Hello everyone! My name is Jane Florence – born and bred in Surabaya, Indonesia. I am here to share my convoluted, daunting, yet wonderful, experience of pursuing an MBA degree at🔸快乐10分玩法说明 Europe International Business School.

I clearly remember the point in life when I was sitting in a quiet coffee shop in Jakarta pondering what I should do next with my life. I was in a phase where I really needed to find a breakthrough. I craved new challenges, but also wanted to ‘take a break’ from life. Even though at that time I was running my own company, every task started to feel mundane. Challenges coming from the workplace felt so dull and monotonous, and even the passion that was once there had gone. Even though I built and bootstrapped my own business with nothing but passion, I came to the realization that passion also needs resources to be sustainable.

What do I mean by resources? I’m not only referring to capital, but people, information, knowledge, relationships, experience and investment. You need a considerable amount of resources and the ability to allocate them accordingly. You need strong business acumen to keep the capital flowing, the ability to handle bright talents in the company and accommodate for conflicts. You need the ability to see things from a bird’s eye view as a basis for making important decisions that can keep your company moving forwards. After thinking deeply about all of these concerns, I knew my target I had set for my business was out of reach, and hence, at that point of time, I decided to go enroll at business school for my MBA. 

My MBA application experience

I applied to CEIBS in May 2021. For the application materials, you will need to have your latest CV, university transcripts, a valid GMAT or GRE score report, professional licenses (optional), and personal documents (such as identity cards or your passport). For the application process, you will need to write about some personal and professional experiences in the online application portal as well as attach those abovementioned documents.

If you have been notified by the CEIBS MBA Admissions team and called for an interview and, like me, were out of🔸快乐10分玩法说明 at the time of applying, they will arrange a video interview with professors and/or CEIBS staff. They want to know you holistically, not just at the surface or work level, so there is a lot to fit into a 40-minute discussion. From my experience, the admissions team is also interested to know how you react to failure and whether or not you have the resilience to bounce back from it.

Once you have been accepted, you are given the opportunity to apply for more scholarship and financial aid options beyond the merit-based scholarships and diversity-based fellowships that you are automatically considered for. There are quite a few scholarships offered by CEIBS that can be found here on the website. I would recommend applying early and be mindful that some scholarships require additional forms and even presentations.

The student life experience

When people ask me what the day-to-day life is an MBA student is like, I would say only one thing: RIGOROUS.

The classes are very interactive and the professors are highly intelligent and engaging. They expect us to voice our opinions – even if we have a different opinion from the rest of our peers. Do not worry, as they will not undermine you, even if you have differing opinions, as it opens up new perspectives and creates a more interactive learning experience!

Besides studying, I currently serve as a Student Ambassador and member of Management Consulting club as I want to pursue my career in the management consulting industry post-MBA. Also, I happened to get the opportunity to serve as a competing team in the Roland Berger Consulting Case Competition which will take place in March 2023 in Barcelona!

There is a famous saying: “In MBA, we have to be able to balance the 3Ss: Studying, social life, and sleep!”

This can be daunting, yet it is indeed an unforgettable experience! In the MBA programme, you will have the chance to re-discover yourself – to know what turns you on and off, to know which kind of environment you operate best in, to develop friendships and long-term relationships with awesome individuals from all over the world, and to be able to leverage the school’s resources to grow yourself to your upmost potential.

I would like end my sharing by quoting CEIBS Associate Dean and MBA Director Professor Shameen Prashantham. During our opening ceremony, he told us, “The most important thing during your MBA journey, which I hope you will continue when you graduate, is to uphold the same standard and ethics throughout the whole journey. You might feel that the first two weeks of your life here seems very exciting and, of course, you will keep your standards high. However, as time goes by and the course begins to challenge you both mental and physically – will you keep the same standard that you had on the first day?”

His speech resonated with me. We might lose ourselves during the journey due to homesickness, a never-ending to-do list, presentation-overload and club activities; however, you still have to be able to uphold your values, be true to and believe in yourself, and trust that whatever you have dreamt of can come true.

C’est la vie!

About Jane Florence

Jane Florence is currently pursuing her MBA Degree at🔸快乐10分玩法说明 Europe International Business School (CEIBS) and is a recipient of the CEIBS Education Fund & Shanghai Government Scholarship. She has almost seven years of experience wearing several different hats – as a startup founder of a healthy food D2C ecommerce business serving 45,000 customers across Indonesia, a business development strategist focusing on implementing strategy for market entry to parts of SEA, and was trained in legal sector. Prior to doing an MBA, she pursued a MSc from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and was a Plant Based Nutritionist certified from Cornell University. Now, Jane is very keen on developing her professional interests in the consulting and investment related industry.

She loves playing the piano, painting, yoga, and has a profound interest in culinary art. She can be reached through Instagram at @janeflorence94 or email at fjane.m24@ceibs.edu.