Should You Go For an MBA Today?

Should I get an MBA?
 
As a double major MBA alumni from one of Canada's top universities, as well as a class rep, I get asked this question a lot, especially by prospective immigrants from Bangladesh. It's often looked at as a quick way to get Permanent Residency (and eventual citizenship) in Canada. It's relatively easier to get into an MBA program in a Canadian university as a foreigner, it's quick (2 years) and job prospects seem promising. 

First thing I would advise you is to see whether you need it for your career. An MBA is most useful if you want to set up your own business or you are in the financial or stock market area. It's a must (I feel) if you are going to start your own business here in Canada. It's probably useful if you are a manager or going to be one. If you want to go into HR, it could be helpful. 

After that, it's usefulness starts to decline rapidly compared to other options, especially getting a PMP certification, or a booster course at a community college.

Second, it's very, very costly. Rotman, for example, is the costliest in Canada, and an international student (depending on courses) can easily be looking at $108,000 in tuition alone (domestic fee is around $99,000). There are far cheaper ways to get PM into Canada. And definitely far cheaper ways to get educated.

Third, the job prospects around the world are dull. An MBA doesn't have the lure in a down market as it used to, except for some specific job sectors. If you have been working as a programmer, for example, and you want to become a manager, an MBA will not help you, but dev lead experience and technical expertise will.

Those are the downsides. However, I have also experienced the upsides. Alhamdulillah I had a consulting job that was a direct result of the MBA. It also gave me great connections (provided I leverage the alumni network). And of course the knowledge you get from an MBA itself is excellent.

If you do decide to do an MBA, based on your career path and affordability, here's some guidelines.

1) Stay away from 1 year MBAs. They are not worth it. You will not learn anything in 1 year.

2) Some schools, such as Rotman, have morning or evening part time MBAs (3 years). They may be suitable if you have a job. Ryerson also has a cheaper part time MBA for IT, which is unique in Canada.

3) Do not go for MBAs that are not in the original campus (such as a visiting MBA course in another city). You will not get the best instructors then.

4) If you are in full time MBA, look for co-op opportunities as interns. They are the best way to get into the career track you need.

5) Some universities also have an exchange option (so you can do a course or two for a term in another country's university). Take advantage of that if you can.

6) GMAT is really, really, really important.

I. Am. Done.

I am done.

Wrote the final final exam of my MBA degree today. It was on Advanced Negotiations. Yes, we had a final exam for that course.

Someday, I will write about my (mostly fantastic) experience at Canada's top business school but for now, I feel ... free.

So, if you any of you are looking to hire a person capable of managing multiple complicated projects (hey, I have a wife, a career AND school!), with fantastic writing skills (but of course!), with skills AND experience (I will get you something), sophisticated and smart (not to mention - modest) ... you know how to reach me. :-)

Barongbar - the BSA Show

I will continue my posts on Dubai vs. Toronto after this. Last night, I attended the Bangladesh Student Associations' (BSA) 12^th annual show - this time called Barongbar - which means repetition. I have often said the University of Toronto's BSA's annual show is a highlight on the Bengali social calendar here, and is often the first sign of spring.

It's about the life of a 'colony' of middle class citizens in Dhaka - whose lives are the same day in day out - hence "Barongbar".

The singing of the national anthems. With a twinge of regret/amusement, I realized I am now more comfortable singing the Canadian one than the Bangladeshi one!

The traditional dances were pretty good and the music quite peppy.

What's a "jatra" without the presence of our esteemed Prime Minister! As an aside - our two women leaders have set the cause of women's liberation decades behind with their inept management!

The travelling "Baul" singers give us their philosophy of life and death. Again, as an aside, I have always found the 'sufi' spirit of Bangladesh has done a lot for communal harmony in the country.

The Kobita (poetic) medley - on how a guy should woo a girl. Good to see the new generation of BSA-ers continuing the good work of the old!

More Kobita medley. I really enjoyed this part - especially the 'formula'. It's a departure from previous Kobita medleys.

