HKUST out: Lesson learnt. Do the research early.

What you want and what a college offers should be in sync.
Everywhere they say, do the college research and see what a college is offering. But most of the people do not look deep inside the college. Most of them are not even sure about what they want. And I am one of those people only. But going through this, I have realized that going through the admission process only, tells you so much about yourself. If you don’t know what you want in life, go through MBA admission process and you will get to know more than you ever knew.
From the very beginning, I know at least that I do not want to go in Finance. I am thinking about going in either Management in IT or Marketing.
I had shortlisted just a few collges. HKUST, CEIBS, Krannert, SP Jain and a few more but every day this list is getting shorter, and I do not have much time to research more colleges and get one of my choices, and then apply.
From the very beginning I have some inclination towards Asian Bschools. And HKUST seemed to be a good option. Expenses play a very important part in the school selection and that’s the main reason I have not selected many US B schools. The total expenses including tuition fee and living expenses go upto $100,000 for most of the schools. Moreover they ask for a Loan Co-signer. And the schools which didn’t ask for a co-signer earlier are now asking for it due to the recent global turmoil.
So due to above reason, HKUST sounded even better to me. Total expenses (Tuition + living expenses) go upto $55,000, as mentioned on its site.
Today I sat to dig more into HKUST Business School. And within some time I realized that the school is good but most of the recruiters were from finance sector.
And fortunately I got more clarity on this from some guy who was considering HKUST at one time. Thanks to him, he replied instantly and gave me more insight into the same. He has been in Hong Kong and that part of the world for long now and he suggested that one should only look for Singapore or Hongkong B schools if he is interested in Finance as career.
So despite of my proclivity/predilection for Asian Schools and Asian market and because of my disinclination towards Finance, HKUST is out from my list :(
So do the research early. It’s really important.
Chao