‘Ask’ HKUST B-school, Hong Kong: Admissions-related thread hosted by current students

hkust2007 · 11:59 PM

Hi PGs,

I have been a PGite since 2004 and currently a full-time student of MBA at HKUST Business School. It intrigues me that HKUST Business School isn’t even known to most people [sometimes MBA applicants too], so the ‘desi’ community here decided to do a campaign, throw some light and hopefully clear your doubts regarding the school, the education, the degree, the business climate of Hong Kong/China, the placements, the alumni clubs…

What this thread may not specialize answering?
I have N years exp, GMAT score etc...what are my chances?
Most International applicants know that the criteria is hard to state. I would like to point out that the youngest person is 24y and the oldest is 3X and the average age is 28years. So, the least experience is 3years and goes all the way to 10+ [actually several of them here].

Please look into the school’s website too for admission deadlines, process etc and also numbers like GMAT range, % ratio of students based on background, gender, experience etc.

[Home] HKUST Full-time MBA Program

[Admissions related] HKUST Full-time MBA Program

Some Facts

*Hong Kong is a great place for Finance-related jobs

*Program can be completed in 12months or 16months

*English is the language of communication in HKUST Business School and Chinese is not mandatory. I am learning Chinese!

*The class size is just 75 students [from 23 countries].

*The diversity of students is a key differentiator and it is the highest of any B-school in the world.

*Most faculty members have PhDs from leading universities. My Economics prof has a PhD from Univ of Chicago, worked as Chief Economist – IMF HQ at Washington DC. My Operations Mgmt prof has a PhD from MIT just for e.g,

*We are 6 Indian students here and most have IT or technology-related background.

*The students are very cordial and have a professional outlook towards competition.

*HKUST Business School is rated #20 worldwide [#1 in Asia] by EIU 2007 [http://mba.eiu.com/index.asp?layout=2007rankings]

*The Executive-MBA degree is rated #1 in the world.

*Some blogs, but are not be Bschool specific
http://mbahkust.blogspot.com/
http://hebbarr.blogspot.com/
http://prathaps.blogspot.com

Current Students: Randhir, Sushma, Shirish, Arthi, Mohit and Prathap

Regards,
Prathap

PS: Application related queries once the app has been submitted can be posted to the following mail id - the admissions team will reply to it. "HKUST MBA Program" <applymba@ust.hk>.

hkust2007 · 12:59 AM

Hi Everyone,

This is Randhir - a brief about my profile. Ex IT Project Manager from a leading IT Services company (take a guess?) with nearly six years of experience. Worked for about 2.5 years in US and now having the time of my life here at HKUST. Like Prathap, I'm also an Ex-PGite. Almost ended up not app'ing to HKUST since there was almost no mention of the school in any of the forums. Now here to change that.

As much as this forum is about bringing in greater awareness of the school itself, I'd like to make this more a Q&A session for future aspirants. I got quite a few inquiries over the past few weeks from quite a few folks and answering the same questions n number of times is not very efficient. So we will encourage aspirants to post most of their questions here and you can generally expect a turn-around time of 24-48 hours (exceptions may be exam times of course).

Question: This school has been consistently among the top three schools on most rankings over the past few years. Why no one has heard about it in India?
Answer: The simple reason that the Indian Alumni Network at HKUST is very small. Unless you know people who've done their MBAs here, getting to hear about it is difficult since the school doesn't do enough marketing in India - we're trying to convince them to change that

Question: Is your profile is good enough for this school?
Answer: Its all in the packaging. I'd say if you have 2+ years of quality experience without any major lacunae in your acads, you are sort of ready for an MBA. With HKUST, I'd say you'd be able to better appreciate it if you had around 3-5 years of work-ex - my personal opinion. But like Prathap said, we do have classmates with 2-3 years of work-ex too. So you are the best judge of whether you are good enough.

Bring on the questions.

Randhir

hkust2007 · **HKUST Pictures -** 15-11-2007, 05:11 PM

Campus Pics [taken in Aug 2007, so not many students around]

HKUST Campus - a photoset on Flickr

sudoku · 07:28 PM

Dear Randhir and Pratap,

It is nice of you to share your experiences with us however Ask "a college" are initiatives with editorial consent. It is great that you've made it clear in the title itself that you are students. However it may deceive users who've known "ask" thread as threads with consent. Please Contact editor and seek permission if you want to continue with this.

**rmbt** · 11:40 PM

@Randhir and Pratap,

Please keep in mind the theme of the thread. Keep the focus on answering the queries.

All the best.

hkust2007 · 05:29 PM

Sudoku,

Permission has been sought before the message was posted. Still waiting on Editorial consent.

MOD: Point taken. The first couple of posts were merely to avoid generic questions and give people answers to common and open-ended questions we get like "How is the school?", etc.

Regards,
Prathap and Randhir

sick_mind

Hi,

Some queries from my side -

I have read that a lot of focus at HKUST is in finance domain. At the same time I read at the HKUST's website that they specialize in China business, Financial Services, and IT Management. But looking at the elective courses, i find very few subjects actually concentrated in technology domain. I look forward to taking a blend of IT and general management courses at HKUST. So how beneficial will a HKUST MBA be in my case?
Can you also give me an idea about the job prospects for an Indian after completing the MBA course at HKUST? Also ,is it really easy for an Indian to live in Hongkong (considering the cultural and language differences.
Thirdly, looking at curriculum, I find most of the subjects concentrating on China economy. Seeing that, will HKUST MBA be able to provide a global outlook?

Looking forward to you response.

hurricane

Hi,

I want to know how many applications does HKUST receive every year.

I was initially going to put in my application at HKUST but the high average work experience makes the school a difficult bet for me.

The average work ex at the school is 5 years and currently i have 2.5 years of work ex.

Pleas also mention the average GMAT

Regards.

The dreamer

gareebon ko koi scholarship milega?

hkust2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by The dreamer

gareebon ko koi scholarship milega?

There is a merit and need based scholarship offered by the school of upto 75,000 HKD (1HKD ~=~ 5 INR). I and a couple of other Indians got that. Others got a slightly smaller schol.

Let me know if you need more info.

Regards,
Randhir