somewhere between $88,000 [$67,609 in U.S. dollars] and $90,000.

Q: Is there room for salary negotiation?
A: Students don't have nearly as strong a position in their negotiations as they [once] did. They're recognizing that they have to be more realistic in their expectations, and they're willing to take that first step with a little less consideration about salary than they used to. They're looking at this as a long-term, rather than a short-term, investment.

Q: How do you serve the school's part-time MBA students? How is it different from what you do for the full-timers?
A: The part-timers have access to all the online resources, training sessions, and job postings. They're not able to avail themselves of the training that goes on during the daytime...so I try to fit into their hours. I go into the classroom a couple of times a year offering to assist them on an individual basis.

Q: Do you do anything special for international students?
A: Before the program starts, we try to get international students familiar with the Canadian business environment and the cultural differences. We bring them downtown to [Toronto's] financial center, give them a tour, and offer opportunities to speak with potential employers. We offer all our students multicultural and English training.

This year, I traveled to China a couple of times. It's important to know more about the environments from which our students are coming so that I can readily help them.

Q: You've had an increase of students from China, right?
A: Yes. In the past couple of years, there has been an increase. But this year, our applications from China were down substantially.

Q: Are your MBAs facing visa problems?
A: There aren't nearly as many visa problems as there are in the U.S. Many of our students with international passports come with the intention of living here, and they gain residency status before they graduate, which allows them to compete in the job market more readily. However, students who don't have North American work experience find it more difficult to get jobs.

Q: You've mentioned that you're trying to get more marketing recruiters to visit campus. Do you have a plan to accomplish this goal?
A: This year, we hired a business-development specialist, who will put together a strategy for targeting industry sectors and will actively look for companies that are hiring in the marketing functions.

Q: Do you offer recruiters any perks?
A: We're trying and succeeding at giving the ultimate customer service to our recruiters, from the first phone call to the moment they walk out the door after interviewing a student. We want them to feel that that the Rotman school will bend over backward to give them everything they require to make their recruiting easy and effective. We have relationship managers, so each on-campus recruiter deals with one person who gets to know his needs well.

Q: When pitching to recruiters, how do you distinguish your MBAs from those at other B-schools?
A: Our school builds its reputation on integrative thinking. Our students are trained to look across disciplines to make business and strategic decisions. For the last two years, our students have participated in a simulated management challenge. Each simulated company has a real board of directors to whom our students present their findings on a particular problem or situation. In this slightly intimidating environment, they make presentations...and find a comfort level for selling themselves in the marketplace. It gives them a head start when they get out in the workplace. In addition, Toronto is a very multicultural city, and we have students who speak many languages and come from many different backgrounds.

watdahell

The only reason I wrote top 100 instead of top 50, which was the number i was going to write, was because there are the odd times that the three schools will have its rankings drop below 50. If you are curious, I did my undergrad at one of the above mentioned business schools. This opinion is reflective of many in the grad program, as well as the opinions from the students attending the other schools.

plus, i am not saying they cannot attract top applicants, but they have found it increasingly difficult to do so. I have met some of the brightest finance students from rotman, but there has been complaints among some that the admission office has been letting in more people who are not really qualified to attend the program.

[此贴子已经被作者于2005-9-24 23:22:14编辑过]

jkmbe

having a degree from a prestige business school does help someone's career to some extent, however, the end of the day, the key determining factors are a person's past experience, attitude and networking skills, the fact that some people are complaining does not justify that the above three schools are bad, as far as ranking is concerned, i found it difficult to recall a time when their rankings dropped below 50.

besides, you said you are a graduate from those 3 schools, and then you should probably be mature enough to realize that who really cares about the ever changing, self contradicting rankings? the most important thing is recruiters' opinion, do you believe that canadian companies will hire hbs/wharton/stanford graduates, the answer might be yes while certainly not as many as the amount they would hire locally.

i have been in canada for many years, canadians simply do like americans, a lot of them would rather stay in their own country even though they get paid more in us, of course there are exemptions, interestingly enough, i have even heard students at wharton, the number 1 school in the world, complaining about their program and worrying about their career prospective.

my suggestion is to have some faith in the top canadian business schools, because it doesn't matter where you are, there are always people who can excel, and of course those who love complaining.

[此贴子已经被作者于2005-9-25 6:58:09编辑过]

neo1001

以下是引用jkmbe在2005-9-24 8:59:00的发言：
agree, finish off your msf and try to get a good grade might help you in 2 ways, first it might land you a decent job, second with the master degree you might be able to apply for the best business schools, that being said, i still have one more question for you, how are you going to support yourself through an expensive mba on top of a master?

So u think that I should quit this MBA and just do the MSF? Well, but on the other hand, just 2 years and get 2 master degrees seems quite attractive...esp. compared with I quit MBA now and do MSF then maybe apply for MBA again some years later...another career break...( u cant always get what u want...ai)

But just second thought, well my undergrad major is business, u know, the courses in MBA are not quite difficult for me ( just as LOU ZHU said, soft skills may be more focused on here than technical skills), is it worth another career break to have an MBA, if I quit MBA now? esp. I have got an MSF degree, I mean, by that time, I should have solid finance knowlege.

U mean how I finance myself now? Well, BC gives me some scholarship, and u know, MSF and MBA have some overlapping courses, so the tuition for MBA/MSF is not much more than just doing an MBA here. And doing an MSF needs 3 semesters here while doing a dual prgm or doing just an MBA needs 4 semesters, so in terms of time and money, the dual prgm is quite attracitve...

Just heard that our new dean is quite ranking-oriented and will try his best to upgrade BC's ranking..

watdahell

I agree, at the end of the day, work experience is what counts. The point I would like to mention though, rankings can provide hints as to the class room envrionment, and the educational experience. In most cases, it is hard to deny that the private schools in the US have usually have smaller classes, and that one can establish better connections (there is a reason why there are many people who want to attend Harvard instead of Michigan). Plus, some people will not cease to complain until they are attending the so called "#1" institution. For such people, perhaps they will be happier attending another institution.  

As for the whole ranking mess, I don't want to go there. There has been this emphasis on rankings by some deans that have triggered negative consequences.

By the way, I was quite satisfied with the education I got. But with all these people promoting the strength of business schools in Canada (perhaps not in this discussion thread, but certainly true among other discussions), I wanted to balance things out.