Life of an MBA student at Cranfield University in the UK

This article will highlight my personal experience as an MBA student at Cranfield School of Management in the UK. The article will give answers to various questions, such as: Why did I decide to do an MBA? Why did I chose the UK? How did I chose the programme? How was the life in general as an MBA student at one of the leading European business schools?

Having worked as an Electronic engineer for more than four years, I started to realize that management and business, despite they can be a talent to some individuals, yet it is a science that you need to learn in order to successfully become a competent businessman. I also started to realize that Egypt and the region was putting its feet on the first steps of attracting foreign investors. Starting to see successful technology ventures and knowing that the government is trying to push the nation towards technological advances, I was keen to be part of the action and have a slice of the pie. I wanted to gain the business acumen and experience to be active in this movement. So I decided to do an MBA for mainly this reason.

I wanted to do my MBA generally in European business schools, because they require pervious business experience as a pre-requisite for the admission. This means that the academic environment will be rich with people that have been working in industry for a long time. This will give me the chance to learn from these people, nick their brains and even build life-long relationships that I might exploit in the future. The procedure for choosing the right programme was a lengthy process, yet crucial for future success. Choosing the right programme is of vital importance, because this has a direct link to the quality of education, the quality of your fellow students, the quality of educational facilities and the quality of the faculty members. Choosing a business school with a known brand will ease your life both during studying when you want to do an internship within blue-chip organizations , or after graduating when you start looking for a job.
To arrive to my decision I had to go through various rankings such as the Financial Times survey, Business Week and Forbes magazine. Also talking to people is always a good thing to do. Meeting people and asking them about their personal experience gives you a confidence boost in your decision. Having done all that I arrived to the conclusion that Cranfield School of Management was my aim, because of the strong reputation, the top scores in the rankings and the kind of people they attract, especially those who had international exposure. I applied to Cranfield and after a couple of interviews I was offered a place for their 2000/2001 intake.

The MBA was a hardworking, exhausting, tiring, yet very rewarding, experience. One of the traits of Cranfield was that everything was done in learning teams. At the beginning of the course you are assigned to a team that is cross-functional, cross?sectoral and cross-cultural. Cross-functional with people having different functional experiences, such as marketing, strategic planning, operations management, finance, etc… Cross-sectoral with people with past experiences in retailing, investment banking, telecomm, etc… Cross-cultural, with more than 80 nationalities represented at Cranfield, you will end up working with British, American, Chinese, Europeans, Japanese, etc…

For me the MBA was a paradigm shift, I learned a lot both on the hard skills side, such as marketing, strategy and finance, and on the soft skills side, such as people management skills, communications skills and consulting skills. I remember one great experience I had when we were acting as a board of directors facing a crisis situation and how we had to deal with the hostility of the media, where we actually had reporters coming from the BBC and the guardian trying to extract information from you to appear on the 9.00 o'clock news. I have to say it was a scary experience, yet enjoyable, because you learn a lot from it.
The MBA was an intensive life experience where I learned a lot about myself and how do others perceive me and what impact I could have on people. Being armoured with these skills I was in a position to be offered three positions, two in Europe and one in the middle east. I was also ready to change my role to accept an offer as an investment banker for technology ventures across the middle east.

My last advice to you is to have a dream. Have the passion and drive to make this dream come true. Believe in yourself and have faith in yourself, because if you don't believe in yourself no one would believe in you.
I personally believe that we are on the verge of a technological breakthrough in the region. This breakthrough will need people like you and me to join forces and work together to make this happen.

Finally I wish you all the best for your future endeavours and hope to see you soon on the front page of Forbes magazine as a leading entrepreneur.

Khaled Fouad BSc MBA
Email: khaled_fouad@yahoo.com