Canadian MBA Thread

[imschatz]



You know,

I have considered either an EMBA or MBA from Haskayne. They have good number of their students who go on to very great things. It's also a three hour drive from my hometown, so if I did the EMBA, I'd drive in Thursday night, stay two nights at a hotel and drive back Sunday AM.

Calgary is a city where there is a lot of money to be made. Is Haskayne a good choice?

Thomas

I had this conversation last week, with a VP at my company (one of the largest private power generation companies in in Calgary/Canada).

His thoughts were, 10 years ago .. MBA's would have landed you huge payoffs in Calgary. Now, not so much. He recommended going International - doing a 1 year program in Europe or Asia. The network at Haskayne is pretty limited, and your classmates are going to be your coworkers and counterparties. You really won't learn anything with a Haskayne MBA, just add a few letters to your resume. You won't meet people. And there is no personal gain (ie: the challenge of moving international to go to school).

Also seems like CFA's and MBA's are pretty interchangable at least for jobs I'm interested in.

Most of the people I work with all have International MBA's - or other 'graduate' degrees in Business (MSc. in Management or w/e). Unique programs, in all sorts of different places.

If you have a company in mind that employs a lot of Haskayne MBA's that's a different story. It seems like my employer loves Economics MA's .. probably 2-3 dozen of us (CEO has a UofC Econ MA). I don't know any companies loaded up with Haskayne grads .. but there are so many players, it's hard to imagine there isn't one.

 

[TRINI]

I met up with a couple of Ivey undergrad classmates the other day and one of them was telling me of his experience of going back for the MBA.

He wasn't too impressed with the make up of the class. As he put it, you have a bunch of foreign nationals who couldn't get into any of the big US schools so defaulted to Ivey.

 

[hrb]

I really think the dynamic and process of MBA's has changed over the last decade. Excluding Bay Street, it seems like the best/safest /intelligent route is to go to a school that is local to your target market and independently make your own connections and network rather than going to a 'big' school and relying on the name and recruiting process, which is, as I understand, nearly non-existant these days regardless of your alma mater.

I met up with a couple of Ivey undergrad classmates the other day and one of them was telling me of his experience of going back for the MBA.

He wasn't too impressed with the make up of the class. As he put it, you have a bunch of foreign nationals who couldn't get into any of the big US schools so defaulted to Ivey.

I really think the dynamic of where and why to get an mba has changed in the last decade. EXCLUDING bay street and wall street. It seems the best


Was he doing his MBA at Ivey as well? I have heard that about a number of the Canadian programs, disproportionate number of internationals that have limited interest in interacting with the Canadian students.

 

[bings]

i'll be going to Degroote based on proximity and cost (it's cheap and close)... do not care about rankings or reputation.

in my opinion people place too much weight on the reputation of the school and not enough on the quality of their own professional output. I've worked with MBA's and went through my CMA with a bunch of MBA's and i really couldnt tell the difference between any of them as far as what school yielded a better graduate. what stand's out about people is not the school they went to.