Kdub:
I would not say a high disadvantage but it does place additional pressure on that part of the application. I would apply now with 2 years of W/E. However, a critical question to address on the essays is what you have been doing lately since your separation from work. This is in conjunction with your longer term goals. Applicants are rejected because the school does not believe they have a game plan that is realistic for the school and actionable for the applicant.
HKUST is a great school for finance but will help you get your foot in the door in other areas such as mgmt consulting and intl business. I am not certain of its strength in marketing. The play that was successful this past year at HKUST was taking LA based RE analysts and speaking to the need for codified RE investment practices in the booming China region. Also, with LA being a major base for Chinese investors and for American investors in China, we spoke to how the applicants would use their relationships in the Chinese-LA community to help strengthen the schools relationships in LA and China. With HKUST, you are most likely going to be constrained to the Asia region. However, if you get into a large Chinese company with an international presence upon graduation, you should have not geographic restrictions. This is your backdoor to moving back to Canada for example.
Generally, I thought their admissions requirements were quite agreeable. For example, when one candidate got waitlisted, I encouraged him to call up to see how he could personally move the needle. This was all he needed, including another rec, to get him off the waitlist. The adcon member even told him what his achilles heel was. Basically, the interviewer had noted that she doubted his sincerity in wanting HKUST as he had mentioned USC as another school he was applying to (more on this, if you want.) I thought this was quite refreshing and honest. So once he addressed it directly, he was in.
If you want to talk to this current HKUST student, please let me know, I will reach out to him.
If you want to speak to me this week regarding your questions, please PM me and we can set up a time to speak for about an hour.
Respectfully,
Paul Lanzillotti
kdub09 wrote:
Thanks for your quick reply, Paul - I appreciate it!
With regards to the EU schools placing greater emphasis on quality of work experience, does this necessarily put students who have less work experience (i.e. me) at a large disadvantage? Rather, if I really want to study in EU, would I be better off working for another few years before applying?
With HKUST: Great to hear that you've had great experience and success in helping applicants get admitted there! I've read a lot about the school and its rising reputation within not only the global ranks, but particularly within Asia. I guess a question for you, since you seem to be quite familiar and knowledgeable about the school: what are the job prospects like in areas outside of Finance for students at HKUST? I know it's arguably one of the tops for finance within Asia, but how about for other functional areas such as international business, marketing, strategic management, or management consulting? Are graduates of HKUST's MBA program usually limited to stay and find work within Asia/HK/China afterwards? Or is there large mobility to work elsewhere internationally, for instance in Europe, or the US, or even Canada? And what are their admissions requirements like compared to EU schools or Canadian schools (more emphasis on which areas?)
I actually recently took a university-level Advanced Assurance course through distance education and got an A- in the course. Would it be wise to take a few others on top of this to further supplement my transcript?
Thanks Paul!!
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18 Feb 2010, 10:19
