Meet The CEIBS MBA Class Of 2023

A PIANIST, A MUSIC PRODUCER, AND A BALLROOM DANCER

Sabine Katrin Neuhaus holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s of Law from Zurich University, along with an LL.M. in International Arbitration & Dispute Resolution from the University of Hong Kong. Two years after re-locating to China, she was awarded the M&A, Business and Commercial Lawyer of the Year in China 2021. Legal prowess isn’t the only talent possessed by Neuhaus, a classically-trained professional pianist.

“I used to accompany stand-up comedy performances on the piano. Improvising on the spot and creating the sound to sketches for a live audience together with the actors was a thrilling experience. I often could not help it but laugh with the audience about a hilarious joke!”

The class is full of artists, actually. Archie Preston jokes that he is a failed child actor. Morgan Fourdrigniez records and produces music in his spare time. And Radina Arnaudova’s journey to CEIBS includes stops as a professional ballroom dancer, financier, and entrepreneur.

“I started my career in Varna, Bulgaria,” she writes. “A year later, I took a huge risk and moved to the USA to pursue a Master’s in Finance. At the time, I gave up a prosperous career track to pursue the unknown. Upon graduation, I joined EY in New York in one of the most technical groups – Structured Finance. Later on, I moved to Shanghai to work on a start-up opportunity and now I am back in school.”

GMAT SCORES UP 16 POINTS

Here, Arnaudova is part of CEIBS’ 120-member Class of 2023. Representing 21 countries, the class has achieved a 50-50 male-to-split, placing it alongside American stalwarts like The Wharton School and Northwestern Kellogg. The class has also taken a more international character, with 38.3% of MBAs hailing from outside China — a 10% increase over the previous year. That’s not the only number that’s up. This year’s class averaged a 684 GMAT, a 16 point bump over the previous class.

Academically, 42.5% of the class majored in Business & Management, just a few points shy of last year’s 46.5% mark. Another 30% of the class holds undergraduate degrees in Science and Engineering, followed by Language and Arts and Other Majors at 15.8% and 11.7% respectively. The class’ professional backgrounds, however, are more diverse. Like last year, a fifth of the class last worked in Financial Services. Technology (14.2%), Manufacturing (11.7%), and Consulting (10.0%) each make up sizable shares of the class. The rest includes professionals from Healthcare, Real Estate, Media and Entertainment, Petroleum and Energy, Government and NGO’s, Retail, Consumer Products, and Logistics.

The Class of 2023’s prospects also look bright based on the results of the spring graduating class. 95.5% of the Class of 2021 landed job offers within three months of graduation. However, this percentage is a slight misnomer. Among the 27 graduates categorized as “Not Seeking Work,” 22 had returned to their sponsoring company or family business, started a business, or continued their education. The incoming class can also expect high returns on the education investment. Within three years of Graduation, CEIBS MBAs earn $178,558 in weighted salary according to The Financial Times, the second-highest earnings among Asian MBA programs. Even more, this pay is higher than alumni pulled down from London Business School, HEC Paris, NYU Stern, and the National University of Singapore over the same period.

And CEIBS is hardly a program to rest on its laurels. This past year, the school boosted the percentage of courses incorporating entrepreneurship to nearly 47%, with entrepreneurially-themed clubs drawing a fourth of the students. Along the same lines, the school has recently cut core course requirements by a fourth while adding nearly two dozen electives, providing MBAs greater choice and flexibility.

“What hasn’t changed is the program’s laser focus on the China experience,” explains Shameen Prashantham is the new director of the full-time MBA program at CEIBS, in a 2021 interview with P&Q. “We have certain electives and this huge case center which produces the largest number of Chinese cases in the world,” he says. “Digital China is one of many unique electives here. We are trying to increase the portfolio of Chinese-based modules (immersions). I will take students later this month on a module that explores the globalization of Chinese companies. A German colleague is doing a Shanghai-based elective on European companies in China and how they cope with local competition and the rise of digital companies in China.”

AN INTERVIEW WTH MICHELLE ZHU

That said, you can expect CEIBS to move deeper into sustainable business practices, Prashantham adds.  That’s one area that P&Q discussed with Michelle Zhu, MBA administration director at CEIBS. From popular electives and clubs to the China Strategy Project and eLab, here is what potential MBA students can expects in the program.

