My experiance with Hult SF

Here is my experience with Hult.
My wife got a very nice job offer at a large university in Sillicon Valley. So instead of searching for a job I decided that taking a MBA would properly be easier than to find a job. I had a very good job already so a MBA was not part of my career plans. Instead I thought the MBA could contribute to my “learning”. This has been my approach at Hult, to try to learn as much as possible. That is a big mistake at Hult. I have a master in finance/strategy already and there have been very little new compared to what I already knew. Much of what Hult teaches is on a bachelor level not due to bad professors but because the recruitment process is a joke.
I started to target MBA school in the Bay Area. Unfortunately my wife first got her job offer in April and Stanford / Berkeley closes for applications in February (whether I had gotten in is another question). Left was Hult, SFU, SJ state and Santa Clara. Santa Clara was by far my first priority but they mainly offer their MBA programs in the weekend/evening. Hult was then the highest rated school so that’s what I chose. And sorry to say, that was a mistake.
I did the GMAT and got and OK score (not great), but it was difficult especially the verbal part. Hult said that it was a requirement to get in, which is fair and expected. The funny part was just that when I arrived at Hult many of the other students did not needed to do the GMAT and they had very limited experience. I could understand if these students were a real asset to the school with executive experience. But no.
Hult also kindly gave me a “scholarship”. That was nice of them. I’m from northern Europe and it did not for a second occur to me that the tuition is for negotiation. So I was happy with the scholarship offered by Hult. Again the funny thing was that when I got to Hult I found out that they have given away massive scholarships (up to 60-70 pct) to students with limited experience or just because they came from the US. In fact some of the worst students at Hult most likely got the largest scholarships. I’m properly one of those that have paid the highest tuition of all students at Hult. It really makes you feel cheated and robbed.
To me recruiting is one of two major problems at Hult. The other problem is management. Properly 2/3 of the students should not have been accepted, including me. But all the recruiters care about is the money they bring into the school. Instead they should think about if the student-school relationship is the right fit. In my case it has not been. Any recruiter with respect for himself and limited understanding of the school would have seen that right away.
Everything is for negotiation at Hult. Hult claims it has this honour code of respect, mastery (and something else which I can not remember). But I have never seen so much cheating and free riding as at Hult. Especially the latter part has driven me crazy. Free riding is actable at Hult and management only in a very limited way react to it. You can easily get through Hult not doing anything.
And the grading is often very subjective (and I’m not complaining about my grades). There is no possibility to complain about a grade you think is unfair, your destiny is solely in the hands of the professor. Even more funny is something called the “Hult deans scholar”. These are special students that get to sit down with the dean and talk about life at Hult and career plans. These students are picked by the dean as “Hult ambassadors” and to represent the finest students at Hult. That is all fine. For some strange reason many of these students gets the highest grades. I have seen some of their presentations/exams and some of it was really bad. But funny enough they end with an A. To me it is just strange and untransparent.
To me management at Hult is the other big problem (besides recruiting). You can never be sure that management acts and stands by the decisions they make, or they do things in the best interest of the students. As an example, we were told that if we, as students, could source our own company for the high profiled Action Project at Hult we could pick our own team which is a large advantage given the recruitment problem described above. It turns out that executive management at Hult could not even make those kinds of promises as Action Projects was not their responsibility. As result as lot of time is wasted trying to recruit companies which only made the school and the students look bad. For my own part a major career opportunity with a Fortune 100 company was wasted due to this.
On the positive note, I think most of the teachers are on a good sometimes even on an excellent level. However, you can wonder how on earth it is possible to graduate with an MBA without being able to speak a somewhat understandable English, which some of the students don’t. Most professors come from Berkeley, SFU or other high profiled companies/institutes. No doubt many of them are good. Especially many of the professors that teach the electives are very good. I had the best accounting professor I have ever had. I can only recall two bad experiences. The mgmt. communication class was a complete joke to me and waste of time. The professor spent three hours on how to “book a meeting”. Another was a strategy project where the students were supposed to source their own clients to work for. But at the exam it seemed as if it was more important for the professor to sell in his own consultancy services than to discuss the actual project. All students felt this way. It was very unprofessional. But to be honest, besides the accounting class and a few other classes, I can not say I have learned a whole lot. Not because the professors are bad but simply because they need to set the level at such a low level so everybody can follow.
The dean keeps saying that the 1 year MBA programme is intense. I have never had so much time with my family as under this programme. Also the level of reading you are supposed to do is very limited compared to what I have been used to. And as soon as there was a lot of reading, the students complained and the professor gave in. The first month I even something called “toolbox”, which is a very slow start. Mainly the students are suppose to learn each other – but for a month….! Two days was more than enough.
I don’t know how to evaluate if an MBA is good or bad. I guess part of it is the MBA’s ability to lift you to a higher career stage and also teach you new things. I don’t think Hult does any of that. To me Hult SF sells a dream of working in the US or that the “high profile” MBA will help you. But only for a very limited number of the students this will be true. Most have properly like me wasted a year. Hult also forget to tell the real story. I wish somebody had done that last summer when I applied to Hult. So hopefully you can learn from my mistake.
If you decide, against my recommendation, to take a Hult MBA, my advice would be i) focus on the social aspect and forget the academic part. The students at Hult are all very nice and you will meet a lot of cool people from all over the world. Ii) Negotiate your tuition to the max iii) find your inner “free rider” gen. My biggest problem at Hult is that I do not have that “gen”.
I hope that Hult will improve in the future. It has the foundation for doing so. It has a good faculty and setup. It just needs to start taking management and recruitment serious.


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