A duet song - pretty well sung. I was amazed by the high caliber of artists and performers in the BSA nowadays.

The group dance - a signature part of BSA shows now. Really well done again, just like every other component of the show.

Take a bow BSA - you have outdone yourself this year.

Many universities in Canada now boast of significant Bangladeshi populations and Bengali shows, proms and formal nights have become an essential part of student and young Canadian-Bengali lives here. However, the BSA at University of Toronto retains its position as the premier show, and this year I can truly say they have put together one of the best three hours of theatrical enjoyment I can remember in recent times.

Convocation U of T

This past week was Convocation week at the University of Toronto. I always amazes me that no matter how crappy the weather is the week before Convocation, the sun and blue skies always show up for Convocation week. If you are a tourist planning to visit Toronto, if you schedule your trip on this week - you will have great weather. Year after year, it seems like a strange coincidence.

The picture above is of University College, from where graduates are led out in a parade to Convocation Hall. One member of my family graduated early this week, I ran into Geeki and his friends yesterday and yet another friend is finishing on Monday.

Graduates entering Convocation Hall

As an aside, the university always tends to its athletic field right before graduation ceremony, so the grass is super green and well tended right on Convocation Week. And good weather seems to bring out people who want to play football (soccer). What really gets my goat is this:


Few people decide to make a team. And the way they differentiate the team is that one group keeps its shirts on, the other group plays topless!

If girls wants to go topless that's another thing, but I mean, guys, I know you are dying to get your shirt off and show your six two-pack to the world, but no one can see it due to all that hair! Just... put a shirt on!

I end with a shot of one graduation ceremony in progress.

Brittanto

One of the signs of Spring in Toronto is that people start saying on every sunny day, "Well, thank GOD winter is over. No, really, this time, I MEAN it!"

The second of course is the Univ of Toronto BSA show, which this time was held on March 14 (last Saturday) and which I haven't blogged about because I was extremely busy with some laziness.

The show was called Brittanto and it featured stores. It reminded me a bit of the movie Crash, with different stories woven together and the common theme here being karma. Overall, it was quite fun. Everyone acted really well (the performances looked well rehearsed) and while I would have liked some more songs and dances, it was quite a good show.

The national anthems of Bangladesh and Canada

The show started on time (and not Desi Time) which was an achievement in itself, although UofT BSA shows regularly start on time. And bonus, this time no one mangled the national anthems. It helps that both Bangladesh and Canada have really melodious anthems, although for some reason as soon as the Canada anthem ends I want to just start clapping two imaginary longish balloons together. Too much Hockey Night in Canada for me!

Bangladesh Idol

I like songs, singing and dancing. Bengali culture is a lot about music and so it was nice to see a bit of fun with a Bangladesh Idol setting while at the same time hear some unplugged vocals.

When I was a student, BSA was just a bunch of guys going out to ski, it's nice how big, and diverse, and multi-talented, it has become in 10 years.

Nitol Paye

This "band performance" was the highlight of the show for me. A beautiful song, sung beautifully with no fuss, just plain talent.

Fashion Show

It used to be that (and still is for some) BSA fashion shows was just a bunch of good looking girls walking down the aisle with the best desi dress they have in their wardrobe and guys in the audience hollering. Used to take guts and lots of persuasion to do the fashion show!

The UofT BSA fashion shows, for the last quite sometime, has been different. It is a choreographed skit all on its own. This year featured a mannequin! It was set in a sari store and the "customers" going through the store all feature different fashions. To me, however, it was all about this "mannequin". I had force myself to realize it was actually some one "live" but man could she have convinced me! Her performance was just outstanding.

More Fashion Show

In fact, come to think of it, I never saw any show in BSA more professionally choreographed, performed, or organized better than this one. In my mind, the show two years ago, Ujjibon, was still the best BSA show ever. I did not much like last year's show (probably because I still can't get over the anthem bit), but this year's was very entertaining and very fun. Well done BSA.

