Masters in Management - Smurfit Graduate Business School

hey,

I'm like yourself, i have applied to this course but alittle unsure. It is alot of money, but is it regarded? or just another business course. As its a thought masters I don't know what sets it apart from a masters in any other college. Im on the fence!

i assume your looking at doing it full time...im looking at the part time option which is more expensive.

I stumbled upon this a few days ago, but i've heard nothing about it! But it goes to show that other universities are doing similar courses to smurfit!

http://www.ucc.ie/en/CKL22/

siochain wrote: »

hey morganilegid, are there other sites for getting good feedback on courses?

sorry for off topic ; )

there is postgrad.ie but it doesn't seem to get alot of traffic.

Im going to do Finance in Smurfit and now am very apprehensive about the whole thing...

Even if it the Masters in Management is not the most difficult, and opinions differ on this, it be very unwise to extrapolate the Masters in Management to other Smurfit programmes. As the previous poster said the likes Finance & Quant Finance are far from a joke, and I doubt if anyone ever implied that the likes of the Msc in Business Analytics or the MAcc have easy marking.

Sadly there is demand for non challenging courses and many people prefer to do them.

Im in the same boat. I applied, spent ages filling out the question part of the form only to realise that as long as the application fee went through I was in. But a friend of mine did the course, he did the same undergrad as me, and he really enjoyed it. I think there will be a difference between students that came straight from 3 years arts and are doing it as a follow on type course, and those that are out of college a couple years and are going back to actually learn and get a business qualification.

I logged on online to the past paper section on the UCD website and looked through the exam papers to see what sort of stuff I will be expected to know when I finish and was suprised. A lot of the stuff I was pretty clueless on, and they didnt seem as easy as I was expecting. So maybe look through them will give you a more accurate view on the course.

Also my friend that did it said the work load was pretty heavy, lots of assignments. First semester was ok - hr management and other lighter subjects, but the second semester with more finance and economics etc was tougher. Then you select your thesis, which is far easier than most undergrad ones asyou can do it with someone else, but it can give you some focus.

So if you just want the qualification on the cv, I'm sure its easy enough to pass, but equally there are options there to focus your learning. My friend worked with Accenture when he finished, and is now working with an investment managament firm, which wouldnt have been an option for him with a Product Design degree.

Either way I'm commited to it and hope it's gonna be worth the money

scarface22 wrote: »

Will you have any chance of getting into one of the big consutancy firms i.e. BCG, Bain, Mc Kinsey with a Smurfit Mim?

I heard anything short of Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, Imperial is really difficult

I believe Smurfit does highlight some recent graduates who went on to work for McKinsey on their website - they were from the MBA program rather than the MiM though.

McKinsey having an office in Dublin may be a factor in why they have recruited from Smurfit - I don't believe Bain or BCG have a presence in Ireland.

Saying that, if you're good enough to work for McKinsey/Bain/BCG you'll probably find a way to get yourself in the door no matter what school you end up going to. It just might take a bit more work on your part.

scarface22 wrote: »

Is the MiM far too general a masters to pay that kind of money for?

Will it enable a candidate to make the cut for one of the second tier consultants such as Deloitte, Mercer, Oliver Wyman


According to this...

http://www.smurfitschool.ie/specialistmasters/management/masterinmanagement/careers,35030,en.html

Accenture is the only consultants previous students have got and I certainly dont want to settle for Accenture as Ive heard nothing but bad things about the place. Also Ive heard from good sources that working in the IT consulting sector can easily limit you to a this career path and make it difficult to move into strategic consulting (i.e. McK, BCG, Bain)

Would you advise some more technical and specific i.e. Economics or do you think its possible to get a decent second tier mgmt consulting job?

Cheers

I'd imagine one way to find out what the recruiting landscape is like might be to contact Smurfit's Career Service Office and see what they can share with you. They could be able to provide you with some MiM alumni currently working in various consulting firms who you could talk to.

You could also probably find out whether the MiM graduates working for Accenture are in Accenture's Strategy Consulting arm (they have somewhere around 2000 people worldwide providing strategy consulting services if I remember right) or if they are in the larger Accenture IT consulting organization.

Accenture themselves might be able to give you an idea of the internal mobility in the organization - if you join the company on the IT side there might be an opportunity to move laterally to the strategy consulting group.

Finally, I wouldn't let the fact that a MiM is a general degree put you off - you can say the same about an MBA, and lots of MBAs get hired by strategy consulting firms.

As a matter of interest, have you considered the MBA path if you really want to work for the likes of McK/Bain/BCG? Might be worth your while working for a year or two then applying to do an MBA and leveraging that to get yourself into a strategy consulting job.

Irishrossoblu wrote: »

A friend of mine is down to do the MBA this year, and in the interviews he was told in no uncertain terms that doing a Smurfit MBA was no guarantee of a job. Smurfit have been suffering from the fact that 50% or more of graduates from their courses last year are unemployed. It was mentioned that the careers office had sent a request to Smurfit Alumni to only hire Smurfit graduates where possible. Thus they are seeing that Smurfit a MA/MBA is no guarantee of a job.

I thought it quite incredible that they would tell people in the interview that they could not promise a job at the end of the programme. The Strategy Masters class of last year is largely unemployed as far as I know.

I'm not surprised by this - MBA programs at business schools that are much more well-known and respected than Smurfit also tell their students that there are no guarantees of jobs when you come out.

Anyone who goes into a degree like an MBA expecting that it will magically guarantee them employment once they finish probably needs to adjust their expectations.

What these schools and programs do provide is access to their alumni networks and recruiting opportunities. It's up to the individual student to leverage these resources to find a job.