Very interesting to hear your take on HKUST and it's admissions goal. I will admit my resume reads very well, but personally I have carefully crafted my career since undergrad because my grades are less than optimal for a top tier school. I had dinner last night with a few other HKUST accepted students, alumni, and a few interviewing candidates. I can absolutely say that not everyone at the table was a banker or a consultant or of an 'easily place-able' background. A couple of people were not even business. While I believe your thought that HKUST is concerned about placement (and really, what school is not, since that is a major criterion of school selection), I don't think that a 'different' background in and of itself will not exclude you from being interviewed or accepted (just based on who was around the table). But true, you cannot be clueless and waffle on what you want to do. While someone has 2 years to 'discover themselves' at HBS, one only has 1 year at HKUST, so you better have a clear idea of what you want before you go in, or you better figure out fast.
I would also point out that MBA programs in Asia are still not as mature as the US or European programs, and they are going to focus on the immediate need at hand, which is 1) a solid educational platform, and 2) the basic fact that graduating students need jobs. I think you're being a bit harsh comparing HKUST to HBS. One school was founded in 1908 and the other has been around for 10 years (guessing). One school is located in the United States, where all the major corporations have MBA recruitment programs and schedules, and one is in Asia, where companies have no such en-masse recruitment program in place. From last night, I learned that while career services has a resume book for companies to flip through, there's a big emphasis on the student to network and make their own opportunities. So of course in an environment with such a lack of external 'infrastructure', the career services office is going to be very concerned about placement.
So I understand you are angry you didn't get accepted, and you are probably pretty pissed off at the institution and the rhetoric, and that has obviously made you very bitter. Or, perhaps you really enjoy completing applications, requesting recommendations, and paying fees for schools you never intend to attend even if accepted. At any rate, venting your frustrations by attempting to defame the school in a place where people are looking for mutual support and advice is probably not your best forum. Why would you come here to make people who have applied or been accepted feel bad about their decision?
xuexoa wrote:
Hi all,
I was dinged from HKUST w/o an interview but so were a lot of other peeps (and peepettes) with strong backgrounds.
From reading all the traffic on this thread and based on my own conversation with HKUST admissions staff, including the post grad admissions director, Mr. Tsang, and the some regional ambassadors, it seems to me that HKUST is a school that is particularly concerned with ensuring that its students land good jobs after the program and that they, correspondingly, promote the school through their achievements.
In fact, I'm too kind in using the above language...the school is downright way too paranoid about ensuring it selects the right people. Requesting that peeps who have been previously interviewed and who obviously have strong backgrounds and are qualified applicants participate in yet another career-focused interview with a career services person is totally ridiculous. It portrays the HKUST MBA program as being a "nanny" institution that micro-manages its students career choices and rates them on the basis of these future career choices for selection purposes.
The philosophy behind the process, along with the process itself, reeks. It portrays a rather stuffy and controlling atmosphere at the school, or at least within the admissions and career services fields. In contrast, a prominent school like HBS doesn't really give much of a damn about what an applicant's career goals are.
The HBS admissions director, whose comments are influential to the point that she is often quoted solely on a first name basis, told an audience that I was part of last year that its adcom doesn't particularly care for what an applicants career aspirations are because they want leaders...HBS and other schools look for leaders while HKUST seems to be acting as more of an outplacement agency, more concerned with ensuring that it can fill job vacancies than selecting the best overal leaders.
This is sad not only for the school, the quality of its student pool, but also for the people that are being asked to jump through more unannounced hoops by participating in a "career focused" 3rd interview...it's rather hard to fathom! I know, you're probably thinking, "well, HBS attracts and values younger applicants"...true, but the HBS career goals essay is totally optional. Most of the HBS alums who attended the session I was at overtly stated that they "had no idea what they wanted to do after b-school", and the HBS admission director seconded that by adding, "...and we don't expect candidates to have a very clear picture to know what they want to do afterward either."
Yes, HBS' program provides two years of growth and discovery while HKUST's is either 12- or 16-months...but still, going to b-school is largely about personal growth and discovery, and perhaps trying something new after the MBA that had not initially been envisioned at the start of the MBA...acceptance into b-school shouldn't be merely about convincing the career services and admissions folk that you can easily find a good post-MBA job in a sector that these people expect you to work in after graduation. MBAs were supposed to be about selecting and training those most prone to be enterprising and successful, not about determining whether your career plan accord with the expectations of Mr. Tsang and his motley crew.
I recall how Mr. Tsang kept telling me ad nauseam in person that it was "key to for HKUST to understand if and how its MBA program would be of aid to a particular candidate's career." All of the above sounds pretty routine for b-school admissions folks to say except that HKUST seems to be overly concerned about selecting only those candidates that will be easy to place in jobs after graduation. Perhaps this is due to the rather un-enterprising and unimaginative spirit of Mr. Tsang and his staff (padon the ad hominem nature of this comment but these were my views after meeting with the HKUST folk last year) or the fact that the HKUST staff remember the long days of 2008 when the unwanted Bentleys kept piling up in HK garages and the school's graduates couldn't get jobs.
An ambassador had also told me how HKUST had in the past accepted applicants who turned out to not be very good and were a disappointment. I don't know much more about this situation but it seems like the school had some issues with this in the past decade and that's partially why the ambassadors were instituted to help candidates submit better applications. Perhaps this issue impacts the paranoia I sense coming out of HKUST.
I hope the comparative example with HBS given above and my personal views on the matter resonate with some of you. I wouldn't have attended HKUST even if I were accepted. It's a fine school but it's really just a place where INSEAD and LBS rejects congregate, especially thosae with know Chinese language skills. Seriously, would you want to attend such a school? I met some European alums of HKUST who couldn't even speak about basic things like the weather in Chinese despite haveing taken the 2-week Putonghua training course at the beginning of the program. That 2-week intro is such a joke. Ironically, I met 2010 alums of HKUST who were planning "internet startups" that aimed to re-create Facebook and Expedia...hmm...haven't we seen this before? I guess everyone is considered a startup entrepreneur when they can’t find work after completing the HKUST MBA.
The funny thing is that these startups peeps who recently graduated from HKUST had good, solid technical and engineering jobs prior to attending HKUST. Given the fuzzy nature of their post-HKUST "startups", I find it perplexing that HKUST is so concerned about ensuring the post-MBA viability of the current batch of applicants that are being recalled for further interviewing, especially since HKUST has already taken so damn long to reach its decisions. The school works at a snails pace while places like CEIBS are lighting quick and to the point.
I know some may call me a h8r but it's not that simple, as there's some substance to my views on HKUST. I'm now even wondering whether I should exchange in to HKUST or whether ISB would be a better option.
For those not accepted by HKUST but accepted by CEIBS: Did you pay the deposit to CEIBS already to hold your spot prior to the R1 deposit deadline? If accepted by HKUST, would you really forego that deposit to attend HKUST? I don't know why HKUST says it's China-focused since all the true Sinophiles attend CEIBS over HKUST. Furthermore, HKUST is far from competing with the likes of INSEAD, LBS, and IMD in terms of its international scope. As a backup plan, there is always BeiDa’S School of Marxism? Did anyone else apply to its graduate program for foreign students?
I wish good luck to all those being interrogated by career services staff during the upcoming interviews.
Ciao,
30 Jan 2011, 04:26
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