Summary of the Cambridge MBA courses I studied: what I liked (and not), and how I had to be collaborative actually.

As I compared the Cambridge MBA with other schools in the previous post, I (finally) felt like objectively seeing the courses (recapping them might follow later).

In a retrospective review, I liked (and disliked) the following courses most:

• Top 2 
• Project: Global Consulting Project (MBA page / Example of Project Deliverables)
• Core Corporate Governance by Professor Rau
• Next 3
• Elective: Philosophy in Business by the Faculty of Philosophy 
• Elective: Behavioural Finance by Professor Rau 
• Elective: New Venture Finance by Professor Randy Haykin, who comes from SV
• Bottom
• Cost Management and Control

Yet, satisfaction with a course does not necessarily mean a good result ...interestingly and sadly they are barely correlated (r=0.16).

Marks seems almost irrelevant to how I am stimulated by or satisfied with courses.

*Satisfaction is defined as an average score (1-10) between intellectual stimulation and personal fit to a lecturer; a relative mark is comparatively scaled based on my personal range between highest and lowest marks.

However, marks are approximately 40% determined by (in most cases) collaborative group works.

One example of how collaboration is included in marks (NB: weighted total of course depends on elective choices)

When you compare three terms, interestingly, the first term, Michaelmas, was more individualistic, while the last term, Easter, required a lot of class participations. On a different note, the second term, Lent, was the busiest term as there were a lot of group assignments while preparing for the coming GCP. However, when busy you learn a lot.

In my opinion, Michaelmas courses also should (and could) have engaged students more, to set up a pace of studying individually (yet for me this was good as I skipped some to join courses and events in different departments of the Uni). 

Financial Times Global MBA Ranking 2015

Cambridge is overall ranked 3rd among major one-year MBA programmes, after INSEAD and IE as IMD drops its position this year; what's more, it has ranked at 4th for Value for Money and 5th for Aims Achieved among all the b-schools ; not too bad apart from the fact that Recommendation from Alumni still lags behind as 39th.

In a nutshell, obtaining Cambridge MBA will help you achieve your aims for what you pay, yet your opportunity of being recruited might not be widened significantly just by the fact your CV has a Cambridge MBA stamp.


(for the graphical purpose, all ranks below are put in minus; rank figures are among all the MBA programmes)

The overall rank for Cambridge Judge Business School in 2015 is improved to 13th, compared to 16th in last two years; this is third, if you compare among major one-year MBA programmes.



Its Value for Money rank has improved from 7th in 2014 to 4th, which is next to IMD as 3rd rank.



Moreover, the Aims Achieved rank went beyond IMD again, and got ranked 5th among all the MBA programmes.



However, the Recommendation from Alumni rank shows great room for improvement, despite a jump from 47th in last two years to 39th.


Note that Aims Achieve rank in 2015 is just ranked by sorting the percentage figure of each school as no rank is disclosed yet; even if two schools have the same percentage figure, the school that is showed upper is ranked one higher here. Those ranks are disclosed in 2013 and 2014, so there might be update in the near future.

Sources: Financial Times
http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba-ranking-2015
http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba-ranking-2014
http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba-ranking-2013

2015 New Year resolution (belated)

After several short trips to Korea, Japan, the US, and Spain within a few weeks, I finally came back in London, (caught a cold again), and successfully extended my visa to remain in the UK as a happy dependent :-p.

Now, belatedly, is the time to set new year's targets as every year. This year, again, I should stick to rather simple targets (rough allocation of time); this year is going to be a year of totally challenging new stuff:

• Career: to success in seed financing for the startup (50%).
• Private: to learn anew not to be bored; through studying Finance (MSc-level) and Economics (BSc-level) (20%), learning programming (20%) and absorbing various contents to write up a short fiction (10%).

Happy New Year 2015 monument, in a sort of traditional Japanese way with an orange.

Regrettably, last year I did not achieve much regarding my revised targets:

1. Keep exercise every week: Not really at all. After an accident in golfing, I stopped playing it. 
2. Complete the Cambridge MBA with writing up the final dissertation on 'innovation and corporate governance': Done, but not fully satisfied with what I wrote up.
3. Confirm a place, likely in London, for researching management in the UK while working on the entrepreneurial project: The startup goes well so far (definitely this is the greatest achievement unexpectedly), yet failed to secure a research position.
4. Draft a story of science fiction. An idea of multi-worlds/minds structure is there, yet still too vague to start writing.

Anyway, my life to get busy living goes on.

From a new year's trip to Grand Canyon in the US