CEIBS Offers MBA Bootcampers Entry Into Vast China Biz Landscape - Poets&Quants

Dr. Zhang Yu lectures CEIBS bootcamp participants on Building Competitive Advantage for Innovative Organizations. Courtesy Luminary Visuals

If you are a business school in Shanghai and you’ve got a group of potential students you want to impress, you don’t have to worry too much. The city is an architectural and cultural wonderland, with a “wow” factor that does much of your selling for you. 

China Europe International Business School has been happy to use its home city of Shanghai as the main selling point to would-be students in the school’s annual pre-MBA bootcamp. Word has gotten out: This year’s bootcamp, which concluded earlier this month, saw a bigger crowd than ever, about 70 would-be MBA students from 20 countries, up from 58 last year and 49 the year before. That’s 70 talented up-and-comers from around the globe willing to pay about $1,500 each to test drive a program in a city many have never seen. And it’s no wonder why. It’s a city at the forefront of China’s economic and cultural revival.

Once they arrive, would-be students sense Shanghai’s energy immediately. It’s impossible not to. It’s a mix of excitement, optimism, and drive, and potential applicants to CEIBS are responding: So many young women and men crowded into the school’s residence halls for this year’s bootcamp, the sixth CEIBS has staged, that next year’s event may be split into two groups, MBA program Director Juan Fernandez says. What started as an experiment is turning into a major pin in the CEIBS calendar.

Shanghai may be CEIBS’ chief attraction for both Chinese and international talent but it is not the only one. The school, 1,800 acres of glassy pools, sharp lawns, and ultramodern facilities, is on the rise in the rankings and in the estimation of peers — particularly as a gateway to the world of Chinese business. 

INTERNATIONAL VERSUS CHINESE GRADS: A SALARY COMPARISON

Courtesy Luminary Visuals

Would-be MBAs in the annual pre-MBA bootcamp at CEIBS are smart people. They can read the data. And the data for graduate salaries at one of Asia’s premier B-schools shows that for non-Chinese grads — fully a third of the cohort for the Class of 2019 — it pays more to leave China after getting their degree. For Chinese students, it pays to stay. 

The most recent data available, for CEIBS’ 2017 grads, shows that international students who stay in China to enjoy the lower cost of living (among other perks) pay for it with lower salaries. Median pay for this group (which decreased between 2016 and 2017 from 13.6% to 11.8% of all grads) fell from $63,000 to $61,200. Those who left mainland China, meanwhile (22.1% of all grads), had a median pay of $72,750 in 2017, much higher than those who stayed ($56,287) — though both are down significantly from the year before ($82,500 and $61,200, respectively). Throw other compensation into the mix, and you can add $18,900 to the total. Irrespective of location, a typical newly minted international MBA from CEIBS can expect to get a starting pay package of $75,000 to $90,000. This is borne out in further data provided by the school showing that international grads in 2017 fell equally into three different pay brackets, with 20% making between $45,000 and $60,000 to start, 20% making between $60,000 and $75,000, and 20% making between $90,000 and $105,000 — though a lucky 10% made more than $105K. (All compensation calculations based on 1 yuan = 0.15 U.S. dollar.) 

For Chinese CEIBS students, the choice is clear: Stay in China, make much more. For those who stay (74.6% of total grads), median base salary jumped from $54,000 in 2016 to $66,750 … and for those who leave (just 1.5% of total grads, down from 4.2%), there’s a huge dropoff, from $70,500 in 2016 to $28,192 in 2017 (though the small sample size probably skewed the latter figure). Add $22,500 in other comp and, without stipulating where they work, Chinese grads can reasonably expect to pull in just shy of $90,000 in year one of post-grad work. However, the starting pay bracket with the most 2017 Chinese grads (31.1%) was $60,000-$75,000.

Who’s hiring? Lots of familiar U.S. names — Amazon, Deloitte, Google, PepsiCo — and lots and lots of Chinese companies, among them giants like Alibaba, Baidu, Meituan-Dianping, and Tencent. Most CEIBS MBAs go into financial services (30.4%), tech (17.6%), or manufacturing (15.5%), and by far the greatest percentage of grads become managers — 39.1%.

