Visit to Oxford and Cambridge MBA programs

It's interesting how the whole prospective can change within a short period of time. After my trip to the UK, after much more indepth research and information interviews with both schools and students the information was telling me that the one year programs are actually a better option is a lot of respects. It's about the 96% of the material taught in the conventional two year program compressed in a shorter time frame. Moreover, as it turns out, the timeframe is not that much shorter as the two year programs would like you to think. Typical two year program is 16 months with extended holidays and Fridays off in a lot of cases. I've heard number of students from different programs tell me that it's actually quite relaxing towards the end of their two year programs. So one year programs that are quite a norm in Europe and are a new animal in North America are not as scary as they look. As long as you understand all the facts are able to weight them according to your situation you will be able to make a right choice.

During my trip to London, UK I've arranged to meet with both Cambridge (Judge Business School: MBA) as well as Oxford (Oxford Saïd Business School). Both schools were very accommodating in arranging the meeting, however unfortunately my time wasn't the best and I didn't get to sit in any of the classes because of the Winter break. I was really impressed with Cambridge, member of the admissions staff her name was Natasha I believe gave a thorough tour of the facility and gave excellent questions to all of my answers. Overall my meeting confirmed the preliminary research which shows that his is an excellent school. The only challenge is the cost of living and the tuition itself. The tuition alone is about 26,000GBP on top of that there's a mandatory college fee which gives you access to the college of your choice (an additional 5,000GBP). There are also associated academic and living expenses. All in all the overall cost of the one year degree adds up to around $100,000 US. Which is pretty significant. The big advantage that they are trying to sell you is the international (European) doors that this school opens for you. Non the less I still believe that the cost of the MBA might be quite high.
Oxford on the other hand did not impress me as much, the admissions lady tried to avoid majority of my questions and tried to push their brand name as the main advantage of the school. However, honestly the fact that some college on campus was built in 1287 does not add any value to my future MBA degree. And the answer I liked the most was the one about financing the MBA: she said that its not uncommon for students parents or aunt/uncle to pay for the tuition... and again, how does that help me? So the whole attitude at Oxford did not impress me too much, and I safely crossed that school of my list as well.

Upon my arrival back to Canada I started researching one year North American programs much closer realizing that it was something that I became really interested in. Ivey was one of the schools that grabbed my immediate attention: One of the oldest MBA programs in Canada, as well as highly ranked internationally by both Business Week and Wall Street Journal. I have also done a quick calculation which showed me that actually both Ivey and Schulich cost approximately the same overall. In Schulich half of it goes towards the living expenses and at Ivey it goes towards the tuition. In either case it works out to be about 84K. Either for a year or for two years. One has to also consider the increased opportunity cost at Schulich due to the additional year of lost salaries.

Schulich MBA class visit

Schulich remained my number one choice for about a year. None the less, during that time I kept an open mind and kept digging into information about other schools. Majority of other interesting programs that I could afford took place outside United States and were accelerated one year programs. With that in mind, I decided to visit an MBA fair in Toronto, September '06.
For me, the value proposition of an MBA program consists of the following components, weighted differently, depending on ones priorities. First and the most important one is the knowledge made available to students and the approach used to relay that knowledge; academics is still the core value of each program. Then there are softer components, such as networking opportunities with your classmates and potential employers. There's also a brand name that each school loans to its alumni, quality of career services, practical experience opportunities, and finally, social activities.

My initial belief was that the traditional two year MBA at one of the top Canadian universities is the way to go. Those are generally at least a third cheaper than a comparable US based MBA. The cost of living is cheaper around here too. I also thought that the two year format ensures that you will have ample networking opportunities and enough time to successfully transition back from work to school environment. Moreover, the traditional program would not have to cut any corners. It's the way the MBA has been delivered in North America for quite a number of years, so why change a good thing?

