3 Reasons to Pursue Your MBA at Oxford Sa?d Business School: Reflections from the COVID Year

3 Reasons to Pursue Your MBA at Oxford Sa?d Business School: Reflections from the COVID Year

Vignettes of this piece were tossing around in the back of my mind for some time now. Rather than jumbling them together, I wanted to wait until it felt right to assemble them. Fittingly, it’s a bright August day and I’m at Society Café, the first coffee shop in Oxford I found myself in over two years ago ahead of a meeting with Liam Kilby from Admissions. Liam is probably the entire reason I applied and why I’m here right now. The world looked a bit different then – in the greater sense, as well as my own lens through which to view it.

I want to preface my comments speaking on personal experience alone: not on behalf of any classmate or member of the School – though I will leverage my vantage point during the year in a leadership role. Feel free to take what is useful for your own situation.

I. Oxford is an Established Institution, Sa?d is a Rising Brand

If you’re unfamiliar with my background, I can give a brief summary. I grew up in a poor, rural area north of Pittsburgh in the United States – largely, the Appalachian post-industrial rust belt. This figure may be off, but I believe less than 10% of peers attended college; trade school, military and starting a family were generally the three immediate paths for high school graduates. I refer to this environment not to seek approbation on progress, but rather to frame the story.

At Georgetown, I was out of my element with old money from New England; I faked my accent until any remnants of blue-collar America disappeared – taking an unpaid internship and working as a server to pay my way through school, leaving with $70k in debt I would have to pay off. I wouldn’t change it in a heartbeat. I ended up at the World Bank Group and then jetted off to Singapore at age 23 to work as a buy-side investor over the next 6 years. These were the heart-on-my sleeve comments I put into my MBA essays – slightly romanticized, but factual and candid. I didn’t cure cancer or build a tech unicorn. I slipped through the socioeconomic cracks and maintained austerity with my goals and choices.

The point of this extended introduction is that there is no template for why you should pursue an MBA. Generally, and this one is honest, but a bit hard to photoshop onto MBA marketing flyers, unsponsored candidates come because they are unhappy with some aspect of their career – the ‘triple hop’ as its called: geography, role, industry. I had gone as far as I could with my title as Portfolio Manager. I saw the 10 year journey ahead of me and didn’t want to wake up at 40 on that path. Singapore was fine, but I could have used a break. I wanted to get my hands dirty in corporate strategy, learn from those with diverse backgrounds and share the small bits of knowledge I’ve acquired in my field.

The interview will likely ask you where else you applied – there’s no trick here. Requisites critical to my decision included: an international cohort and a focus on sustainability and impact. For that reason, my shortlist included Yale SOM, Berkeley HAAS and Oxford SBS. I wasn’t quite ready to return to America, so Oxford was my top choice beyond doubt. I applied and got in Round 1 as I was sure of my decision. I wouldn’t change that.

SBS is a young program, just recently celebrating their 25th anniversary. On more than one occasion, I was struck by the brilliance of the former Dean, Peter Tufano. Oxford is not looking to churn out a factory of consultants and bankers (our rankings, predicated on starting salary can surely attest to that).

Peter had a grand vision for SBS which was at times misunderstood. Our cohort is 95% international and likely the most diverse MBA program anywhere on the planet. We take modules across terms: Global Rules of the Game (a politically inclined project), GOTO (Global Opportunities and Threats – solving complex problems, often with a social inclination), and an Entrepreneurship Project (building your own start-up with a team).

Let’s be candid and acknowledge that Oxford and Cambridge will always rest on their parent brand names for graduate programs. This isn’t a secret. Rather, the constant supply of students goes beyond GMAT scores and crafts a cohort able to look beyond MBB placement.

The real challenges of business in the 21st century are nuanced and require a heterogenous group of leaders. Oxford SBS delivered on this promise.

II. You’ll Learn How to Think

The art of thinking is probably a whole sub-genre of self-help literature. If you’d like to do so with an extended break and hefty price tag, then an MBA is for you.

Jokes asides, I’ve seen myself change dramatically the past 12 months. I’ll get into some of those personal observations, but at a high level, the MBA has helped me structure my thought process. As an investor, I was attracted to the intellectual nature of my profession – using numbers to paint a story, communicating an idea and figuring out the economics and viability of a product or service. Consumer and tech businesses were tangible and attractive to that end.

