After writing about the best profs, is it time to write about the 20 odd subjects I studied in the past 20 odd months? No, not really, not unless some one asked for it! But as I near the end of this once-in-a-lifetime journey, I thought it would be nice to share some key highlights of my academic experience at NUS MBA.
My courses:
A no brainer isn't it. At $$$$ per class, this better be a key highlight!! :D
During my MBA, I made a deliberate, conscious choice of touching as many diverse aspects of a business as possible. While the Finance people worked well on their way to get mini-PhDs by doing every possible finance course offered by NUS MBA, and ditto with Marketing people (though they had very limited choices to be honest).... I tried to get as much breadth as I possibly could.
I tried to strike a balance between pure strategy courses, supply chain, finance and marketing, and quite a few off-beat courses. And while the learning from the typical courses was immense, I think that to me at least these courses added a whole lot of value and new dimensions to my business & behavioral understanding.
These courses were: Legal Issues in Business, Ethics & CSR, Negotiations, Asian Cultures & Religions, Management practicum with an NGO,
And the reason I have shared these specifically with you, is that students often don't realize their significance & either ignore these courses, or take them to get "a light course with easy grades". These courses just show you so many things you have never thought of before, if only you listen carefully.
Simulation games
We had to play simulation games in Corporate strategy, corporate entrepreneurship & Product&Brand Management (though I didn't take this course). My personal opinion, games are a LOT of hard work, immensely time consuming..but they truly provide exponential learning. As close to real life practice as you can get, games are a must, even if you want to kill yourself for taking the subject, when you have to play them every week! :)
Industry Talks
It doesn't matter if you have nothing to do with the topic, or if you don't want to make a career out of it; attend as many as your time permits. You will be surprised at the end of it all, how slowly all pieces start to fall into place in 1 big picture called a "business". I remember attending a talk to Carbon trading; now I am the one of the most Finance challenged MBAs in the history of MBA world; so obviously, I gave up after the first 1 hour. But the first 1 hour was general stuff about global warming, carbon emissions market and so on; and that was a lot of learning. Did I curse myself for the next 1 hour, sure! I still wish I could have slipped out after 1 hour and used that time for something more fruitful, but thats the price you have to pay I guess. Okay with 1000 things to do in your MBA, you can't attend a talk on hedge funds if you are hardcore marketing, & vice versa; but at least give it a try. You may be surprised at what you find.
Professor-Time
Take some time out every week to have a lunch with at least 1 prof you really like. I didn't do it as much as I would have liked to, but that 30 min - 45 min of offsite intellectually simulating conversation can add so much more value to the whole experience. And not just professors, include any one you like, the admissions person, your own career counselor, just talk to the canteen guy...I learned a lot about Singapore season cycle (whatever there is of it..:P) and its links to the various chinese festivals from Edward, the Western stall guy; and the Middle Eastern guy, he told me so much about Golf! ;)
Extra curricular
Especially event organizing. I organised / volunteered for tons of events, whether organised by student council (where it was my job to help!:P) , or alumni or the school; or at times even the university. I was one of the main organisers for Consultant Unplugged 2009 & Cerebration 2010. 2 of the biggest NUS MBA student driven events. And these events taught me so much more about management and people, than any classroom teaching could have. Each time it was like running a mini organisation with a target to meet. Yes, I cursed myself to no end when I was organising them, but honestly, in retrospect, the learning was monumental!
yeah other extra curriculars (aka 2 dance performances, blog editor etc. ) were good fun. They were hardwork too, but through those, it was more about having fun than learning.
NUS Libraries
A truly world class treasure of knowledge, NUS has many many libraries. Each housing 1000s of books easily. Just the NUS Business School library has 4 floors and 1000s of books on a wide variety of subjects. Now I am not much of a library person, all my life I have hardly ever stepped into one except for to pick up a novel to read. And since I started buying books, almost never. So for me the idea of having such a huge collection of books, reports, journals and what not is so daunting that I'd rather prefer google.
But this is where the magic steps in. Not only are ALL NUS libraries interconnected and online, which means that whatever book/journal you are looking for, if it exists anywhere in the 100s of 1000s of books all over the univ, you will find it; but its a very advanced s/w. You can reserve books online, locate them in the library, get them delivered to your dept library, even renew them online. Not just books, @ NUS MBA, I had access & training (!!) to all possible relevant databases, factiva, euromonitor, bloomberg, GMID, Osiris, you name it and I have been taught how to use it.
Too much information?? Drop the library your specific request! the library staff works very diligently to solve your specific queries, not about the library queries, specific info requests. I have written to them asking for complex historical industry data & reports and they have come back with the precise information within the same working day!!!!
I think the NUS Business School library staff can teach everyone a thing or two about customer service!
A definite highlight! and help I am going to miss soon :P
These are all I can think of at the moment, but what I have realized is, I am never able to recollect everything I did in my MBA at one go. When I had started my MBA I was convinced that I wanted to make the best use of it. Sure, I had a different "best use" in mind, but what actually transpired was even better! Its been a roller coaster that nothing could have ever prepared me for.
