I caught the QS World MBA Tour last night in Berlin. There were a number of business school reps there, so I thought it might be a good opportunity to ask them something that’s on the minds of many in the FIND MBA community these days – applications and qualifications.

One of the questions that keeps coming up in our discussion board each year is “Why do I need work experience in order to get into business school?”

So, I asked around. Here’s what they said:

Marc Endrigat, Pepperdine University (Graziadio)
“If you don’t have any work experience, you’re not going to get as much out of the program. Until a couple of years ago, we used to not require work experience, but then the students and the professors said that the people who are in the program without work experience cannot contribute in the classroom, and they don’t get as much out of the classroom. If they don’t have any experience that they can relate the theories to, they’re not going to learn.”

“The work experience that someone brings into the program is usually going to be the biggest asset on their application…I would say that the quality and amount of work experience can supercede a lower GMAT score.”

Melissa Jones, INSEAD
“At INSEAD, you need a minimum of 2 years of work experience to get admitted to the program. The average of our students is 6 years. We just feel that bringing that experience to the classroom can bring so much more value than coming straight out of an undergrad. When you’re in the classroom, 50 percent of the learning comes from the professor and the other half comes from all your peers. So, if you have that experience, that’s when the learning really takes place.”

Spencer Altman, Alumni, HEC Paris
“It’s actually for everyone in the program, including the person who is applying … With all of the subjects that you cover in an MBA, it’s important – with 4, 5, 6, or in some cases 8 years (of work experience) – to be an expert in at least one of those subjects as some sort of reference point to apply to the rest. So, if you’re an accountant, to at least be able to say, okay, I know this.”

Hanne Jeppesen, Open University
“This is the leadership level, so you need to the actual experience to apply what we are teaching. If you go into a full-time MBA straight after university, you have no experience to apply it to, and you’ll come out at the end of it knowing all the theory about how to be a good manager and how to be a leader, but have no grip on about how to apply it to real life. When you learn theory, it’s important to have some idea in terms of how it applies to a real-life situation. You’ll be an expert on the theory of management, but you won’t be a manager.”

Photo: Annie Mole / Creative Commons

Another video! This one about some MBA programs in Los Angeles and San Diego. Enjoy!

MBA Programs in Southern California from FIND MBA on Vimeo.

More information about the schools mentioned in this video:
UCLA Anderson
USC Marshall
Pepperdine
University of San Diego (USD)
UC San Diego (UCSD) Rady
San Diego State (SDSU)

Check out our first video, a tour of some of the key MBA programs in Northern California!

MBA Programs in Northern California from FIND MBA on Vimeo.

More info about the schools mentioned in this video:
UC Berkeley Haas
San Francisco State University (SFSU)
University of San Francisco (USF) Masagung
Presidio School of Management
California College of the Arts
Stanford University
Santa Clara University

Marc Burbridge

Brazil’s future growth potential has long been considered colossal. That future is arriving today, making it an exciting time for international students there. This according to Marc Burbridge, who teaches negotiation and conflict resolution at several universities in Brazil, as well as the Omnium Global Executive MBA program and Business School São Paulo

Why do international students come to Brazil?
In the new economy – well, this has been going on for about five years – but particularly today, it has to do with the fact that Brazil is playing such a leading role in the G20. And it’s an upcoming economy.

There’s an expression in Brazil – that Brazil is the land of the future, and always will be. Brazilians make that joke about themselves because it always will be, because they’ll never get there. But I think that the future is arriving today.

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Sean Carpenter

Why an MBA in Brazil? We asked Sean Carpenter, an American who is currently pursuing an International MBA at the Fundação Instituto de Administração (FIA) at the University of São Paulo (USP).

So, why Brazil?

When I was looking into MBA programs, I wanted to attend a school abroad. I had a desire to work in an emerging market, one of the BRIC countries, but I didn’t have a strong interest to live in Russia, India, or China. When I saw this program, I thought it was a great idea, especially since my undergrad degree from Georgetown is in Latin American Studies. So, I visited the school and talked to professors, and thought, this is a good thing. My goal is, after graduation next year, to find a job, and to live and work here.

