My Experience In Exchange Program Offered By CEIBS

It is an honor for me to have this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity from the exchange program offered by CEIBS, which would enrich my MBA study and create new possibilities for my future entrepreneurship development.

I am interested in studying in these three schools: Tuck School of Business Dartmouth College, Ross Business School and Darden School of Business, Uni. of Virginia. I choose them not only because of their multicultural environment but also looking forward to exchanging ideas with people from all over the world and hear their perspectives about new business models.

For Tuck Business School. I want to get the first-hand experience of business across different continents and interact daily with international peers. Moreover, I want to have the opportunity to open up a new world of entrepreneurship possibilities. For instance, I am going to take advantage of this opportunity to get a deep understanding of the US market. I believe this opportunity will make me deeply understand cross-cultural differences and improve international communicative skills.

For Ross and Darden, which are also top American business schools, attending these two business schools will help me understand how to work in another way, as a minority working in American culture, and appreciate how American schools approach case study and critics thinking. Although the MBA is almost similar worldwide, schools in America teach it in their own ways, which in turn would open my eyes and increase my capacity to adapt to different teaching approaches.

As an older student in CEIBS, I have learned over the years that you are never too old to acquire new knowledge. So as an exchange student, I would still put my academic study in the first place since I am not only representing myself but also representing my home university and my home country. Secondly, I would choose those lectures that would benefit my long term career goal, such as Tuck Business School’s “Business Model Challenge” The course will be led by a real project provided by established firms and corporations that have a strong need for improving their current business model. That is, in this course, I will be given the opportunity to tackle a real-life business model challenge through team-based project work. Thirdly, I would make full use of the resources in exchange school, for instance, If I succeed in Tuck exchange program, I would attend FINAVES which is the Tuck entrepreneurship platform that brings business expertise, investors and entrepreneurs together to create new enterprises, where I could write my new business plan and have the opportunity to present the business plan to investors.

Before entering CEIBS, I thought the MBA could give me the exact answers or inspiration for my future entrepreneurship and career path. However, after one year in CEIBS, I found that MBA would not give us the immediate answers to my puzzles, but teach me the approaches to find answers and the confidence to figure out the logic under the surface. For me, I believe life is short and I want to do something big, but what is big? The utter entrepreneurship road is right or wrong? No one could give me the answers except myself. To me, an MBA is not an end but a start, from there, I believe I could go anywhere I want to go and feel confident about the future. I guess that is the true value CEIBS bought about to me. Since my long-term career goal is also about entrepreneurship, growing my own business into a new level, so during my time in CEIBS, I used every opportunity to meet alumni from start-up background and played an important role in the E-lab activity as a group leader, such as giving open speech for the E-lab camp and launching a concrete start-up idea in healthcare industry. All these activities in CEIBS make me well-prepared for the next phase of my career both from an academic perspective and professional development.

To me, the exchange program is not just a learning journey, but another level of opening myself. Here in CEIBS, there is merely cultural interaction since the majority of the students are Chinese. What if I am a minority when I do teamwork? I believe the exchange journey would teach me to see people from a different angle and think of business in a global way which is the right perspective I have been looking for in my start-up journey.

Finally, I want to say the exchange experience and my open-mindedness would make my MBA journey more invaluable and meaningful.