As a second year MBA student at CEIBS, I would like to share my own experience studying at CEIBS , to help you be better informed when making your own life-changing B-school decision.
Before jumping to talk about my experience at CEIBS, I’d like to emphasize that it’s vitally important to think about your motivation(s) of pursing a MBA degree, since a MBA is quite expensive not only in money term, but also in terms of the opportunity cost. Think about what you could achieve in your career and how far you could go without “suspending” your career for almost 2 years. Some of my friends have been promoted or landed a perfect job in another industry without a MBA degree, and they do not have any plan to do a MBA. So I would say MBA is not for anyone, and you have to decide whether it’s for you.
Ok, no more cliché.
CEIBS MBA is an 18-month full-time program with around 200 intakes every year . Compared with most US b-school whose MBA programs are 22 month, CEIBS’ program is shorter and more condense. Compared with most European b-schools’ 10-13 month MBA program, CEIBS program has a 3 month summer internship period. Several years ago, CEIBS started to offer a 12 month option for those who will return to previous employer after graduation. But still, most students choose the 18 month option. Normally the program starts at early August, and finishes at April the year after next.
CEIBS separate the whole 18 month into 8 terms. The first four terms are mostly core courses. The first two to three are most intensive. I still remember many groups stayed up to 2-3 o’clock in midnight to finish the group work. Starting from term three, we could choose electives. In term four, there’s a so called “Integrated China Strategy Project” , where you form a team of 5-6 people to do a real-life consulting project for one of 30+ companies based on your own preference and your bidding score. My ICSP was to help an US medical devise company come up with an e-commerce strategy in China. It was a great learning experience for me, not only from an industry perspective, but also from an perspective in terms of how to interact with clients. In term 5 and 6, normally we start the summer internship. In term 7, 1/3-1/2 of CEIBS MBA would go for an overseas MBA exchange. CEIBS offers great opportunities for students who would like to go for an exchange. To just name a few, every year, CEIBS offers about 10 slots on Insead, 10 on IESE, 7-8 on LBS. For top US b-schools, 2-3 on Wharton, 3-4 on Kellogg, 2-3 on Chicago and etc. Starting from the exchange term, full time recruitment season starts. CEIBS has a really strong career development team and everyone would be assigned to a career consultant from day 1. You could basically talk with any consultant, but your assigned consultant has the responsibility to guide you through all the milestones, such as completing your career goals , submitting your CV, and etc. Starting from last year, there’s a big trend at CEIBS that increasing number of start-ups are looking for MBAs at CEIBS, while the biggest portion still go to non-Chinese multinational companies.
But the portion of MBA graduates choosing to go to Chinese MNCs such as Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu and JD is also rapidly increasing. I expect it will soon overtake the percentage of non-Chinese MNCs. And this is also a reflection of global economy, where Chinese companies, especially start-ups are propelling China’s GDP growth.
To sum up, I believe CEIBS is a great choice if you’re interest in learning deep knowledge on China or even thinking of working in China afterwards , while at the same time having a global perspective. Besides, Shanghai is a such a lovely city that you will fall in love once you ever lived here.
Hope my sharing could be of any help.
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Thanks for sharing this. I am very interested in applying to this college and working in China for a few years. I have a few questions that I hope you can answer:
- What fraction of the class would be non-East Asian?
- How necessary is knowledge of Mandarin before you join? I doubt people can learn such a difficult language within 18 months.
- How are the placements for non-Chinese students in China? What is the average package offered?
Hi atulsunilanand,
To answer your questions:
Q1-The percentage of non-Chinese students ( including students from mainland China, HK and Taiwan ) varies from batch to batch. But generally speaking, it's about 1/3 for each batch. In terms of Non-East Asian students, the percentage would be around 20%-25%, considering our batch have 10 students from South Korea, and 2 from Japan.
Q2-Few if there's any international students could speak even basic mandarin before MBA. So CEIBS has pre-MBA language course for every batch. Most international students would choose the pre-course as a good opportunity to learn Chinese and also mingle with peer students. Besides, CEIBS also requires non-mandarin speaker to pass a mandarin test before graduation. But don't worry. I heard the test is pretty easy.
Q3- For the job placement for non-Chinese students, from what i know, a big proportion would choose to work in consulting departments of big MNCs in China, such as Bayer, Ford, Baxter and etc, where English is used for daily work within the department, and some would choose Leadership Programs designed for MBAs. If I remember correctly, for my previous batch, an American student and a Spanish student choose Alibaba Global MBA Program, where they stated to work in Hangzhou( where Alibaba's headquarter is located) , and then have several international rotations including their home countries. And some would leverage the international exchange opportunity to land a job in a target country. CEIBS has career resources sharing agreement with Insead, IESE and Harvard. In terms of salary, generally speaking, the average starting annual salary is around 80-100 K USD ,without PPP adjusted. Considering the tuition fee is more of less half of that for a US top b-school, I would say it's an investment with pretty good ROI. :)
Steven
Hi Steven,
Thanks for a detailed review! One question - how intensive is the MBA in terms of daily work. You mentioned people staying up until 2-3 o'clock? What a typical day looks like? (morning 'til evening?)
Also, how big is the focus on China itself? From what you mentioned it seems to be pretty big? i.e. how much have you learned about China, Chinese business environment and doing business there?
Thanks!
Mike
Hi,
Thanks for the detailed insight into CEIBS. It was really helpful.
can you please share some insights into the resources that will help me accelerate my career in marketing especially marketing analytics.
Also how are the career prospects to work in Singapore post MBA
Regards
Swati