My whole thing was, if I want to learn the language and learn the culture, and to learn about doing business in Brazil, I need to be there, live it, and do it. Sometimes, I think people will go to schools in the U.S. or Europe and they come to Brazil to do business, and they just aren’t as successful as they could be because it’s a different way of doing things here.
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Marina Heck

São Paulo’s Escola de Administração de Empresas de São Paulo da Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV-EAESP) is one of five business schools in the OneMBA consortium. The OneMBA is an Executive MBA program where students attend classes and residencies on four different continents. Marina Heck, FGV-EAESP professor and OneMBA associate dean, explains the growing interest in emerging economies like her native Brazil.

How much of the OneMBA program is focused on acquainting students with emerging economies?

The program started with the idea of allowing international students to exchange their better practices. This client has been changing a lot recently, because interest in going abroad – specifically going to the United States or Europe – has decreased. We have been getting more calls from people interested in learning the Brazilian way, because they are interested in Brazil or other emerging economies.

And in Europe, we don’t just go to Rotterdam (where Erasmus RSM is located) for the residency; we go to Rotterdam AND Istanbul, because we think that Turkey is an exceptional example of a country that wants to be in Europe, isn’t yet, but is almost there. There are all these challenges that Turkey is facing that is very interesting to study from the business point of view.

When we go to Asia, we also spend a few days in India. We don’t have a member of the consortium in India, but we have a partner school that hosts a three-day residency there.

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Greg Hallman

How are MBA programs preparing finance-focused students for working in a crisis and its aftermath? We asked Greg F. Hallman, finance lecturer at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin.

What are some ways the current financial downturn has affected the content and teaching methodology in finance at McCombs?

In my view, the financial downturn has actually made teaching finance a little easier.  At its core, finance is the study of risk and return. The past couple of years in the market have given todays students a perfect illustration of risk and the downside to investing.  Now when we teach them that expected return is a payment for risk, I believe they can better understand the risk/return relationship.

The market’s performance has also made very clear the fact that no matter how good our models are we cannot see the future. This has, of course, always been true, but the troubles suffered by the big and generally smart banks have shown that even with a decent model of the market’s behavior unlikely events can and do occur to wreck the best laid plans.

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Markus Rudolf

The financial crisis has taken center stage in business school classrooms around the world. Rightfully so, says the finance chair at one of Germany’s leading business schools.

How is the financial crisis affecting the way you teach finance?

One positive thing about the things that are going on right now is that we can learn a lot from them. You can empirically analyze how markets react in extreme scenarios. This is something you find in our lectures. Our lectures are focused on recent developments anyway, but this year we are teaching a lot about the financial crisis.

Of course, we also have conferences where we invite academics, as well as professionals. One example was the Campus for Finance New Year Conference recently where we had a lot of CFOs and CEOs here, one Nobel laureate, and a lot of professors. We were talking for three entire days about the financial crisis – what the reasons for it are and what can be improved in the future in order to avoid these developments that we have right now.

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Clarissa Tan

Clarissa Tan left her native Singapore to pursue an MBA at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai. We asked her about her aspirations, and how it’s been observing the financial crisis through a Chinese lens.

Why did you decide to do an MBA in China?

I wanted to switch careers from business unit control (primarily accounting and control) to private equity.  There is substantial and increasing private equity activity in China compared to Singapore, which is why I am committed to building a career in China.

By doing an MBA in China, I can re-tool my skill sets, gain some China-specific knowledge of its economy and industries, and network with China-focused individuals.  Doing an MBA in China also gives me adequate time and opportunity to form friendships and bonds in China.

Has studying in China given you a unique perspective on global finance?

Yes, studying in China has given me a unique perspective on global finance. One example is to learn about and to see first-hand the Chinese perspective on the current financial crisis.

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Emily Gohn Cieri

Entrepreneurship cannot be just learned in the classroom, says Emily Gohn Cieri of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. You have to get out there and do it. Cieri is managing director of Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs at Wharton. We asked her how an MBA can help aspiring entrepreneurs.

How can an MBA benefit aspiring entrepreneurs?

Entrepreneurship cuts across every business discipline – management, marketing, operations, legal…. – studied in a business school. For an entrepreneur, it’s critical to have a broad understanding of these various disciplines, but also to understand how to these disciplines work together.

When an entrepreneur builds a business, he or she cannot focus only on one issue at a time, but must be able to understand how to integrate them. From my experience, many times students seek an MBA to complement their strong technical or engineering background or industry-specific skills, with a full range of business skills that are needed to be an effective entrepreneur.

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