I arrived at the train station in London shortly before 10am, and got on a limo arranged by Ivey. There were 7 of us from this train that were getting picked up. Ten minutes later, we were at the Spencer Leadership Centre. The admissions director was there to greet each one of us, we had coffee and fruit, and joined the rest of the visitors in one of the classrooms.
There were about two dozens of people that came out for this visit. We first sat through an admissions presentation of mostly things I already knew - that is, easily found on their website. One thing that they really stress is that they were the oldest MBA school in Canada, and had a huge alumni network of 40 thousand people I believe. The alumni network kinda came with being an old school, and also, their alumni included both MBA and HBA graduates. The HBA is their undergraduate counterpart of the MBA, where students do work that's very similar to the MBA during the final two years of their studies, after which you can apply to do an accelerated MBA for 8 months at Ivey.
I noticed that when asked about why Ivey was not ranked as THE top school, one of the staff completely dissed the rankings, saying that there are many factors that influence the rankings, and that he didn't know at all how the rankings people came up with their rankings. I understand, but that's not really an answer. There was just a hint of arrogance, for lack of a better word, that I didn't like.
This is also a good place to mention the fact that I later noticed that Ivey was only accredited by one of the world's top three accrediting bodies. I know that this doesn't have much practical impact for an individual student, but you would expect that recognitions like this would be important for them as a school.
After the presentation, four professors took over and did a brief introduction of the academic side of things as well as a question and answer session. I already knew that they rely heavily on the case-based method. They also made sure we knew that a large percentage of the grades are based on class participation. While it was also made clear that the grading is based on the quality of your comments rather than the quantity, I don't think it would be very easy (even for a professor) to grade the quality of a comment. Also, assuming all students are of similar aptitude, the more things you say the more likely you are to hit a "good quality" comment. Overall, I think that this just puts too much emphasis on speaking up in class, and possibly pressure on the students to say things all the time.
There was a brief tour of the building after the presentation. They do have a nice-looking building, complete with places to eat, meeting rooms that you can book, and even their own gym. Lunch was then provided in a lounge, with a panel of current students who were of course very enthusiastic about the program and very willing to help and answer any questions or concerns that we had. In fact, Ivey has a "student ambassador" program just for the purpose of recruitment, where you can personally email the student ambassadors and it is their duty to attend to you.
Ivey's class schedule alternates between morning and afternoon. On any given day you would only get one 4-hour block of class, either in the morning or in the afternoon, but not both. The professors and the students think that there would surely not be enough time to do all the work, if class runs the entire day. This is interesting to note, since Queen's usually has classes both in the morning and in the afternoon, all day everyday.
After lunch, we sat in the first half of the day's class, which was accounting. We were given the case just that morning, so there hadn't been time to look through it, plus I knew nothing whatsoever about accounting, so it was a little difficult to actually understand the class. One thing that's for sure though is that the class was very dynamic, and students were VERY eager to participate. The professor acted as a facilitator to the students' discussions (this was also a point Ivey made sure that we understood).
I'd like to add that because Ivey uses only cases for the entire duration of the program, you end up with over 300 cases by the time you're done. Because cases are practical, a lot of alumni find that the higher up the ranks they are within a company, the more applicable their MBA learnings become (with regards to making executive decisions, etc.).
During the class break, we made our way to another room where a career management presentation awaited us. Of course the numbers are impressive, and I don't need to say more. As with most other MBA programs, the most popular areas of employment for grads are finance and consulting. Ivey integrates their career management course into the curriculum just like accounting or any other course, and uses cases in this career management course as well. A typical case would be like "Linda is finishing up her MBA and is torn between becoming a financial analyst and a management consultant" etc. I thought this approach was interesting enough that I should mention it.
The day ended with opportunities to ask questions to admissions and career management staff, who then arranged for those us that came by train to be picked up by a couple of limos to head back to the train station. (The first class waiting room at the London station is beautiful, by the way.)
Overall I thought it was a good experience, and good effort on Ivey's part. Apart from what I've already mentioned, here are some other things that stood out (neither positively nor negatively):
- Incredible amount of workload - students, faculty, and staff kept warning us about it
- "Transformation" - a word that's often used to describe the effect that an Ivey education has on students. I thought it was interesting.
- A lot of the staff have graduated from Ivey. The "director of admissions" is a young HBA who graduated only in 2003.
I also had the following reservations:
- For at least some of the topics, I believe that lectures (and other methods) would at least be a good supplement to the case-based method.
- They kept mentioning the HBA to an extent that gave me the impression that you'd be better off choosing the HBA as an undergrad, rather than the MBA. What's up with that?
- The issue with how important class participation is.
- Rankings and accreditation.
Overall though it is definitely a good school. The reputation and alumni network should come in very handy when it comes time to look for a job.
Appleseed documents his experience with Ivey here.
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