CALCULATING THE COST OF ATTENDANCE

So … is it worth it? CEIBS tuition and other costs for the Class of 2020 are not yet available, but going by the 2019 figures and using the current yuan-to-dollar exchange rate, here are the costs calculated into U.S. dollars: 

• $180 app fee ($150 for Chinese applicants)

• MBA 2019 tuition: $59,850

• Estimated rent for single room on campus: $450 per month for 21 months: $9,450

• Estimated textbook cost: $600

• Estimated food cost: $4,200

• Insurance estimate: $3,450

• Estimated miscellaneous expenses: $4,500

That makes the total for the whole program around $82,230, not counting expenses incurred if a student participates in the CEIBS exchange program. So say you’re an international student making the overall median starting pay package of about $80,000 — it won’t take you long to pay off your investment, assuming it isn’t paid off by your employers or your rich and generous uncle. And for Chinese grads making the estimated starting pay of $90,000 based on the above calculations, the picture is even rosier.

See complete CEIBS salary data on Page 3.

CEIBS pre-MBA bootcamp participants Roop Kishore, left, and Alastair Moore enjoy the view from atop Shanghai Tower, China’s tallest building. Courtesy Luminary Visuals

ONE MORE SALARY ANGLE 

Let’s look at the salary question one more way: How do CEIBS’ outcomes compare to those at its peer schools? Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 86% of whose grads stay in Asia, lists its average salary at $82,234, right around CEIBS’ total first-year compensation. But there are variables that may complicate the comparison, not least the question of how, exactly, HKUST arrived at their figure, and whether that figure is total comp or base pay. So let’s consult another metric. The Financial Times makes a salary calculation that sometimes allows for easier comparisons between schools: its “weighted salary” averages alumni salaries three years after graduation and makes some adjustments for variations between sectors. In this way, FT set the salary at CEIBS, its top-ranked 2018 Asian B-school at No. 8 overall, at $162,858. HKUST (No. 14) is not far behind at $158,119, while National University of Singapore Business School (No. 18) is at $143,917, Nanyang Business School in Singapore (No. 22) is at $132,288, and the University of Hong Kong (No. 33) is at $128,245. Meanwhile, grads from the other big B-school in Shanghai, Jiao Tong University’s Antai College of Economics and Management (No. 34), make $121,635.

Without mentioning a handful of Indian schools with comparable weighted salaries — No. 31 IIM-Ahmedabad ($175,801), No. 35 IIM-Bangalore ($166,651), and No. 28 Indian School of Business ($148,974) — CEIBS comes out looking pretty good with the FT metric.

However, it isn’t only Asian schools CEIBS is competing with. Participants in this summer’s bootcamp, which concluded July 2, have a wide array of options and target schools, including many in the U.S. and Europe — in fact, only around one in five bootcamp participants will decide to apply here, if precedent is any guide. That’s not surprising when you consider that besides Chinese, the bootcamp boasts many Indians and a smattering of nationalities from around the globe, from Ghana to Brazil to Romania.

Kavya Thachankary of Kerala, India, doesn’t expect to apply to CEIBS after attending its pre-MBA bootcamp this summer but found the lectures “pretty amazing.” Marc Ethier photo

FOR ONE BOOTCAMPER, LACK OF MANDARIN COULD BE A DEAL-BREAKER

One of them, Kavya Thachankary of Kerala, India, is an analyst for Cargill in Bangalore, India who is currently studying for the GMAT. She doesn’t expect to apply to CEIBS, however, because she thinks other schools might be better destinations for her interests in digitization and leadership — and, she adds, because she is an international student who doesn’t speak Mandarin. Thachankary, who graduated from PSG College of Technology in Coimbatore, India with a degree in computer engineering, has a couple of U.S. schools on her target list, including NYU Stern School of Business and Duke University Fuqua School of Business. She’s also considering National University of Singapore Business School, and possibly a Canadian B-school. “The difference between doing an MBA in the East and something in the West is something I’m trying to figure out — which one would be better,” she says. “I’m glad I came to China, but multiple people over the last few days have said, ‘International students who don’t know Mandarin — no point in coming here.’

“I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I came to Shanghai,” Thachankary, 24, tells Poets&Quants. “I thought for the most part the lectures were pretty amazing.”

