Specializing in a Global MBA

By Ingrid Cazalis, Global MBA 2013-2014, France

The Global MBA’s third term (T3) presents a new challenge for us students; we can choose our electives. After a global MBA covering topics from finance to marketing to leadership, now we have the chance to specialize for a trimester. The possibility of choosing our classes has been quite welcome, since it allows us to shape our coursework to our future personal and professional objectives.

Some students went to follow the finance core track, either to prepare for the CFA Level 2 or to prepare for the exchange program with Kellogg University. Others wanted to develop their personal competencies with classes such as Advanced Excel and Organizational Behavior. Other options include subjects like M&A, sales force management, or different investment classes, which we can pick and choose to help us reach our career objectives in business development, marketing, supply chain, real estate, and more…

Personally, I took a theater class to learn how to better adapt my behavior while performing “on stage,” which will help me better prepare for conferences or presentations. Every week is a concrete acting challenge.

While the Global MBA students have courses by themselves, or with students from other MBA programs, for the rest of the year, we could choose our electives from the full offering of the Grande Ecole course catalog. While this gives us a wide variety of classes to choose from, in some classes we also had to adapt to a different academic system based more on tests and quizzes, as well as working with students with less professional experience.

Finally, during our MBA, we covered a lot of information about emerging markets and entrepreneurship, but less about government organizations, NGOs, etc. The electives have permitted some of us to focus on these aspects and to pursue economic policy careers.