Hello,

I have Durham and Nottingham, Exeter, Glasgow and Leicester offers and the research I have done hass confused me more than it answered questions.

Durham MBA

Pro

Durham is now triple accredited and Times 2010 ranking gives 8th place, Guardian 2010 gives it 14th place, FT 2009 places it at 80th but this was before they were triple accredited so I am assuming Durham is going to jump the rankings in FT next year like Stratclyde jumped after it received triple accredition, they have companies like KPMG, Accenture, Barclays, LLoyds, BP recruiting MBA's. Oldest going by the history after Oxford and Cambridge.

Against arguments

They haven't consistently made the top lists for last 5 years, university is not campus based like Nottingham, Durham is a small city compared to Nottingham and London. Based on the tidbits on the blogs, I could find I think MBA is not paid as much attention by the university as compared to say Nottingham MBA, I welcome criticism on this point.

Nottingham
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MBA has consistently made the top list, research is better than Durham, Has broader ranking coverage by beyondgreypinestripe and rae. Better campus and thought out MBA program. Better local internships/jobs as city is bigger than Durham.

Cons
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Has slid in rankings lately, apart from coprporate social responsibility, no leading programs. Durham scores over it in most of the forums. High number of asian students who are considered a liability than asset(general feeling in the west) to a business school.

These are my inferences from my own research and would love to know other viewpoints. Good MBA hunt to fellow aspirants.

Go 2009 MBA!
youngbull

hi friends,
this is tushar , here . I am mechanical engineer from pune with 4 years experience I have a unconditional offer from nottingham , conditional from strathclyde ( gmat 620+ mine is 580), uncondi from royal holloway and a few unis more but really in the league of say warwick or lancaster.
I have decided to finalise on nottingham. Is there any post here for people accepted at nottingham , we could just share info on travel plans , accomodation or hostel applications and stuff like that.I am running pretty late on the process so any help /guidance on these issues would be GR8.
Regards,
Tushar Patil

Tushar,
I have created a group on orkut called Nottingham MBA 2009/2010, we can join it and disccuss this further, I have a unconditional from Nottingham as well, Haven't accepted it yet. PM me your email and I will try inviting you to the group

Regards,
Sanjay Tripathi

I know MBA Durham quite well, how on earth do they accept people with merely a couple of years of experience is beyond me. Few students ( Chinese if you dont mind me saying ) dont command their English as as MBA student. I suspect maybe they cheat in the IELTS exam.

Also, they are not third oldest University in the UK, but in England only, if you expand to UK.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_oldest_university_in_England_debate
Read this and they also debates that Durham is not third oldest in England, if you look at when it was founded, it is not very old.

The ranking is better than Nottingham though but the City is tiny. recently their Dean committed plagiarism and was expelled. This is a disgrace for Durham.

Hi,

Getting MBA students with bad English is equally true for Nottingham. For that matter I assume all the schools who recruit from non English speaking countries with optional IELTS and GMAT run the risk of having that problem. I am not worried about that, my worry is if I compare the 2 which one should I choose. I don't think couple of places in the ranking matter much as long as they are in top 100. I am strongly inclined to join Nottingham as I know the professor of marketing who has a phd from Oxford and is an exceptional generalist. What do you think about Durham/Nottingham MBA program and placements.

Sanjay

well as far as english i guess thats not a thing of concern.Its a foriegn language so like indians speak with a different accent no matter how good your vocalbulary and neutral accent u have.there is still few things which make u sound foriegn so big deal id chinese don't have that much command over the language.
Durham i hear is good.if we look at it from ranking prespective then durham looks good not because it is ranked above notts this year but because it is rising up and notts is sliding down.that could be reason for concern,why isn't the school not doing enuf to maintain rankings? whats going wrong and y is it sliding? but durham and nottingham a far from london so none of them have advantage of location. For MBA kind of jobs u know london is like the place hardly anything will u find in other towns. not there there aren't but what ever is available is very very very sparse. im planning to quit my job in uk and take up notts MBA but hav a feeling after which ill not have much chance of job here so might have to try in india.
sanjay no doubt the school have good profs and stuff but placements in almost all schools are nil.. may be lbs,warwick,oxford and cambridge fare lot better on this topic but rest all are on the same boat. ull have companies come to campus they give u presentation about themselves and then go.if u want to apply(provided they have vaccany) u need to do thru thier website so there is no much added advantage of that presentation or them coming to campus.so what i would recomend is if ur sure of the subjects u want to study and sure of what exactly are u going to do after MBA like how will u be able to go back to your previous industry of work and how much will they regard ur MBA with previous work ex,only then go for it. Last thing anybody wants is to quit a secure job spend all the money and also have huge debt and be looking for jobs after graduation.
sanjay if it is marketing ur looking for then i hear durham is better than notts. but im somehow convinced on the whole nottingham is better.well that's for me.so will not be able to coment on ur prefrences.
if i have confused u further then i appologise ;o)