P&Q: What are the two most exciting developments at your program and how will they enrich the MBA experience for current and future MBAs?

MZ: 1) “A conscious move towards SDGs

In 2015, the United Nations adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030. In order to help our students become well-versed in the concept of sustainability, we aim to incorporate the SDGs into our curriculum. We believe this will also prove valuable in term of the employability of our students as more and more organizations look for “responsible” professionals.

2) A 16-month programme

We have cut down the length of our programme by two months, making it a 16-month programme for those going for the full-length option. Since the credit requirements and other aspects of the programme remain unchanged, this will make our MBA slightly more intense, but will also provide a big benefit to our students in terms of lowered opportunity costs. Instead of August, our MBA programme will now begin in October each year.”

P&Q: What are two biggest differentiating features of your MBA program? How does each of these enhance the learning of your MBA students?

MZ: “First, our motto “China Depth, Global Breadth” really does exhibit our programme curriculum and it is the China depth part that sets us apart from other top business schools in the world. We deliver this depth through a wide range of China modules, a week-long China discovery series, a three-month compulsory Integrated China Strategy Project (ICSP), and by utilizing China-focused cases taken directly from our in-house ChinaCases.org case library which has now grown into the most influential China-related case platform in the world.

Second, CEIBS’ trademarked Real Situation Learning Method (RSLM) is an upgraded version of the case-based teaching method. Although RSLM is also based on cases, it brings students into the cases and into the companies involved, instead of adding cases into classes. This enables an entirely new level of student engagement by allowing students to visit these companies and interact with top executives there. We have already incorporated RSLM into our domestic electives in Shenzhen, Nanjing and Ningbo.”

P&Q: In recent years, there have been several areas that have gained increased prominence in business school programming, including STEM, analytics, artificial intelligence and digital disruption. How does your full-time MBA program integrate these concepts across its curriculum?

MZ: “We introduced a digital business concentration into our programme in 2018, and have since added digital-focused electives such as Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning and Digital Strategy: How to Win and Lose Big in Digital Transformation & Disruption as well. Currently, about a third of our electives are innovation/digital related. More and more of our students are now choosing to graduate with a concentration in Digital Business. Digital business is not just popular with students, but also with recruiting companies who now want more of their employees to have formal education when it comes to digital business. Furthermore, for the last three years, the technology sector has been the top industry of choice for our graduates, accounting for 25.6% of recruitments on average across the last three graduating cohorts.”

P&Q: What are CEIBS’ two most popular elective courses? What makes them so attractive to students and what are a couple of the big takeaways from them?

MZ: “Here are two:

1) Leadership and Acting: This course offers a wide range of exercises and tools that help our students express their best and authentic selves by cultivating self-awareness, body language, and voice by being more convincing and being able to better relate to others. In this course, we draw on insights from psychology and communications science and on methods from acting and theatre. This is actually a very practical course as well.

2) Rethinking Strategy for the Digital World: In this course, we aim to develop a working knowledge of the impact of technology on business with our students. Thus, we will explore the implications of digital technology on the ways that organizations think about competitors, strategy, organizational design, and the nature of management. This course has been one of our most popular courses for many years now.”

PQ: What are your two most popular MBA student clubs? What are the biggest events put on by these clubs? Why do these clubs resonate so deeply with your students?

MZ: “The two most popular student clubs are the Women Leadership Network and the Social Impact & Responsibility Club. They are the ones most active in terms of events organized and also the participation from the members. Two of the biggest events at CEIBS every year, the Female Leadership Forum and MBA Social Impact Week, are organized by these clubs.

Our student and professors are very passionate about female leadership and sustainability. These two events receive contributions from both sides. Given the scale of these events, we do not limit them to CEIBS people but open them up to everyone. Female leadership and sustainability isn’t specific to CEIBS, but rather is something that all of society strives towards.

The Finance Club also contributes a lot to the CEIBS community. Every year, the club publishes the comprehensive A Guide to China’s Financial Market and also organizes our annual Investment Forum, which is quite popular even amongst our alumni.”

Next Page: Profiles of 13 Members of the Class of 2023