Note: Ilham has kindly put up some clips on youtube. As always, there's more on facebook.

Ekushey Celebrations and Slumdog Millionaire

February 21 is an important day for Bengalis - we mark this day in celebration of our language and the Language Movement. The UN also celebrates this day in honor of Bangla as International Mother Language Day [source]. Bengalis have a deep pride in their language and February 21 is often marked with passionate events about language, culture and 1971.

In Toronto, the Bangladeshi community is very strong and mostly educated. I attended one event "Liberation 1971" in Scarborough on Friday. Bengali readers of this blog know I have a soft spot for university Bangladesh student associations and usually attend their cultural shows. This show was held by Bangladeshi Students Association-Scarborough (BSAS) and focused on Bangladeshi's struggle for independence.

[Photo Credit:Shahryer Ahmed]

The skits were fabulous. The whole show was mind blowing. The actress pictured above played a mother who receives a letter from her son who went to fight the war. She starts reading the letter, and starts to break down into tears as she reads on. At the end of her skit, she falls down to the ground in tears, and there was not a dry eye in the audience. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant acting.

[Photo Credit:Sharihan Bhuiyan]

There were songs, all brilliantly placed and sung. These are revolutionary songs and evoke strong emotions, and the participants who sang the songs, particularly the singer pictured above, did full justice. Again, they were just superb and the show was fully worth a lot more than the $5 admission they charged.

The Oscars often inaugurate the cultural show season by the BSAs here in the Greater Toronto Area, and this year the bar has been set very high by the BSAS. The downtown St. George BSA usually has the best show, but they would be highly challenged to surpass BSAS's content and performance this year.

There was another event at the Danforth (the hub of the Bengali community here) and they even had their own Shohid Minar!

[Photo Credit:Spriha]

Again, there was singing, dancing, and all-in-all a good celebration of Bangla. The real Shohid Minar is of course in Dhaka.

All this celebration of Bangla underlines the fact how important our language, culture and music is to us! I in fact know of couples where the girl was non-Bengali and the first questions people ask the guy is "Does she know Bengali? Will she learn? Make sure she learns!" Not your "what does her father do?" or "how did you guys meet?" for us! You will find in Bangladesh even religious people send their daughters off to classes for music and singing. Preserving the Bengali identity is a very big thing.

* * *

Speaking of the Oscars, yesterday was perhaps the first Oscar I watched almost, almost, in its entirety. And no, it was not for Hugh Jackman as some girls seem to be doing!

I was cheering for Slumdog Millionaire and it won big time, especially Best Director and Best Picture awards. It truly is a good movie. I attended this movie long before it was released widely and long before it became a "big thing" so in some sense (strange, I know!) I have a special fondness for this movie and am glad to see it do so well. And of course, a Muslim brown man winning TWO awards for music AND invoking God on Hollywood's big stage was just a bonus!

It's actually funny (not to mention strange) to see some Indians' reactions to this movie.

On one hand are all those proud of the movie and glad that "they" made it. Well, it's not an Indian movie! It's made by a British director, written by a British writer, and produced by a Hollywood studio. Granted it has some Indian actors (even the leads are British) and set in India but in the end - it's a Hollywood movie. But, you know, I am happy for them and understand their pride.

And then there are the other Indians who hate the movie and think it promotes cliches and doesn't show the "real" India. That's a stupid debate and this movie not only shows how MOST Indians live but raises poverty on the big screen - a subject many Indians would rather not talk about.

In the end, it's best not to take it so seriously and just enjoy it as a good tale and yarn. It may also be the first time a movie that has cricket in it (the children playing in the airport and one of the questions on the game show) as Best Picture at the Oscars so that's something!

JAI HO!

Kinds of Studiers For Exams

At last all my exams are done. I can finally enjoy what’s left of the summer for the next 3 weeks.

I have realized that there really are four different kinds of studiers for exams.