She has concerns, though, about the level of instruction in digitization, despite the school’s new Digital Business concentration. “I work in the digital space and digitizing in China is pretty far ahead from the rest of the world, which would be a reason to come here. So I was expecting high-end digitization in the session we had on digital business, but basically it was just about e-commerce.”

And she keeps coming back to the language hurdle.

“Coming here if you’re not going to get a job in China doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Thachankary says. “But for someone who doesn’t speak Mandarin, that is going to be very hard. If you love China or you have a family business you have to go back to and you’re just trying to understand something affecting your business that is related to China, those kinds of reasons, yes. But for just a completely independent international student looking at getting an MBA for the experience and exposure and all that, it may not make sense.”

Kwadwo Owusu-Agyeman of Accra, Ghana, was one of 70 participants in the CEIBS pre-MBA bootcamp this year. CEIBS will run a global EMBA program from its facilities in his hometown beginning this fall. Owusu-Agyeman, 26, is more interested in the MBA in Shanghai. Marc Ethier photo

A ‘TECH GUY’ WITH FINANCE EXPERIENCE

More than lectures, CEIBS’ pre-MBA bootcamp showed potential students some of their potential employers, too: companies like PricewaterhouseCoopers and Bayer, major multinational corporations with bases in Shanghai, and smaller companies like Naked Hub, a shared workspace network. Students lived on the 7.5 million-square-meter CEIBS campus and heard from top faculty and alumni. And they made field trips, guided and on their own, into the heart of Shanghai, population 24 million, including a trip to the top of Shanghai Tower, China’s tallest building. As Thachankary says, her generation is spoiled for options, “and if you want to know what these programs are actually like you can just read about them. But you don’t get the answers you’re looking for, I think, unless you really experience it.”

Kwadwo Owusu-Agyeman of Accra, Ghana, was one of the 70 participants in the CEIBS pre-MBA bootcamp this year. He knows the school well: CEIBS has facilities in Accra, where the school runs executive education and women’s entrepreneurship programs. It’s through that campus that Owusu-Agyeman learned about the CEIBS MBA in Shanghai, a program he intends to apply for admission to in fall 2019.

“I spend my time researching fintech and the type of financial technology in China is light years ahead,” says Owusu-Agyeman, 26, an investment banking analyst for IC Securities who studied computer engineering at the University of Ghana. “When I found out there was a CEIBS bootcamp, I knew I had to come, to see the school, see the city, see if it’s something I can experience.”

A few months after joining IC Securities as a tech analyst in 2015, Owusu-Agyeman made the switch to finance, working in capital markets and mergers and acquisitions, serving both institutional and corporate clients. Among other achievements, he helped manage two of the largest IPOs in the history of Ghana’s stock exchange. He likes the work — but tech is not entirely in his rearview. “The reason why I wanted to go into finance is that I wanted to understand how to run a place and what goes into raising money,” he says. “I’m a tech guy, actually, but I wanted to understand finance and investment banking.”

In that space, he spotted a big opportunity. Ghana is a country with bad banking penetration — “people don’t use banks,” Owusu-Agyeman says. “Insurance, pensions, it’s very bad — the population is informal and uneducated, so they don’t use banks. But there’s a new phenomenon, mobile banking — not smartphone banking, but a very rudimentary type of application. But that technology, as basic as it is, is revolutionizing financial services in Ghana.” But it can be much more, he adds. “And when I started reading about stuff like that, it got me really excited because the next stage is probably smartphones for the people in Africa. They don’t trust banks, but if they can understand how to bank on their phones, it will really grow. Fintech is going to skyrocket in sub-Saharan Africa.”

That’s his plan, and with the “right mix of tech and finance background,” Owusu-Agyeman hopes get into CEIBS. “The innovation is what really draws me here,” he says, but he also expects to apply to some U.S. and European schools, particularly Stanford and INSEAD.

Tony Hsieh at Naked Hub in Shanghai. Hsieh expects to apply to CEIBS with an eye to start his MBA journey in 2020 or 2021. Marc Ethier photo

‘CEIBS WOULD BE THE BEST CHOICE FOR ME’

Bala Ramasamy, CEIBS professor, was just one of several people to reinforce to 2018 bootcamp participants that if they want to find jobs in China post-graduation, they had better learn Mandarin. This helps explain why CEIBS offers Mandarin classes in the first term.

