Travel Report: Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada

Transcription

1 Travel Report: Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada Fall 2014 K87621

2 1. Preparing for the exchange The whole preparation process started after I got to know that I was elected to Sauder for the exchange. This was in the beginning of March. Then after couple weeks I got my first from Sauder. This was from the international office. They congratulated me for being nominated and they asked me to fill the exchange application and contract. Although this is called application its just a formality. Every student who is nominated by his or her home university is required to fill these and, as far as I know, no one is getting cut at this point. They also asked me to deliver my academic transcript, passport photo and resume. Everything was delivered via so the whole process went smoothly. All of these were supposed to be delivered by the end of March. The next time I heard from Sauder was 12 th of April. This time the was about the acceptance letter. They send the acceptance letter to you later via , but first they ask you to to fill the application again and deliver all the necessary attachments by the end of April but they recommend sending those as soon as possible. After sending those papers they will assign you a UBC student number for course registration. I got my acceptance letter and student number via in May 14 th. In this there were several time sensitive action points to take care. These included creating accounts, invitation to official Facebook group, information about housing etc. The most important thing at this point was to create account and sent the info back to the UBC coordinator. In July 11 th, I got mail about the course registration. This time we got the final schedule about the courses for the fall semester. Although all the other MBA students are doing their registration through Campus Wide Login system, all exchange students were supposed to fill course selection survey, which was the registration from our part. The coordinators did the rest in the registration process. This was supposed to be filled by the end of June. After filling the survey, every necessary preparation involving Sauder was completed. Housing The semester I went to Sauder, unfortunately, exchange students were not eligible to apply for campus housing. Of course the campus is huge and you can find place on your own, but there were no official options provided by the international office. This meant that exchange students had to find their housing on their own. Sauder s international office gives you a good information package about the housing in Vancouver. They also have a MBA buddy program where someone from the MBA class is paired as your buddy so you can get support from them e.g. in case of housing. Finding a place in Vancouver is a bit tricky. It s definitely not the easiest city to find a convenient affordable place to live. UBC campus (and Sauder) is not located near the downtown. The trip between downtown Vancouver and UBC campus is around 10 km and it takes around minutes by bus to travel depending on the serving lines and exact locations. Lining downtown means that you ll spend around 2 hours traveling

3 back and forth. So the first decision about the housing is to decide do you want to live on campus (or near the campus) or at downtown. This of course depends on your personal preference but I would say that living in Kitsilano area would be a good compromise. You are not too far away from the campus and downtown is pretty close as well. The area is nice as well. Price is of course one of the most important things to consider when looking for housing. Generally rents are a bit higher in Vancouver than in Helsinki. Basically the base level rents are the same, but the base level in Vancouver means sharing the apartment and having a one room, whereas in Helsinki you can get your own place for that money. This table below gives you a good understanding of the general level of rents. Prices are in Canadian dollars so keep that in mind (now 1 CAD is 0,64 EUR, usually around 0,7). I would say that these rents down below are from the lower end. Meaning that in some locations those rents are definitely considered cheap. Source: housing/off- campus- housing/ I started looking for housing in the beginning of July. The link they send you from the UBC about the housing is a good start as I mentioned earlier. There you get good sites to look for an apartment. I checked out several sites but in the end I relied fully on craigslist. It might be sometimes a bit sketchy and shady, but it s definitely the most active marketplace for rental apartments. I pretty much sent 3-5 s per day. The hardest part here was to find a place for 4 months. If I were coming Vancouver to stay, it would have been way easier. After 5-10 answers, I finally got a place from downtown in the beginning of August. One of my conditions in this process was that I am not willing to send any money beforehand. My goal was basically to secure a place and the rest ( contract, rent etc.) would be handled when I arrived. In this case it worked out great and I got a place from West End, downtown Vancouver. I noticed that the biggest challenge seeking for apartment was to secure a place and not being there physically. I would say that it is a lot easier to find a place when you can just call people and meet them and see the places. This is why it took me so long and so many s. If I would do this again, I would definitely try to find temporary place