hi friends,
this is tushar , here . I am mechanical engineer from pune with 4 years experience I have a unconditional offer from nottingham , conditional from strathclyde ( gmat 620+ mine is 580), uncondi from royal holloway and a few unis more but really in the league of say warwick or lancaster.
I have decided to finalise on nottingham. Is there any post here for people accepted at nottingham , we could just share info on travel plans , accomodation or hostel applications and stuff like that.I am running pretty late on the process so any help /guidance on these issues would be GR8.
Regards,
Tushar Patil

hi hs,
I am so bent upon getting a good gmat that I have a appointment , tomorrow 2 : 00 pm. it is my final pre MBA , if I score good i will just drop off Uk plans and start for US . Anyways i have set myself atleast 20 % improvement from my previous score (580).
And i just want to put myself to test and check , so no regrets later.Also I have to deposit the money to nottingham , holloway,) tomorrow.(the advance)
Many people will agree with me on this, Somehow I feel a bit apprehensive/ unsure about going to a non gmat school, and nottingham costs around 19000 Pounds in dollars around 30000. With this money I am good for Texas A&M and similar colleges.Also the trend in Uk suggests that companies prefer MBA's from schools which take GMAT.(at least for london. this was stated to me from the represtative of Royal halloway in june at a consultants. Well all this info is not to confuse anyone but really contrasting and varied.
and hey HS , i hear that the job market is very dismal in UK and 90 % analyst say it is going to improve only in 2011 over there. matter of fact one of my friend in bradford says , none is getting even part time jobs. (also lots of asians in bradford so) whats your take on this issue.
and where are u going to ?
Note: strathclyde actually set the GMAt condi only because i had nt given IELTS , and had around 30 % in GMAT verbal.Essays more pathetic. Later I got 8.0 in Ielts but they just put the GMAT condition in offer letter.(may be the volume of applicants forces them to set such conditions)

Regards ,
Tushar

hi hs,
I am so bent upon getting a good gmat that I have a appointment , tomorrow 2 : 00 pm. it is my final pre MBA , if I score good i will just drop off Uk plans and start for US . Anyways i have set myself atleast 20 % improvement from my previous score (580).
And i just want to put myself to test and check , so no regrets later.Also I have to deposit the money to nottingham , holloway,) tomorrow.(the advance)
Many people will agree with me on this, Somehow I feel a bit apprehensive/ unsure about going to a non gmat school, and nottingham costs around 19000 Pounds in dollars around 30000. With this money I am good for Texas A&M and similar colleges.Also the trend in Uk suggests that companies prefer MBA's from schools which take GMAT.(at least for london. this was stated to me from the represtative of Royal halloway in june at a consultants. Well all this info is not to confuse anyone but really contrasting and varied.
and hey HS , i hear that the job market is very dismal in UK and 90 % analyst say it is going to improve only in 2011 over there. matter of fact one of my friend in bradford says , none is getting even part time jobs. (also lots of asians in bradford so) whats your take on this issue.
and where are u going to ?
Note: strathclyde actually set the GMAt condi only because i had nt given IELTS , and had around 30 % in GMAT verbal.Essays more pathetic. Later I got 8.0 in Ielts but they just put the GMAT condition in offer letter.(may be the volume of applicants forces them to set such conditions)

Regards ,
Tushar

Thing is MBA is hardly content based course if it is only content based ones then better to do MSc.So if college only considers GMAT scores and not quality of work exp then ill be seriously worried. esp for future employment and even personal grwoth fom course may not be that great.see if a typical class will have people from all background.Imagine it has a guy from finnace background with only 2 years of not so significant work ex but has brilliant score then ull be the one in serious trouble.he will not have much insight about that industry which means u can't get much from him. he himself may be a bright chap but how is it going to help u? May be im worrying little too much.. but the sheer cost of it overwhelming . in undergarduate days we knew if we got good percentage then we can sit for campus based interviews.but that won't be the case anymore.

