Calling all Oxford Said MBA Applicants: 2022 Intake [Class of 2023]

Current Said Business School MBA student here. I would strongly discourage anybody from attending this MBA program. Here are my general reasons:

(1) Poor administrative and career support. Recruitment is pretty much left up to the individual students to navigate. Consulting placement into MBB is very lackluster (I think we only had 1 or 2 into McKinsey, 1 or 2 into Bain, and 0 BCG), and investment banking recruiting is non-existent. To top everything off, our MBA head program director jumped ship (left) in the beginning of the year, and the administration has been a nightmare from the inside-out.
(2) Teaching is very lackluster in content. Professors actively discourage students from engaging in anything beyond surface level discussions, and most case questions that we receive for class are just pure reading comprehension checks. You can believe me when I say this, because I took the academics somewhat seriously and am distinction-track.
(3) Access to the broader Oxford ecosystem is a marketing gimmick and doesn’t actually exist. Said doesn’t really make an effort to engage with the broader university ecosystem, despite them touting that they might do so. Students this year (and in all years prior) have complained about this very point, and the administration has still made no effort to help put on events for business school students to connect with other students. Once again, this is a very self-directed effort that you will have to make here, and the administration put in measures to actively discourage such behavior (e.g. you are not allowed to bring non-MBAs into the business school building, you will never have classes with non-MBA students, and the broader university look down on MBAs as the "ugly ducklings" of the Oxford ecosystem)
(4) The school faculty and administration are discriminatory towards certain student demographics. There have been several occasions where many of my classmates and good colleagues have faced unfortunate acts of discrimination, including professors addressing colleagues by other colleague’s names who are of the same ethnicity, building staff presumptuously assuming that MBAs are not students and acting hostile towards such students, and very unfortunate virtue signaling on behalf of the faculty to show that they care about diversity and inclusion efforts on the foreground, while such discriminatory acts continue to persist and are not acted upon in the background.


In retrospect, even if I had to take a worse ranked MBA program, I hands down would have. This has been an utterly disappointing year for myself, and to those of you who will enroll into the 2021-2022 cohort, good luck with your experience... you’ll need it.

Hi,

Does anyone have any clarity regarding the waiver for TOEFL/IELTS, given the recent changes introduced by the school?

Hello - quick question about the Employment History section of the application portal: Under the Select ’Add New’ and add details of your current role section, do we put all roles or just our current and the CV upload covers the rest? I know the next section is to define current role only but just want to confirm whether I need to add all employment history. Thanks!

Does anyone know what the first 2 Kira online interview questions will be this year? I understand it will be the same for all of us.