You’ll be bombarded with dozens of frameworks and charts and Porter’s Five Forces will haunt you in your sleep. This is not unique to SBS. I was initially attracted to strategy consulting and put my apps in with the typical MBB firms, interviewing with Bain in the end without an offer. I probably did over 50 case studies prepping throughout Winter. Combined with classes, I learned to train my mind on how to structure ideas and logic to solve a problem. As a great mentor once said, a good business and a good investment are two very different things.

The MBA teased out these skills. In particular, Tim Galpin’s work on Strategy and my advisor, Rafael Ramirez’s scenario planning framework, along with the GOTO project resonated with me when writing papers or doing research. I paired this with practical approaches in my Sustainability class with Prof. Amengual among other elective pathways. Most of my courses highlighted soft skills to complement quantitative work in the past. I crafted my papers accordingly and chose classes to build upon this idea of structured thinking. If you’re an aspiring applicant, I would think in terms of amorphous themes, rather than ‘finance supporting courses’ or ‘tech skill takeaways.’

At the end of the day, an MBA is a professional, generalized program. Oxford was exceptional when it came to diving into the intellectual facets of business – particularly, Marc Ventresca with the “Strategies for Impact” elective. Most of the papers were open-ended and you could tailor a discipline to your topic of interest without rote academic transcription – for me, much of my research looked at food systems: plant-based alternatives, food waste, emerging market consumers, and organisational transformation.

The case method in class worked best in person. One major critique was the asynchronous learning. I personally did not care for watching recorded lectures and found the online experience subpar to the traditional business school curved room. Engagement is best done live and I strongly advise against any online content once the pandemic subsides. Accessibility is an upside, but for the sake of dilution and hybrid learning, I think it’s something academia can take a hard pass on.

When I say ‘learning how to think’, I refer to structure and logic, but also this fluidity of moving between quantitative and qualitative discussion. Crudely, I split my work into a binary as an investor – I would crunch all of the numbers and then analyse them to make a decision. Rather, I began to see the process as permeable and iterative in my MBA. Management requires a wide set of skills and the ability to know when and how to use those skills acquired is an art in and of itself. To draw on this analogy, my former years focused on adding tools to the box, the MBA has organized this maelstrom, and I hope that my post-MBA career will lend the professional acumen to distinguish when to use them.

III. You’ll Learn How to Lead and Navigate Bureaucracy

The elephant in the room was COVID. Not a day went by where I didn’t have to answer some question from students or staff on some regulation or plan, qualified by the pandemic. Oxford is at times a frustratingly archaic institution to navigate, with conservative members of the community unable to see beyond the myopia or tradition. Conversely, therein lies the beauty. The community you join goes beyond the MBA and growing pains experienced by a young business school. You have to push, but in the long run, all functions are variable – or some derivative of Adam Smith’s theory (also an Oxford alum..). In my view, SBS needs to simplify their organisational structure – whilst Peter was exceptional in expanding the school’s reputation for impact and diversity, the next Dean will need to iron out the stratification and add fire to the machine he created – one which is perfectly situated for the coming century.

I’ll share one anecdote etched in my mind. I had a formal role with my partner as Co-President of the MBA. We came in with honest plans to increase diversity efforts (given our status as a Nigerian woman and gay man), simplify messy technology platforms, and help students navigate COVID (when the pandemic looked mild back in Fall 2020).

It’s almost comical how minor these efforts feel now. No element of our year was close to normal. We knew this coming in and were constantly reminded by visual signs and cues by the School. Yet, I’ll contest that Oxford had the most open experience of any major business school and that staff did their best in supporting our class. We had to manage a growing din of students rightfully demanding refunds for a diminished experience. We had to manage communications and always, ALWAYS above all else keep a positive demeanour and instil hope in the worst of times; putting our own personal frustrations aside to do what was best for our classmates.

I was an early advocate for a program to do regular lateral flow testing for students, knowing that if the pandemic worsened (which it surely did), this data could support organisational workarounds to mitigate online content. If successful, this could be used for other programs at Oxford and beyond. What began as a study, turned into a rethink to approach the pandemic – a medium currently normalized as the work to vaccinate the world continues.