There’s me – the Last Minute-r. I mean, sure there’s THREE WEEKS till the exams, great! Plenty of time. Oh, I see, only one weekend left. That’s ok. I will study on Sunday. Saturday is for having fun. Oh, I haven’t seen this episode of Star Trek. Oh GREAT… only one night left. Study. Panic. Study. Repeat.

Then there’s the Do-You-Know-ers. They will pop up every hour on MSN (after all, can’t have studies without being on MSN, right?) and say “Hey did you study the WACC equalization theory?” and you are shitting in your pants going WHAT WACC EQUALIZATION THEORY and they go “here it’s mentioned on a side note in chapter 21 subsection 14-5” and it’s marked “not on exam”. While you are fuming they will then add “oh it’s just interesting to know”.

Then there’s the “I-am-skipping-that”-ers. Basically, whenever you buzz them with “Psst.. how do you solve chap 10 qn 23” they will reply with “Oh I am skipping that”. You wonder course after course how they pass.

Finally, there’s the “I-know-a-guy”-er. For some reason, this dude ALWAYS has a collection of past papers for the last ten years of this course, sorted by difficulty and sub sorted by professor, along with answer keys. You always wonder HOW on earth he does it when NO ONE can find any past paper and his answer always is “I know a guy”. Of course then the actual exam has NOTHING in similarity to the past paper because they changed the book (yet again) or the prof, and you fume at the time you wasted. Yet the very next course once again you will go to him.

Ok, now I can have my life back.

Making the Case for Good

I was attending our Managing International Talent class. The topic was of Canadian businesses expanding overseas and encountering standards different to our own - which one do we use? What about ethics?

I gave the following (real) example. A famous language school teaching English in Canada has opened a branch in one of the oil rich Middle East nations. Now in Canada, when we hire someone, we don't care whether the person is black or white, male or female - we just care whether he or she can speak good English, teach it, and hold proper credentials. Not so in this country. There, it's quite common to see recruitment ads specifying ethnicity, gender etc.

In that Arab nation, almost all English language schools hire white Anglo-Saxons to teach English (even if they are Irish!) because the local students can never properly accept a brown skinned teacher (someone beneath them) teaching English.

So I asked this question to the class: Should the class also hire by color and ethnicity, because it makes good business sense?

The lecturer's reply to me was memorable.

"No matter how low the ethical standards of a country are, we cannot imagine that they will always stay that way. To do that is to undermine the basic human nature of self improvement. We have to believe that someone, somewhere, will say no, to judge a candidate by their skin colour is wrong, and so on. We have to believe that things will eventually improve in that country and they will also start to hire by competency and pretty soon everyone in that country will do that."

"In this school we teach you to be leaders. Everyone can be a follower and make money in the short term. Here, we teach you to innovate, to be leaders, to be the force of change. And so I would suggest that if you were running that school, you should hire by competency and uphold the Canadian standards, which were higher. Because - ultimately they will follow those standards, and then you would have been the leader in setting standards, not following them. There is always a business case to be made for ethics."

Bangladesh In Toronto News

It's not often Bangladesh finds itself in the news here in Toronto. We are more often an interesting anecdote in a major article about India, or just the place where "crippling floods" happen.

So imagine my surprise when driving to work yesterday morning I heard on 680 news that Toronto East General Hospital is reporting two cases of bird flu - an elderly couple who had recently visited Bangladesh. The news report also mentioned that Bangladesh had many cases of bird flu.

680 news has a weather guarantee but too bad it doesn't have a news guarantee because pretty soon (after hammering it all through rush hour with titles such as Bird Flu Scare in Toronto and comparison with SARS) it became clear that there was no bird flu.

A Toronto hospital says there's no reason to believe any of its patients have bird flu amid media speculation that a couple who returned from Bangladesh were potential carriers of a deadly strain of the virus.

Toronto East General Hospital said in a statement that it has recently treated an increased number of patients with flu-like symptoms, but that there's nothing to suggest any of them have H5N1 avian flu.

Bangladesh has been grappling with an outbreak of the virulent H5N1 strain among animals, but there have been no human cases reported in the country.[Source]

An even forceful denial is found here.

