One Milestone Achieved

Hurray!! I did it. Our results were out last Friday and I am pleased that all the hard work of last one year paid off. I have achieved an MBA with distinction from one of the best MBA programs in Europe. I must admit that I put more efforts in my first and last term and the results truly reflect it.

When I look back at my time at Warwick, from day one it has been a truly amazing experience. I am glad that I decided to go for it. You would agree that this is not the best time to be in the job market and nobody predicted this crisis, did you? The job market is probably not as bad as it looks like, at least in some sectors, and I am positive and hopeful that with a little bit of luck and hard work I can still get that offer letter. But I need to be patient as success will not come easy especially during the recession period as it is very difficult to convince employers that you are really value for their money. Anyways for now, heartiest congratulations to my cohort and thank you guys, I learnt a lot from you. I wish you all the luck in wherever and whatever you choose to do.

Summer Term Roundup!

This is the pre-final term of a year long intense program; already feel like I have learnt a lot of new things and much more to explore out there. This is in a way an unusual term, unlike previous two terms; a module runs from Monday morning to Friday evening. Not only that a class is a mix of full time, modular, and distance learning (DL) MBAs who travel from virtually every corner of the world to be here. Their approach to a module is slightly different than full timers as they look for more practical aspects in the module and also contribute with up to date first hand industry knowledge. In all three modules I did so far i.e. Entrepreneurial Finance (by far the best module of my MBA), Strategy & Practice, and Managerial Economics, the contribution of DL and Modular participant has been very useful. I am sure like me whole full time cohort would have learnt something from the experience of these director level individuals.

I have one more module, International Business, to go next week then my academic or perhaps taught part of MBA is over. Final term require us to do a consultancy project with a firm of your choice and then writing 25,000 words dissertation around it. A mere thought of writing 25,000 words scares me. My full time cohorts are finalising their projects with firms such as Motorola, Pepsico, Intel, Volkswagen, HBOS etc. I will start my project in the second week of June with one of the leading suppliers in telecommunications industry.

Weather permits, we will have our first barbeque party soon and this would also be an opportunity to meet all my classmates at a time which is a rare occasion considering the kind of term we had.

New to the Library?

Certainly I was new to the library until last couple of days. I rarely had been to library except for one or two very short visits to get some books. But university main library is much more than that especially after renovation.

We finished our term 2 classes as well group work (most importantly POM!!) last week. It was also one of the busiest weeks in my MBA so far; four group presentations in three days and if you add the written report, language classes and what not...I came out of it with some sort of satisfaction.

We have our term2 exams from next week; good news is I have only two and a couple of individual assignments (I chose my electives carefully did I?). I feel for the guys who have four exams, good luck to you!! The biggest distraction for my studies at the moment is technology, yes Internet!! So I decided to go to library, ohh boy!! To my pleasant surprise, it’s so much better place to study than at your home (at least for me). I am not a person who could study in library but these guys at Warwick care for you; the library is so purposely built that you will get a corner/area of your choice. It has a quiet postgraduate reading room, a big open study area on each of the five floor (again quiet), a colorful area near entrance (not so quiet though), a small cafe serving a decent coffee until 8 and so on. check library opening blog for more info.

So far, my study time at library seems to be effective...However, it's too early to claim anything...

Careers Week

This week is dedicated to personal and career development (PCD) related activities. It is designed to help us to prepare well for the coming recruitment activities whether it is an interview for a consultancy project/internship or a full time employment.

The week started with a very useful case study workshop on Monday followed by a one to one mock case interview with experienced recruitment consultants. Wednesday and Thursday were dedicated for mock competency based interviews. The good thing about these events is that since they are mock, you can try new things and see whether they work, moreover, unlike real interviews you get immediate feedback on your performance. In all these events, one thing is apparent that preparation is the key to success; this is especially true in case interviews – scariest of all. I have learnt a lot by participating in these events and looking forward to tomorrow mornings assessment centre workshop.

Some of my colleagues could not experience some of these events due to limited number of spaces but I hope PCD will and should provide them another opportunity.

Good luck to you for your real interviews. I am sure we all will do well in real situation as well.

We are in Top 30, So?

Warwick MBA climbs to no 29 in prestigious and arguably the most influential rankings for MBA education i.e. FT Global MBA rankings. You could talk about Business Week, which is mostly US focussed and Which MBA, which is relatively new and yet to make any real impact.

Firstly, many congratulations to all associated people with Warwick MBA. So, how does it matter to us if we are in top 30? Well a lot, if you are a prospective MBA student, where do you look first to decide on a B-school of your choice? If you are an employer, how do you decide which school to visit to beat the competition in "war of talent"? If you are a professor, apart from salary, what attracts you to take a teaching position at a B-school? These are the kind of questions for which you would look at FT rankings, wouldn’t you? Make no mistake this is just a starting point for your “long” research, but it's a good starting point because FT rankings arguably covers the areas that matters most or rather should matter most for a good MBA program (with some exceptions of course).

I am here not to defend or criticise FT rankings but can't avoid it, as right now, it is probably the most talked about thing at B-schools after global financial crisis and a fall in US sub-prime market.
Two most talked about B-school in this year’s rankings are Indian School of Business(ISB), which participated in the rankings for the first time and entered directly at no 20 with a bang, and second one is Judge Business School at Cambridge University, UK, which has moved into top 10 in just 10 yrs of inception. So, what is so special about these schools? It seems no one has the right answer for this question. May be the guys at FT can help us?

You can proceed to term 2

Today, we received our results for the term-1 and I can now officially proceed to term-2, four weeks of which I have already finished. Overall, I am satisfied with my result, scored two distinctions and scores very close to distinction in rest of the three modules; however, there is a scope for improvement.
Generally, the whole MBA class did very well in the exams, reports, and presentations. Economics preofessor is particularly very impressed by the quality of analysis and level of information presented in various individual reports. So, well done guys and good luck for term2.

Spring Term

Firstly a very happy new year 2008 to all of you and wish you all the luck this year. I have been missing from the blogging scene for just over a month. But I hope to change that and post here more frequently.

This term we have 2 core and 2 assessed electives with an option to choose an extra sit-in module without being assessed. I would call this term as “real” MBA term as most of my modules are focussed around strategy. My modules for this term are strategic advantage (core), modelling & analysis (core), operations strategy (elective), management of change (elective), and corporate finance (sit-in). I have taken the maximum as I don’t want to miss out on any of these key modules but this also means this term will be very hectic for me.

Apart from these five modules I am doing French level1, part of SSLC, POM project, running presentations club, looking for internship & jobs etc. I have already started to feel the heat as I am missing out on lots of pre-reading for lectures. Also, I have started to believe that this term is even more hectic than term1. My time management skills are under serious test here…