Being ambitious as I am, I decided why not pay another visit to Schulich the same day as I was going to the MBA fare. Sit in couple of classes to see what it's all about down there. Again I was pretty impressed with the response from Schulich staff, however after the process got handed-off to a student ambassador it became much less apparent that my Schulich visit is going to be a well organized experience. At the end of the day they did arrange for me to watch two classes, first year Economics and a second year Brand Management class. I was warned before the class, by couple of students that the Economics class is one of the less interesting classes with hardly any class participation. I decided to keep that comment in mind when I sat in class. The class was indeed really dry with professor mumbling something about his red shirt and unsuccessfully trying to make both a joke and an economics example out of it. Students seemed extremely disengaged and disinterested, some surfing Facebook website and instant messaging each other. After the class I tried to analyze my experience. One comment that popped back in my mind was the answer I received a month before that: One year MBA vs. two year? on yahoo answers. I was told that two year MBA is good if you want to have some down time and play some golf, at the time I ignored the comment, however now that I could put it in the actual context it seemed so much more relevant. During the break between classes I was invited for lunch with the Dean of International MBA at Schulich, who tried to recruit me for his program. The International MBA adds a requirement to learn a foreign language and a mandatory work term in the summer. The program has only 35 people which might further minimize networking opportunities. I have to say that the Brand management class was much more energizing and interactive.

Later that day, at the MBA fair I talked to number of European business schools and decided that the trip to see some of them might be worth my time in the near future. In the mean time I could not stop thinking about the Economics class at Schulich.

Choosing between Asper, Rotman, and Schulich MBAs

I thought the hard part of my MBA process was over after I was done the GMAT. In retrospective, however, it turns out to be the easiest part of whole process as there are hardly any variables. Basically, you have to decide how much time you want to invest into preparing for it, and the rest is decided for you: you don't have to worry which test location you go to or which test to take. When it comes to figuring out which school to get your MBA from it becomes a much different process with great number of variables involved. Its not that different from a dating game, you pick a university you think would be your best choice, but might not accept you, and then you pick some that would probably accept you, but are not the best.

I started my process by considering a local school - Asper School of Business, at the University of Manitoba, Canada. Costing only $18,000Cdn it sounded like a good deal (well apart from the online, two month MBA degrees which as the ex Radio Shack CEO illustrated are not the most valuable degrees :). The reviews said Asper MBA it's not a bad degree if you want to stay in the province and on top of that it has only 15 students in the program and no dedicated teaching staff and out of 15 students 50% do not find a job within three months after the graduation... ouch, as the result that was the first University to get crossed off the list. With that in mind, I went to the next stage, looking at the rankings for MBA programs around the world and in Canada.

I found the MBA rankings really confusing to look at. Each one of them used different methodologies and as the result emphasized different things. One really has to dig deep to try to figure out what those numbers are telling you. I find it worth my while to also try figuring out the secondary signs, obvious one for example, if you want to work for a financial institution it's probably worth looking at the WSJ or FT rankings. Overall I found that there were four top tier MBA programs in Canada, offered through the following universities: Queens, Schulich (York University), Ivey (Western), Rotman (UofT).

I tried to narrow down my decision to the top two school and came to the following conclusions, Queens, which has consistently ranked at number one in International School ranking compiled by the Business Week magazine is a good school if you have a technical background and have been in the workforce for at least 7-8 years, as the average age of students there is 32. It a one year program and it didn't strike me as anything interesting right from the start. Western is the oldest MBA program in Canada and from what I could gather had been a pretty solid curriculum at least before the transition to a one year program. At that point I wasn't quite sure that one year program had everything that I was looking for out of the MBA. Moreover, I had a preference towards larger cities, so I decided to start my selection process with Schulich and Rotman. Both of those schools were highly ranked and well respected internationally, with Schulich having a bit better international reputation and Rotman being a very traditional destination for financial sector. I did my preliminary research and emailed both schools to arrange a visit. It took couple of days to get a response from either school. I liked Schulich's response way better, they were very accommodating with trying to arrange a school visit, while Rotman admissions just told me to come down there anytime I wanted.

