As part of the Oxford MBA programme you have three options to spend the summer months - and to gain the two credits required for the programme. People contemplating the Oxford MBA read on. Others, pardon the detail.
The first of these is the Summer Consulting Project (SCP). This involves doing a short 6-8 week consulting project (pretty obvious!) for a company, building on and consolidating the academic learning from the course and combining it with past experience and general skills to present a solution for a real-life problem faced by the company. The SCP, which is worth two credits, involves working at the client site or remotely, presenting a practical solution for them, and writing a more academic 15,000 word piece for the formal assessment. The projects are typically sourced by the school (though you can source your own, subject to certain criteria being met), and students are often compensated for their work.
The second option is to take two 'summer elective' courses, each worth one credit. Each course consists of eight three-and-a-half-hour lectures condensed into one week, often accompanied by individual and group assignments. Some courses run concurrently (i.e., in the same week), and so depending on your choice of electives you could be attending 16 lectures in one week and working on the related assignments and practical work. Or you could choose one in the first week of the summer, and one in the last.
The third option is to write an Individual Academic Thesis on a subject of your choice. This is the most academically oriented option of the three, and therefore the least preferred option for most MBAs.
So, what did I do this summer, and what would I recommend to future students of the Oxford MBA? I elected to do the summer electives, and took both my electives in the first week of the summer. Of course this meant an extremely hectic first week - 50 hours of lectures in the week accompanied by several assignments. But it also meant that once I had ridden through that week, I was more or less done for the summer! There were still a couple of assignments left, but I could do them at relative leisure. And why would you want to do this? If you want an easy-going summer, wish to travel, spend time with family, or just utilise the time to look for a job. This option works particularly well for those opting to do internships over the summer, which are not academically assessed and therefore do not count towards the course. For such students, the practical option is to take the two electives and to then spend the rest of the summer completing the internship.
And who should do the SCP? Students who wish to build on what they have learnt in class during the year, those who wish to work for the company they are doing the project with, or those who wish to travel to different countries at the expense of that company (trips this year included those to India, China, Gambia, and Hungary). The report or presentation for the company, and the 15,000 word academic submission can make this pretty demanding in terms of time, though, and people may find they have little time left for anything else. Long term benefits depend on individual motivations, and I have found people in my class to have benefited in varying ways and to different degrees. There are some who are glad they took that option, others are more ambivalent about it and are unable to come up with concrete reasons for why they would recommend it. The process used to award the school-sourced projects is complex, however, and it involves bidding for the project(s) of your choice. The project that is right for you, therefore, is not guaranteed, but you commit to any other project you bid for, and are awarded. It is hard to come up with a process that is fair to everyone, and I'm sure the school and the projects office are working hard t improve on it all the time. Self-sourced projects, however, are not bid for and are therefore guaranteed.
The academic thesis is almost definitely for the more academically minded student - for someone who wishes to dig deep into a subject with a view to entering the world of academia or continuing academic / research work in the future. If you wish to work in the traditional avenues of industry, consulting, or finance, this may not be for you.
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Friday 29 August 2008
The Oxford MBA Summer Options
Chef Alok
Tall claim, surely. Bordering on the atrocious, even.
Still, if it were a relative evaluation, I might just about qualify. For someone who has never really cooked in the 36 years of his life (my activities in the kitchen always limited to doing the dishes, cleaning up, and occasionally, very occasionally, cutting up the veggies), living away from family in Oxford has resulted in me becoming a little adventurous in the kitchen.
It started too late, perhaps in the last quarter of my year here. And it started with one disastrous attempt, followed by slightly more successful ones. Edible food, and gradually, reasonably tasty stuff. Often made with the help of ready-made sauces and gravies topped up with onions, tomatoes, and additional spices! And my repertoire depended on the type of gravy I could buy. My flatmate Varun often turned out to be the catalyst, suggesting we cook in rather than eat out. Incidentally Sebastian, my other flatmate, has never been around when I've cooked. Sheer coincidence though, each time, Seb. Honest
Antonio recently cooked an Italian meal for a bunch of friends at my place. I helped, but my help was limited to cutting the meat, peeling the potatoes, and the like. On another day I cooked some chicken together with another guy at Pranav's house - used some ready sauce to prepare some pretty decent stuff.
For all those cooks sniggering away, trust me when I tell you it is a big deal for me! So who knows, for someone who has never really understood the point of cooking for several hours only for the food to be eaten up in 15 mins, this might just be the turning point. I might just turn chef - one day!
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Wednesday 27 August 2008
Punting
One thing you've got to do when in Oxford, is go Punting. A couple of months ago I had written about my experience with punting (see here) when I'd gone with friends from Mansfield College. This time it was with friends from SBS. And thankfully, the conditions were absolutely perfect for punting, and we had a blast of a time! Here's proof.
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Capstone, and the Beginning of the End
In one of my previous posts I had promised to let you know about the final course of the Oxford MBA - the Capstone Course. Don't ask why it is called that, but it involves the development of scenarios for a client who is facing challenges presented by climate change. Working in small groups, we will identify key changes in the client's strategic environment likely to arise from developments relating to energy security and climate change, and develop a set of scenarios that will help them confront those changes. Should be pretty exciting!
It is a relatively short course, starting on the 8th of September and finishing on the 12th. Our MBA culminates in a black-tie 'farewell' dinner on the 12th and an 'end of course' ceremony on the 13th.
It has been an absolutely fantastic year for me! There's just over two weeks left, but I'm expecting the remaining days to be very eventful and memorable.
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Thursday 14 August 2008
Foila Car
Literally Foil-a-car, here's something interesting for car enthusiasts: foil from a company called Foila Car that can be applied onto a car's panels, thereby instantly adding a removable additional layer. The foil can be transparent and therefore only protective, or coloured to completely transform the appearance of the car. Apparently this is catching on in Dubai (where else?). Here's a few pictures of a car being, well, foil wrapped!! Click on play to view.
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A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
I'm sorry, but I'll conveniently use this cliche to post another set of pictures...even though I am months late and the night in question was in late May. Some 'real' posts will follow. I promise!
The night in question was Pranav Garga's birthday, which started with dinner and a few drinks at Las Iguanas, and ended after many hours and a few (ahem!) more drinks at Anuba. The party, after we were kicked out of Anuba, moved on to Cranham Terrace where it continued until the small hours of the morning.
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The Oxford MBA 2008 Photo-book
For the last few weeks a group of volunteers has been working on creating a photo-book for the Oxford MBA class of 2007-08. It was hard work, but equally, a lot of fun. The photo-book is ready to be printed now, and should be available for us by Capstone week (what is that? I'll get to it - in time), that is, around the middle of September.
Here are some pictures of the team.
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Oxford in Pictures
Some pictures of Oxford, taken on a delightfully sunny day, not too long ago...
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Back...
...after a rather long, and unexpected, hiatus. My last post was just over two months ago, and though the 4-5 weeks after that were pretty much taken up in assignments and exams, there really is no reason why I shouldn't have posted anything for the last month or so.
Well, I'm back now, and hopefully will remain more consistent hereon.
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