SMU MBA review
This is a rather long post but bear with me. I would like to caveat this was purely my personal experience with SMU’s MBA program unless otherwise stated. Another student may have an entirely different experience for better or worse. Nonetheless, I would like to share my experience with the program over the last 1 year.
I was part of the full time class of 2013 and recently graduated. SMU was never on my radar for my list of B-schools; in fact, no Singapore school was on my list. My intention was always to head to the US for my MBA. However, due to significant cost outlay of at least 150k by going overseas, I had to settle for a local MBA instead. On hindsight after completing the SMU MBA, I should have gone overseas instead of settling for a local MBA.
I ended up selected SMU over NTU and NUS (I was accepted to all 3 programs) because of the following: 1) They had the earliest start date as compared to the other 2 schools. 2) It was a 1 year program compared to NUS which was 1.5 years. NTU had switched their program to a 1 year program for 2013 onwards as well, but the start date was in April. 3) As the SMU MBA was a new program, I thought the school would put in more effort to ensure students get the best out of it to be future ambassadors about the program.
From here on out, I will split the review into 4 parts: 1) Faculty, 2) Modules, 3) Students, 4) Career prospects.
Faculty
This is a hit and miss with the MBA program. There are some really excellent faculty members who know what they talk about and truly value add to the program and learning. They design the course to maximize the learning experience of each student and as a whole. That said, of my 19 different modules that I took in the program, I would only classify 10 of them in this category. The core modules (mandatory modules part of the MBA) tend to be taught by full time faculty, while the electives are taught by a mix of adjunct and full time faculty. Adjunct faculty are usually the ones who fail to hit the mark. Given that some of these faculty members have been teaching the past cohorts as well, it amazes me that SMU would still hire them again for future batches when I think their evaluations would have been rather poor. Then again, this would be how I would rate these professors. These adjunct faculty may be great practitioners, but they fail to translate that into teaching.
A piece of advice to future and current MBA SMU students, talk to the alumni and find out which elective profs to take and which to avoid (unfortunately there is no choice with the core classes). It makes a huge difference to the learning experience.
Modules
As the MBA program is still in its infancy (started only in 2008), the number of offered electives can be rather limited depending on your preferred area of concentration. For year 2013, the heaviest concentrations available were in finance and marketing. If you preferred something in HR, you could be out of luck since there were only 2 classes dedicated to this area. Unlike an established school like INSEAD which may seem to have an abundance of electives, choices tend to limited at SMU. I do believe this will improve over the near future as the class sizes continue to grow. There are only so many electives you can offer with a class of 90 students.
Electives are only offered once during the entire course, so if you miss an elective you want to take, you won’t get a second chance. Some times, 2 electives will overlap in timing and you will need to choose between the two.
Another point to note is that electives are only conducted on weekday evenings and during the entire day on Saturday and Sunday. This allows full time students to take on a job or internship during the elective period providing more flexibility. Depending on your job/internship, this can be extremely tiring as you still need to attend classes at night and on the weekends, leaving little time for rest.
Students
During your core modules, you will be assigned groups randomly, so you won’t get to cherry pick your group members. This gives everyone an opportunity to work with one another and get to know each other better. Because of this arrangement it allowed me to know most of my class rather well and the type of people I can work with in the future. While working with my class, some of them left me pondering if they were truly postgrad students, even their behaviors in class could be baffling at times.
As the MBA program is new it seems the admission criteria is rather lax at times given the quality of some of these students.
That said, there were some really bright folks, who truly contributed and made the experience better.
Career prospects
If you are depending on the career center to find you a job, don’t bother going to SMU. The career services is probably the worst aspect of the entire program. During my 1 year, I was assigned 3 different career counselors, all of whom were administratively incapable and despite their supposedly glowing resumes about their previous experiences and so-called connections, I never once saw it being used or help someone. I only found one counselor (not part of the assigned 3) to be effective and helping me land my role today.
For full time class of 2012, 45% had full time offers by graduation, and ~77% had offers 3 months after graduation. My class is still under the process of collecting data but it doesn’t look good at this point in time.
A handful of class 2013 gotten full time offers before graduation, so despite being an unranked and new MBA, it is still possible to obtain high paying jobs in large MNCs.
Summary
To conclude, I must admit if it wasn’t for the SMU MBA, I wouldn’t be where I am today. Through a networking event held by the career services, I had a nice full time offer in the industry I wanted to move into.
That said, there are many pain points one has to endure throughout the program and they should be aware of what they are getting themselves into if they choose to enroll in the program. It’s not all bright and rosy as you see in the brochures or talks. I do hope this review will help any prospective or current student in the SMU MBA program.
Probably need to clarify if taking a course or two for 2-3 months can be done on a tourist visa.
