Being surrounded by 40 different nationalities gave Hong Kong native Sharon Kwok an eye-opening MBA experience at Hult International Business School, London campus. She told MBAGRADSCHOOLS why the international nature of the Hult MBA is what sets it apart from other programs.
Before my MBA I was working at Apple for around six years. It was more in the retail capacity, doing their trainee program and then I became a manager working at their stores in Hong Kong and London. Then basically it hits me: “Where to go next?” I loved the company but I really wanted to experience something else and change my career path. I think the MBA is a way of figuring out where I want to go next. [00:12]
Exchanges or going to other parts of the world to study has always been an amazing part of study life, and Hult allows you to go to [any campus] you want to, without another layer of selection or application. [08:56]
London, Boston, San Francisco, New York, Dubai (Hult’s international campuses)… they’re all in very strategic locations and you can really find the locations where you might want to do your internship at the end of your elective, or that’s where you want to develop yourself in your career. You can literally end there (in a foreign campus), even if you started in London. That was something I was really excited about. [09:25]
Also the curriculum itself – they lay out everything, including a capstone experience where you work with companies for the spring term. These are the real practical experiences I’m looking for from my MBA, so it’s not just going to the class and listening to the class, but also doing something that can be applicable in real life. [10:19]
I think the commonality is that we are very very international! Whenever I’m in a group project there is never another person from Hong Kong or even Asia. That’s the commonality – that we are all so different. We are all very eager to learn from different cultures, different backgrounds…and that’s when the sparks happen. When you work together that’s when you learn how to interact with a French person, a British person, an American…they’re all different. [11:28]
People all understand that that’s what they’re there for. You can’t take your own method as the best. You have to be open-minded, and I think the school has a really well-understood mindset that when I’m there, I need to be open-minded to learn. [12:47]
I think it’s two things mainly. I hope I will be figuring out what I want to do [as] that’s why I did it in the first place. Instead of saying I know exactly what I want, I want to know the direction I will go next. It might be a different path than I thought, but at least I know in the future that’s what I really want to do throughout my career. [16:57]
The second thing is the network that I get from Hult. Within two months you’ve already made friends that you feel you’ve known for a long time. With COVID it kind of helps you to do that because everyone is in the same boat. Everyone is going through the same thing. It unites everyone together more than usual. [17:38]
I would be very very happy if, by the end of this, those networks and friendships stay. You never know where you’re going to be, but those people have gone through the same thing and you can always go back to them and have a laugh about what happened. That is the best feeling when you go through some major experience together. [18:07]
