Charles Akah - MBA - Introduction & Why Ivey

The following is an computer-generated summary of the video transcript.

 Hi, everyone. Welcome to my short video about myself on my business school. My name is Charles Akah I'm, an MBA student of Ivey business school here in London, Ontario. I began my program in march. I came over to Canada for the first time in February 2020 and so far it's been a great journey and I'm here to tell you so much about the school why I chose Ivey. So stay tuned for a few clips where I'll kind of let you in on what MBA program here at Ivey. Thank you. So I’m currently in my apartments in downtown London Ontario. To begin I would like to tell you a bit more about myself, on my background and how I decided to come over to Ivey. So I trained as an architect back in Nigeria on I walked in commercial banking on project managements. In the past 7,8 years with one of Nigeria's largest financial institutions, I got exposure to banking, finance and project management works. But I knew a lot some of the business skills that I needed to transition and proceed to the next phase of my career and that's why I decided to come to business school. I first of all, applied for permanent residency in Canada when it was approved. I saw it as an opportunity to do MBA in one of Canada's best, um, MBA schools. So basically everyone has a different story on how they decided. Toe pick an MBA school. For me, it was basically a goose. Such my interest really was to do an MBA at one of the most prestigious MBA programs available in Canada and Google told me that Ivey was among the top. Of course, the usual suspects came up. There was Rottman. There was Ivey, there was Queens. What made Ivey stand out was, you know, one-year length off the program. I didn't want a program that would take me to far too long out off the job market. I wanted something I could do around off very quickly on the one-year program was very appealing, also was drawn by the fact that the MBA program  start using the case method of learning, and I found out fascinating. I hadn't done case learning in any of my other undergrad program of master's programs. So I found it interesting, and I was really, really eager to find out what this was on those air. Some of my key attraction that, you know, Mid Ivey appealing mid Ivey stand out from all of the MBA schools I considered. Yeah, so tell you a bit more about the recruitment process and how I eventually go into Ivey. Like I said earlier, google was really my major companion when it came to searching information about Ivey. I was back in Nigeria when I hand in my application and I didn't get a chance to visit campus or talk to anyone locally here. London entire. What? I found out. A lot of the resource is I needed. We already available on google. I was able to upload my resume on Ivey's website, and I got a call a few days later from the MBA recruitment seat wanting to know more about me on a little bit of what I was looking for from the MBA program. So once they established that it wasn’t much they were able to tell me exactly what to do? how to go about submitting my documents? what documents they were looking for a range of what I needed to score in the G months to the guarantee the place in the program. So I took all these advice and I worked on them. I was able to get my G mart and every other things in place before submitting my application. The key part of the process you submit your references, you would also have the MBA essays. During my time I was asked to write two essays. The first one was what I plan to do after I graduated from the MBA program. It was an opportunity to hear from me what my expectation from the MBA program, where on I was able to express myself in that essay, secondly, essay was more interesting one where I was asked to talk about any issue, I had changed my mind about in the past five years. I found out interesting. I had to think hard on and right to come up with something to write on that topic, and I was very pleased with my responses. so after the essay submission, typically goes into a interview and If you qualify for an interview, your call for the next stage of this selection process. During the interview, you're paired with someone from the Ivies carrier management seat. Basically, I think the idea is to be sure that your expectations from the program aligned with what you wanna do after the program. That's why you heard it, someone from career management to start from the get go to align you with your eventual career path after the MBA program. So the interview was set of behavioral questions mostly trying to find out more about your background, on what you expect going forward. The response I got after that was that an admissions committee will look at my entire submission, get back to me. eventually I was given the core. And here I am. Ivey uses the case method of learning to teach in its MBA program. The case method of learning requires that students participating classand your final grade is determined by how much you contributing class discussions, how much insights through from your experience in your past work coming into the program and how you're able to draw insights from cases you study to kind of expand the knowledge of the entire class. so you need someone who is very active, thinks on the spot and you know is willing to speak up at every point when they have something to say. It's a very challenging experience. It has challenged me before I came into the Ivey program. I couldn't pride myself as being very vocal, especially in the new environment in a different culture. But when you come in, there are so many very interesting individuals. Because the school makes sure that is a good mix of people from diverse backgrounds, so that class discussions are very engaging. You get a chance to speak on provided you rise up to the challenge. The case method of learning is a very pleasant experience. Smooth admissions process. I love to share a few tips on how to stand out as an applicant for the program here atIvey. So typically, admissions officers are looking for candidates who have a minimum of three years of work experience. But in addition to that, they should be able to stand out in the entire admissions process by the quality of the CVs, being able to carry themselves well during the interview processes. Off course it could G marks would help to, you know, make things a bit more solid. But don't be afraid. If you don't have as high G marks you think as you require. Basically just someone who has the experience and is willing to fit into Ivey's culture, which is being both being able to speak when necessary, being vocal about issues because these tips will eventually help you when it comes to learning from true the case method of learning. So thank you for watching, um, it being fond sharing these insights with you on. I look forward to doing more videos and letting you in on the cultural here at Ivey on everything about my MBA experience.