For Tony Hsieh, the classes aren’t necessary. Like most bootcamp participants this year — and like around two-thirds of MBA students at CEIBS every year — Hsieh speaks Chinese, though he is not from the China mainland but from Taiwan. He’s a division head of marketing for the health care and life science business group of Foxconn, an IT services firm based in Shenzhen with more than a million employees. Hsieh earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from National Taiwan University in 2011; just a year into his current role, he came to Shanghai with a plan to learn more management skills.

“I’m currently leading a small team of five, and that is a little bit challenging for me,” Hsieh, 29, tells P&Q.

His first interaction with CEIBS was a couple years ago when he accompanied a colleague on a visit to Shanghai. Besides touring some locally based companies, Hsieh also got a view of the CEIBS campus. Back then he had no plans to pursue an MBA degree, because he never thought he’d need one. But that soon changed. 

“I remember being told that the best best way to learn more about the CEIBS MBA program was to join the bootcamp, and I remembered that,” Hsieh says. “Last year in my new job, the idea popped into my mind: Maybe I need MBA training. And because I plan to have my career here in China, I think CEIBS would be the best choice for me.”

Hsieh’s timeline is longer than most bootcampers: Unsure about the wisdom of quitting right now, he is eyeing 2020 or 2021 to start his MBA journey. But the bootcamp has given him a good taste of what life at CEIBS will be like, and he likes all of it: the lectures, the campus life, the possible future classmates. Of course, Shanghai itself remained a major selling point, as well, one that Hsieh — like all bootcampers, even those not new to China or the city — was duly impressed with.

CEIBS 2018 pre-MBA bootcamp participants. CEIBS photo

Base Salary & Other Guaranteed Compensation	All Students Median Base	All Students Range	All Students Median Other Compensation	Chinese Students Median Base	Chinese Students Range	Chinese Students Median Other Compensation	International Students Median Base	International Students Range	International Students Median Other Comp
Class of 2017	425,000 RMB ($63,750)	120K-1.05M RMB ($18,000-$157,500)	150,000 RMB ($22,500)	436,000 RMB ($65,400)	120K-700K RMB ($18,000-$157,500)	150,000 RMB ($22,500)	408,000 RMB ($61,200)	180K-1.05M RMB ($27,000-$157,500)	126,000 RMB ($18,900)
Class of 2016	375,000 RMB ($56,250)	125K-890K RMB ($18,750-$133,500)	60,000 RMB ($9,000)	360,000 RMB ($54,000)	180K-800K RMB ($27,000-$120,000)	50,400 RMB ($7,560)	420,000 RMB ($63,000)	125K-890K RMB ($18,750-$133,500)	83,600 RMB ($12,540)

Guaranteed Cash By Industry	2017 Percentage	2017 Median	2017 Range	2016 Percentage	2016 Median	2016 Range
Financial Services	30.4%	400,000 RMB ($60,000)	150K-1.05M RMB ($22,500-$157,500)	23.6%	400,000 RMB ($60,000)	125K-1M RMB ($18,750-$150,000)
Technology	17.6%	511,000 RMB ($76,650)	270K-900K RMB ($40,500-$135,000)	22.8%	400,000 RMB ($60,000)	200K-810K RMB ($30,000-$121,500)
Manufacturing	15.5%	500,000 RMB ($75,000)	250K-800K RMB ($37,500-$120,000)	18.1%	500,000 RMB ($75,000)	260K-750K RMB ($39,000-$112,500)
Healthcare	8.1%	535,000 RMB ($80,250)	300K-725K RMB ($45,000-$108,750)	10.2%	495,700 RMB ($74,355)	336K-750K RMB ($50,400-$112,500)
Consulting	5.4%	525,000 RMB ($78,750)	180K-850K RMB ($27,000-$127,500)	3.2%	590,250 RMB ($88,537)	537,800-890K RMB ($80,670-$133,500)
CPG	4.7%	545,000 RMB ($81,750)	220K-662K RMB ($33,000-$99,300)	5.5%	402,498 RMB ($60,374)	358K-450K RMB ($53,700-$67,500)

Dr. Ginkgo Bai lectures pre-MBA bootcampers on Creating and Capturing Value in Digital China. Marc Ethier photo

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