When cases rose exponentially, classes went entirely online from January to March (Hilary term, or Hellary colloquially by peers). It felt as if the cohort collectively gave up, sinking into apathy that the MBA may have been a poor life decision. On a personal note, I seriously considered a deferral. My mental health was strained, and the challenges were mounting. I felt alone during the lockdown and like I let down others by not doing enough to improve the experience.

We had a conversation with leadership who were convinced that the MBA would not get an exemption to in-person classes. Nevertheless, we knew that the odds were not zero. We had plans to pen a joint letter to the government along with leadership at the London Business School and Cambridge Judge to request an exemption for the MBA as in-person and experiential degree. In the end, we had a 24 hour window when the government said some exemptions would be given at the University’s discretion. The University of Oxford held the decision over the Business School. We put together a letter for Oxford alone, conveying the malaise, anxiety, and stress our classmates were facing.

Miraculously, with the protocols of testing and safety in place (no small journey to get there), Oxford was granted an exception to return to hybrid classes in March. The class celebrated while I received hate mail in my LinkedIn inbox from community members claiming the choice was selfish, claiming that we put the community at risk. We were painted as elitist by the Telegraph and Guardian. It was worth it in the end.

Students came together to find ways to connect over coffee walks, charity runs, fundraisers, Zoom events. Despite the backdrop, we persisted together and made it through. I’ll personally say that this period was rather traumatizing – I won’t paint it as rosy or empowering, as it wasn’t. It was awful and painful, but it didn’t last forever. And that’s the allegory within. We can choose to accept that status quo or we can rise and find ways forward for ourselves, those around us, and the organizations we lead. Leadership was decentralized in this instance. Each member of the cohort found a way to lessen the impact for others – for that, I am truly grateful.

Why is this anecdote particularly relevant? It may seem specific to my own experience, borderline egotistical, and only applicable to the COVID year.

Oxford Sa?d advertises itself as a place to develop leaders for extraordinary times. The ethos of the school is predicated on moments like this. There are always solutions, always ways around a challenge. SBS is building an institution which produces leaders to go out to all corners of the globe: to redefine capitalism, to audaciously put sustainability at the centre of the board room, to make the future female, to may it gay, to make it African, to make it representative of the global community.

Should you join?

Yes. Without a doubt, and despite all the stress and frustration during COVID, I would do the experience over again a thousands times.

Though I cannot speak for other MBA programs, Oxford is a magical place and SBS is curating something truly exceptional. While my comments above are candid, in my heart, I believe that this year was exactly what I needed at this moment in my life. It was tough and outside of my comfort zone. I have many regrets on leadership and in my own character, I will fight for what I believe in. Sometimes it worked, other times I came up short.

This is a pitch to consider Sa?d as much more than a traditional MBA. For all of the hype pre-COVID, to the anxiety on what the program would look like once I was in, to the ups and downs throughout the year – Oxford offers a unique product. The leadership team is finding it’s footing on how to raise this experience to the next level – particularly, our new MBA Program Director Matthew Conisbee, a lifeline and true MVP this year.

I’ll close with one last childhood memory, returning back to Western Pennsylvania. When I was 12, I had an English teacher, older and about to retire- traditional in her ways and stubborn (one of those teachers who had given up and enjoyed the authority in her later years). It was my first few weeks in junior high school and I had to ride a bus by this enormous waste management plant in the small rural town. I chuckle at the early rebellion and activism, but I put together a petition with 50 names to have it removed. Years later, it likely polluted our water (surely the air) and may have been linked to my mother’s cancer.

The English teacher threw it out and it was laughed at. Now, I’m not saying there was a chance in a million that anything would have been done. Greta Thunberg is an anomaly, to put it lightly. Yet, the action, the passion and the dedication are what should come out of this story. We’re never too small to impact the world around us. My narrative isn’t clean or linear by any means, though I will say that this personality trait stayed with me. It brought me to SBS and my short incubation of a year here has helped contextual this moment as well as countless others from my career.

Oxford and SBS will not be for everyone, but if any of this article resonated, then it is for you. If this is the type of person you are, the ideals you aspire to, and the community you seek, then it is for you. The MBA has been a humbling experience and I am endlessly grateful to those I met this year.

I’m happy to talk through specific questions with any aspiring candidates. Generally, I’ll respond if the questions are pointed and direct, outside of any other online content or blogs about Oxford. Best of luck to those submitting their applications!

Michael