Big advantage of Rotman School of Business at the University of Toronto is that it's located right in downtown Toronto and as the result is much easier to get to, from my experience. However, during my visit to Rotman, I was totally unimpressed by the admissions personal who seems very disorganized and unprepared to answer any questions. I found it was really hard to have a meaningful conversation about their MBA program. They told me that CIBC was the biggest recruiter on-campus every year and finances is what you will eat and breathe for the two years you are there. I was told that the rest of the information could be located on the website. I was quite disappointed and crossed Rotman of my list at that point, as I believe, the admissions is a face of an MBA. If the program director decided that they wanted to present a potential student with such a person then most likely that same approach going to resonate through the whole program. (Rotman MBA Blog)

My second visit was to the Schulich School of Business at the York University in Toronto. I was pleasantly surprised with the reception I received there, compared to my Rotman experience. I genuinely felt they were interested in me as a potential student, and directory of admissions spend more than an hour talking to me about advantages of the program. I very much enjoyed my visit there and moved Schulich to the top of my list. The only thing that I did not quite understand was the comment about the GMAT score. I was told that even though my GPA is not stellar I didn't have to aim high for the GMAT score and if I could achieve 660 or higher points I would pretty much be guaranteed a spot in the program. Add to that the fact that Schulich rarely interviews it's applicants, and you might get a questionable classmates that might have studied quite hard for the GMAT but lack in other key skills. Other than that I was very impressed with the program and the flexibility that it offers to its students in terms of electives, specializations, and switching between part- and full-time schedules. So as of June 2006 my number one choice became Schulich school of business.

On MBA rankings

I'm still very curious what caused such a large adjustment in Ivey MBA's ranking this year on the FT list (Globe and Mail article). From the looks of it there was no explicit changes in the methodology used for the FT rankings. And yet somehow there seems to be a very significant reshuffle of players on the board. Furthermore, how do you consolidate such information as a loss of 10 places on the FT list with a gain of 6 on the Business Week list of International schools. It surprising to see that gain correlates to the loss on the other. Personally I find it really confusing and mildly unrealistic. The best way to avoid the confusion is to search for alternative sources of information such as placement reports from each school and then visit the school, sit in classes, and talk to current students.

Ultimately MBA is the degree that will help you capitalize on your strengths, therefore it should feel like a right fit when you try it on. Same idea as with a pair of professional running shoes, if it's a size smaller it would not matter that it's the most technologically advanced shoe on the planet it will not help you win any races.

GMAT

Majority of people start their MBA research by looking at a variety of business programs and their corresponding admissions GMAT and GPA averages. As it turns out, GMAT and the GPA are pretty much the only quantitative data that potential students can measure themselves against. Moreover, GPA is a constant value for the majority of those looking at MBA program, which leaves GMAT score as the primary quantitative variable on your MBA application. GMAT is an interesting animal in itself. It is administered by GMAC (Graduate Management Admission Council®) not to be confused with GMAC Financial Services.

With enough practice, potential test takers feel that the questions themselves are not very hard. The hardest part comes while working on the timing for those questions. Like a perfect machine, your mind will have to spit out the correct answers at an average of one minute and thirty seconds, per question. The test is an adaptive creature and changes the difficulty of question depending on the answer to the previous question. Correct answer earns you a harder question. It's also rather hard to aim for a certain score as the particular score represents the difficulty level of the questions at which your answers are correct 50% of the time.

The following books might be worth taking a look at: ("Kaplan GMAT, 2007 Edition: Premier Program" and "Kaplan GMAT 800, 2006-2007").

The thing to keep in mind is the fact that GMAT score is an important but not the only part of your application. It’s all about keeping it balanced: GPA, GMAT, Work experience, and extracurricular activities.