I personally believe MBA to be training ground to learn all aspects of a business, even the ones you don't know exist & never think about, and if you agree, then in your MBA you should strive for a holistic experience as well
My courses:
A no brainer isn't it. At $$$$ per class, this better be a key highlight!! :D
During my MBA, I made a deliberate, conscious choice of touching as many diverse aspects of a business as possible. While the Finance people worked well on their way to get mini-PhDs by doing every possible finance course offered by NUS MBA, and ditto with Marketing people (though they had very limited choices to be honest).... I tried to get as much breadth as I possibly could.
I tried to strike a balance between pure strategy courses, supply chain, finance and marketing, and quite a few off-beat courses. And while the learning from the typical courses was immense, I think that to me at least these courses added a whole lot of value and new dimensions to my business & behavioral understanding.
These courses were: Legal Issues in Business, Ethics & CSR, Negotiations, Asian Cultures & Religions, Management practicum with an NGO,
And the reason I have shared these specifically with you, is that students often don't realize their significance & either ignore these courses, or take them to get "a light course with easy grades". These courses just show you so many things you have never thought of before, if only you listen carefully.
Simulation games
We had to play simulation games in Corporate strategy, corporate entrepreneurship & Product&Brand Management (though I didn't take this course). My personal opinion, games are a LOT of hard work, immensely time consuming..but they truly provide exponential learning. As close to real life practice as you can get, games are a must, even if you want to kill yourself for taking the subject, when you have to play them every week! :)
Industry Talks
It doesn't matter if you have nothing to do with the topic, or if you don't want to make a career out of it; attend as many as your time permits. You will be surprised at the end of it all, how slowly all pieces start to fall into place in 1 big picture called a "business". I remember attending a talk to Carbon trading; now I am the one of the most Finance challenged MBAs in the history of MBA world; so obviously, I gave up after the first 1 hour. But the first 1 hour was general stuff about global warming, carbon emissions market and so on; and that was a lot of learning. Did I curse myself for the next 1 hour, sure! I still wish I could have slipped out after 1 hour and used that time for something more fruitful, but thats the price you have to pay I guess. Okay with 1000 things to do in your MBA, you can't attend a talk on hedge funds if you are hardcore marketing, & vice versa; but at least give it a try. You may be surprised at what you find.
Professor-Time
Take some time out every week to have a lunch with at least 1 prof you really like. I didn't do it as much as I would have liked to, but that 30 min - 45 min of offsite intellectually simulating conversation can add so much more value to the whole experience. And not just professors, include any one you like, the admissions person, your own career counselor, just talk to the canteen guy...I learned a lot about Singapore season cycle (whatever there is of it..:P) and its links to the various chinese festivals from Edward, the Western stall guy; and the Middle Eastern guy, he told me so much about Golf! ;)
Extra curricular
Especially event organizing. I organised / volunteered for tons of events, whether organised by student council (where it was my job to help!:P) , or alumni or the school; or at times even the university. I was one of the main organisers for Consultant Unplugged 2009 & Cerebration 2010. 2 of the biggest NUS MBA student driven events. And these events taught me so much more about management and people, than any classroom teaching could have. Each time it was like running a mini organisation with a target to meet. Yes, I cursed myself to no end when I was organising them, but honestly, in retrospect, the learning was monumental!
yeah other extra curriculars (aka 2 dance performances, blog editor etc. ) were good fun. They were hardwork too, but through those, it was more about having fun than learning.
NUS Libraries
A truly world class treasure of knowledge, NUS has many many libraries. Each housing 1000s of books easily. Just the NUS Business School library has 4 floors and 1000s of books on a wide variety of subjects. Now I am not much of a library person, all my life I have hardly ever stepped into one except for to pick up a novel to read. And since I started buying books, almost never. So for me the idea of having such a huge collection of books, reports, journals and what not is so daunting that I'd rather prefer google.
But this is where the magic steps in. Not only are ALL NUS libraries interconnected and online, which means that whatever book/journal you are looking for, if it exists anywhere in the 100s of 1000s of books all over the univ, you will find it; but its a very advanced s/w. You can reserve books online, locate them in the library, get them delivered to your dept library, even renew them online. Not just books, @ NUS MBA, I had access & training (!!) to all possible relevant databases, factiva, euromonitor, bloomberg, GMID, Osiris, you name it and I have been taught how to use it.
Too much information?? Drop the library your specific request! the library staff works very diligently to solve your specific queries, not about the library queries, specific info requests. I have written to them asking for complex historical industry data & reports and they have come back with the precise information within the same working day!!!!
I think the NUS Business School library staff can teach everyone a thing or two about customer service!
A definite highlight! and help I am going to miss soon :P
These are all I can think of at the moment, but what I have realized is, I am never able to recollect everything I did in my MBA at one go. When I had started my MBA I was convinced that I wanted to make the best use of it. Sure, I had a different "best use" in mind, but what actually transpired was even better! Its been a roller coaster that nothing could have ever prepared me for.
I personally believe MBA to be training ground to learn all aspects of a business, even the ones you don't know exist & never think about, and if you agree, then in your MBA you should strive for a holistic experience as well
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