When I first heard the news, my mind wandered over to the SARS crisis. That time, everyone avoided Chinese owned businesses, and Chinatown had become a ghost town. Let's say this bird flu thing was real, would Banglatown (Danforth) become a similar ghost town? I don't think so. We still would have gone down there for our rui mach and lota pata.

It's strange that while one of the most widely reported complaints by other immigrant groups against Chinese immigrants is that they only mix with their own kind, it's Chinese businesses that would have suffered because they need other people. Banglatown apparently is immune.

Meanwhile, Toronto Star recently did a focus on Banglatown. Very ideal and utopia-like a picture it paints of us!

The annual Bangladesh Students Association (at Univ. of Toronto) show, this year titled Nirontor, is on this weekend downtown, and I will be checking it out. Last year I was involved in the show - everyone I keep running into this year asks me if I am doing a sequel! No, this year I will strictly be amongst the audience (which means, yes, I had to purchase a ticket!).

They have increased the prices this year to $15. Every year the prices seem to steadily go up, hopefully this year the quality change will also reflect that upward trend in price. That show is now big enough that the Minister of Education last year came to speak during the intermission, and it gets wide coverage in the community here.

Ryerson Enters The Cyber World

OK I am back after a break, and if anyone is reading this (yes, I mean the both of you!) - break is good! I have opinions, and I am not afraid to share them!

Thankfully though, there are somethings I would NEVER divulge.

For example, the fact that if you are cheating, you should probably NOT broadcast it on Facebook.

Take a look at this story.

First-year student Chris Avenir is fighting charges of academic misconduct for helping run an online chemistry study group via Facebook last term, where 146 classmates swapped tips on homework questions that counted for 10 per cent of their mark.

If this is what passes for intelligence at Ryerson (sorry Haleem, MH) no wonder employers flock to U of T!

A "study group" is OK as long as you help each other understand concepts. It may be borderline if your buddy helps you understand a problem of a problem set, as you are supposed to understand it on your own. But when your Facebook group says "If you request to join, please use the forms to discuss/post solutions to the chemistry assignments. Please input your solutions if they are not already posted" - I am sorry, you have crossed the line.

Yes, yes. I know everyone cheats in university.

But this guy got caught. *wink*

Do You Believe in Feng Shui?

I have started to become a big believer in that whole Feng Shui thing. I have been very grumpy and tired recently, and I have noticed that it may have something to do with the state of my room. I haven't really gotten down to cleaning up my room, ever since I came back, and everything is still in a clutter all around. ORGANIZED clutter though, I should add.

I mean like, I can say, "Oh, the charger for my cell? It's in pile no. 3. Should be under the receipt for the DVD writer I bought 4 years ago." See what I mean, everything is in a mess in my room, but I know where is it.

Or may be my grumpiness has to do with the fact that I have an exam tomorrow that I am absolutely NOT prepared for, and I am blogging when I should rather be studying.

I can't help it - the more I study - the more I don't know - and the more I am tempted to Facebook or blog. I mean, I am even secretly willing other people to update their blogs so I can have something else to read beside cost curves and consumer surplus and willingness to pay.

My life is now progressing from deadline to deadline. On this day I have this exam. Then from this day to that day I have this assignment due. Then start studying for this other exam. I mean, it's gotten to the state where I am unhappy November has 30 days, as that means 1 less day till December 4 which is when my term project is due. Oh yea, I work too, so have to squeeze those 8 hours in somehow. And it doesn't also help that Ahmed praised Heroes so much, that I got the whole season 1 on DVD, and now am hooked.

I will be so glad once the break starts.

On another note, I am leaving, again, for yet another conference during the Christmas holidays. And no, I have not confirmed the hotel yet, and still have to clear the credit card bills from the last trip. You deal with travel agents and shocking bank statements and international hotel receptionists who can't speak English and study 200 pages of demand equal to P=100-2Q with marginal cost = marginal revenue, and you will start to believe in Feng Shui as well.