4 (hostel, hotel, from MBA student s Facebook group) and then try to get place while already in Vancouver. Other preparations Like many of you probably know, doing exchange to Canada doesn t require visa for Finnish students. Citizens of Finland are allowed to stay in the country for 6 months without a visa and this applies naturally to students as well. All you need is your acceptance letter from UBC. It is also recommend to have all the acceptance letter from Aalto as well. Then just show these at the border and you should be good to go. I heard some students even got through just showing an related to UBC from their smartphone at the border. I wouldn t rely on the but this is just an example that there is nothing to worry about entering the country. The one other important thing is the flights. I highly recommend booking flights as soon as possible. I bought mine in July and I got a decent price but it could have been lower. I bought only one- way ticket, because I wasn t sure about my plans after the exchange. Studies started with the orientation in the end of August and I arrived to Vancouver two weeks before. I think this was a wise choice. In this two weeks I got time to get to know the city and relax before studies. Once the actual studies started I already knew everything like public transit and all the places so the beginning of the studies wasn t such a hassle for me as it was for some other exchange students. Total Costs I thought it might be a good to share my thoughts about the cost of living and budget here, because I guess that is one of the things applying students might be interested about. Here are all fixed/ necessary costs I had while doing my exchange: Rent 750 CAD / month x 3,5 = 2625 CAD = 1850 e Tuition and Student Fees = 408 CAD = 290e Tuition and student fees included my insurance by school and public transit ticket for my time in Vancouver. To those costs you also have to add the plane tickets, which are going to be around e. Of course those costs are just the necessary ones so it depends on what you are going to do and travel etc. There are also all the daily expenses such as food and beverages. It is fairly inexpensive to eat out in Vancouver. The groceries cost as much or sometimes even more than here in Finland. It depends on products and where you do your groceries. But overall you can estimate your daily expenses by checking how much you spend here in Finland.

5 2. Exchange studies There are around 100 students in the MBA class every year and there were 20 exchange students while I was there. Exchange students are studying with the second year MBA students. The average age of exchange students is whereas the MBA student s average age was roughly around 28. Most of the exchange student had little to none working experience whereas the MBA students had at least the required minimum of 3 years. If you hesitate applying to Sauder, because you don t have any relevant working experience, you shouldn t. Working experience is not required to make your exchange experience great. I didn t have any relevant working experience and I was able to get so much out of this. It would be ideal if you had some working experience so you would be able to reflect on it, but it is definitely not required. Like I said, especially European exchange students have basically no work experience. I already mentioned about the course registration process in the preparations section. Aalto University students have to select 8 courses in total, which makes 24 Aalto credits required for the exchange. There are 2 periods so it makes 4 courses per period. This might sound a lot but the course load is fair. You can pretty much do all the assignments during the week and then you can have weekends off. Before review the different courses I took, I want to address some of the main differences and characteristics about studying in the Sauder MBA program compared to studying in the Aalto Masters programs.

6 First of all, the structure of the courses is pretty much the same as here in Aalto (at least in Marketing). There is participation, group projects and final exam. There are also different kinds of courses such as simulations etc., which are something I haven t seen that much in Aalto. The main difference in my opinion is the discussion and the use of academic articles. The content in the courses is often based on the expertise of the lecturer and their lecture slides. Charismatic lecturers of Sauder make those courses and I would say that every lecture is a real joy, because of the top of the class presentations skills that these lecturers have. Some courses use a lot of Harvard Business Review cases, but there is very little academic articles included in the studies. On the theory- practical implications axis, studying relies heavily on practical implications. This is typical for MBA studies, where students already have working experience. Classes include a lot of discussion about different topics and students are encouraged to share their opinions and challenge each other (including the lecturer). I think that the discussion, co- creation and practicality are the defining aspects of MBA studies in North American University. Open- minded atmosphere really encourages students to participate speak their opinions. Disclaimer: I did only management and marketing courses. I cannot really comment on finance or accounting courses. Here are the courses I selected: Employment Management Group Project 30% Final Exam 50% Participation 20% The content of this course consistent of different issues related to employment relationships from the managerial standpoint. Although, there were a lot of Canadian legislation and practicalities involved, the course was still relevant and on point. This course really gave understanding from employers and employees point of view. The lecturer Perry Atwal also gave really good advices and tips from his experience related to applying jobs, interviews etc. I really recommend this course. Innovation & Sustainability Weekly Climate News Portfolio 35% Integrated Case Study 50% Participation 15% This course was the weakest of all the courses I had. The topics were only about the grand scheme of sustainability such as climate change etc. This course was basically about climate change and how it is going to effect business. James, the course lecturer, is a top- notch expert in this matter in a global scale, but if you are not interested about