Guys if you take GMAT, try ISB, IIM in India, local MBA's have better opportunities as of today. Capital Markets used to hire a lot of MBA's pre reccession but as you know most of them are still trying to recover and have cut down new hires, lately BOA has cancelled hundreds of offers it had made to MBA's from Cornell and other leading schools this year, and that is the general trend everywhere in US. I am considering MBA as a long term investment which will start paying back in 3-5 years, in short term I doubt it will make a lot of difference. UK schools give you an opportunity to do MBA in less time for reasonable amount of investment, it may or may not result in opportunities in UK right away as hs pointed out.

Personally I think there won't be a better time than this considering what is out there is not as promising for the future to come. I plan to specialize in Finance, hs which program you think is better for it, Nottingham I think. What say you?

Guys if you take GMAT, try ISB, IIM in India, local MBA's have better opportunities as of today. Capital Markets used to hire a lot of MBA's pre reccession but as you know most of them are still trying to recover and have cut down new hires, lately BOA has cancelled hundreds of offers it had made to MBA's from Cornell and other leading schools this year, and that is the general trend everywhere in US. I am considering MBA as a long term investment which will start paying back in 3-5 years, in short term I doubt it will make a lot of difference. UK schools give you an opportunity to do MBA in less time for reasonable amount of investment, it may or may not result in opportunities in UK right away as hs pointed out.

Personally I think there won't be a better time than this considering what is out there is not as promising for the future to come. I plan to specialize in Finance, hs which program you think is better for it, Nottingham I think. What say you?

Cool,

So Nottingham it is, btw we haven't formally introduced ourselves, I'm Sanjay Tripathi, I have worked for 11 years in capital market systems in US and have a fair knowledge of capital markets like equities, fixed income, pricing, risk management and quants. hs/Tushar/Jasneet please join the orkut community called Nottingham MBA 09/10

Sanjay

Hi Guys,

I am new to this chat..but gone thru all the discussion on this.
I got unconditonal offer from Nottingham and thinking whether I shlould accept this or not. I am also awaiting for offer from Bradford and I am expecting to get it. But I am confused now.. I am aware of ranking and all but confused o n the same things as u guys pointed out...that is return of investment... i am very much ready to join Nots but sometimes i really makes me think ;) so guys just help me here with ur inputs..

AKS.

Hi Amit,

Again like I said. ROI will take a bit. The real question thou is whether you will be on the path which will take you there. MBA is not going to be an answer for all questions. You have to see if it is in you to become a leader and what have you done before getting an MBA and where does that leave you. If you have a good background MBA will help you make it even better. If you are a fresh out of school, it will put you on a path to gaining a good background. Monetary reward is going to be based on what you can bring to the table along with an MBA. So I say be objective and unbiased while you answer these questions. Strong answer to these questions should make a strong case for an MBA, rest is how people perceive the school you choose to go to.
Good Luck

yeah i guess will see ya guys there.Btw i just joined the commnity and in one of the posts jasneet said college is starting on 15sept but i was told it is on 21st? i haven't yet given notice to my job.guys what's the exact date?

Induction is on 21st and Lectures start on 25th September

Induction is on 21st and Lectures start on 25th September

so guys,
update from me on my GMAT test. I got 590 just 10 more. to sum up in one word "pathetic" quant was as usual decent but verbal sucked. so now i am sure to see you all at nottingham. few ruffled feathers have now settled.
A thought has me worried a bit.Nottingham is living off its reputation. Because if you ask any senior MBA , 9/10 will suggest nottingham against Durham , but durham constantly featuring in top 30's is worrying . Not that I envy junta at durham, but it also reflects the state of health of nottingham program,They better pull up their socks and reinvigorate the program.( also we are coming ) Nottingham featuring at 100 in ft ranking is a standing testimonial of that fact.
HS -- you being in UK , Are laptops cheaper there , many of my friends suggest London (duty free) etc . guide us bro.
just a passing thought , Nottingham vs Leeds.

ON GMAT
Reply to HS,
As u seem to suggest that the ad com should take into account you and only YOUR achievements into considerations. But achievements like earnings, plaudits , brilliance are relative factors. People have to be tested on a common platform . I believe GMAT provides that.( i am not a great proponent of GMAT's perfection) for example Fresher Vs experienced debate. Gmat etc settle that in a way that fresher will definitely have to score 700 as compared to 550-600 for a 5-7 year Pro.
Alos look at Uk trends , LSE< LBS

< warwick