7 climate change at all this is not the course for you. Also the content and the assignments were a bit shallow like prepare a presentation about a sustainable business or product. Multinational Enterprises Participation 20% Team Project 30% Final Exam 50% This course was pretty straightforward, nothing too special. The topics of this course are related to issues, which worlds largest corporations have to face. This course gives you a good glimpse all the main things corporations have to consider while going multinational whether it is marketing, logistics etc. I recommend this course if you feel this is your area or something you could see yourself using while working, but otherwise I would select another course. Strategic Management of Customer Relationships Case memos (team) 20% Class Participation (individual) 20% Project (team) 20% Final exam (individual) 20% Peer evaluation 20% This was definitely one of the highlights of my exchange. This course was help by Dean Murali, who is really charismatic and excels at presentation. It was truly a joy to listen these lectures. We had lectures only once a week and every lecture was structured around one of the group cases. Every week we prepared our solution to the weeks case and then on the lecture we discussed about the solution. For me this is how courses should be done. There s enough content and every time you come to the lecture you feel that you learn something. E- Business Participation 25% Three case memos 45% Final Presentation 30% As you can see from the requirements above this course was pretty straightforward as well. The content of this course felt sometimes a bit shallow, but as a whole package it felt good. If you have very little to none experience about digital business and what s going on out there this is course for you. And this is also excellent course to get a chance to talk about your opinions about digital business. Internet Marketing Article Report / Interview (individual) 20% In class participation 10% Project (team) 30%

8 Reflective learning paper 20% Blog 20% Internet marketing was a different kind of experience when it comes to courses I have taken during my studies. In this course our lecturer was Julio Viskovich who is well experienced when it comes to Internet marketing. Every part of the internet marketing was covered on this course more or less. The course was held in a Sauder s fairly new computer lab, which is one of the nicest classrooms I have been. We also get a chance to do a project for a company, but because of the timeframe (roughly 1month), it was pretty challenging to do any striking difference to clients digital presence. I really recommend this course if you are interested about digital marketing. Intrapreneurship Participation 20% Individual Assignment 40% Group Presentation 40% This course was one of the most interesting ones. Like the name already says the course is about innovation and entrepreneurship. The bug story of this course was how to bring innovation process and entrepreneurial aspects as a part of your organization. Every lecture we developed our process structure for our selected case company. Again, different way of learning things and having lectures. I highly recommend this course. Consulting simulation Presentation and final report 100% This course took place during a one weekend. Selecting this course means that you miss out one weekend but at the same time your whole second period is a little lighter, which in my opinion is worth the sacrifice. This actual course was really something different. In the beginning students are assigned to groups and every group acts like a group of consultants and the set up is to work with a case. We pretty much spent the whole weekend in these break out rooms (small meeting rooms) working on this case and preparing a slide deck to present. Our case was to figure out possibilities for NFL to grow outside US. This was really intense and rewarding course. I really recommend this one.

9 3. Free time and other information I don t think anyone should a difficulty of finding new interesting people and enjoying Vancouver during his or her time studying at Sauder MBA Program. There were organized pub nights every week and other activities where you got chance to meet people and have good time during the time in Vancouver. There are so much culture and possibilities for sports activities that there is definitely something for everyone. Location of Vancouver on the west coast makes it also a great place to do your exchange. It takes only 4 hours by car to get to Seattle and only couple hours on plane to California. Flights are also fairly cheap if you want to visit Hawaii as we did after the exchange. The weather might scare some people but that s something that can t be changed. The weather is actually fairly warm, which is nice. Vancouver is the warmest place in Canada and it only gets as low as little bit below zero Celsius during winter months. There s hardly any snow during the winter. The worst thing about the weather is the rain. It basically rains all the time during the winter months and my time there was not an exception. Of course there were many dry days especially in August and September, but in October and November, sometimes it rained more or less the whole week nonstop.

10 4. Final Comments Doing your exchange at Sauder you will meet amazing people around the world and get a chance to experience what it s like to study in a MBA program. Studying in a master s program in Europe involves a lot of theory and academic orientation. Studying in MBA program forms an excellent bridge between theory and practice. For me this exchange brought new fresh perspective how to think about life and business in general. There s always another way of doing things and you should never be restricted by someone else s ideas. I would say that my studies in Sauder complement my studies at Aalto quite perfectly. I also learned a lot about the culture and improved my English, especially my professional communications. In North America there s a lot more talking and self- expression is one of defining aspects of the culture. You will definitely learn being more open and improve your communications skills. Besides the professional benefits, I highly recommend Sauder and Vancouver for anyone who is interested about living in a North American city and experiencing the culture. If the North American and West Coast culture has always been something you want to experience doing your exchange in Vancouver is perfect place to get in touch with that.

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