Rotman School of Management

-There's a strong emphasis on the analytical skills that every student should acquire, but an even stronger emphasis on the softer skills such as leadership, negotiation, brand placements, etc.

-Not rely only on GMAT scores but also on Business experience. Rotman is accepting students with no work experience and no teamwork experience. It's like going to school again, an MBA should be about learning not only from your professors but also from your peers. They are increasing quantity not quality.

-The integrative thinking, business design and innovation programs at Rotman are truly unique. Integrative thinking is one of a kind with Dean Roger Martin's talks, integrated core course and elective on the Opposable Mind combined with others on Business Problem Solving, etc. The frameworks given are great tools to use on our own to solve problems without making bad tradeoffs. Access to one of the world's top business thinkers... priceless. The business design club, case competition, Design VISA program, career workshops and class (design practicum) were truly amazing with Heather Fraser's well known Design Works program using business design frameworks to solve real client problems in a far more advanced way than using one-dimensional high school level marketing thinking that is so prevalent in MBA curriculum. Working with very senior members of the Target corporation this year and delivering to them a lot of high quality creative ideas was something beyond a typical MBA course. The results were heart felt, creative and inspiring, something that a function like Marketing could only aspire to. Extraordinarily unique are new workshop programs like ""Voicing Yourself"" pioneered by Mihnea Moldoveanu where an acting/voice coach is brought in for over 40 hours of instruction per interested student to learn how to confidently express themselves. I was one such student who graduated from that course and it has been invaluable in making my presence in interviews and presentations more compelling and authentic.

-Rotman's first year syllabus needs to change. Especially for career switchers, only studying Finance for one month is not enough when going into January recruiting for summer internships. For example, the few finance interviews I was able to get were heavily focused on Corporate Finance. However as per Rotman's syllabus, Corporate Finance is only taught after much of the summer recruiting is already done. Instead, I wasted the first four months of my MBA learning basic marketing and organizational behavior.

-What made the program unique was the 2 year nature. The other competing programs in Canada changed over to 1 year (a huge negative in my opinion). Aside from that, the school is located near one of the largest financial districts in North America (Toronto) and that made it very appealing.

-Rotman is a fine school if you are looking for academics and finance. However, it is a very strong local school, which means that it lacks branding outside of Canada. There is virtually no multicultural experience inside the classroom as there are three notorious groups: Asians, Indians and Canadians. The rest of the people that don’t fall into these categories have minimal representation.

-The quality of professors and the classmates is just phenomenal. The concept of trying to get out of the silos of management and work across functions to get the best business strategy, officially called Integrative Thinking, is the next big thing and could revolutionize the way we do business. Rotman is at the forefront of this thinking and is pushing business design right to the top.

-Rotman needs to improve on two fronts--career center and alumni network. The career center's connection with recruiters, both in the Greater Toronto Area and globally, needs to be improved a lot. The number of desirable job positions for internship is not enough to satisfy the students' demand (each consulting firm or investment bank or large CPG firms only recruit one to two students from Rotman each summer). Although the situation for full-time recruiting is slightly better, it is still not enough. Moreover, the career center needs to expand its staffing so that they can assist students with the entire spectrum of career-related work, from company research to salary negotiation. In terms of alumni network, it is not as tightly-knit as other top b-schools. Only very few alumni are willing to help students. Of which, fewer can provide connection to expand students' network. Another issue is that most alumni are concentrated in the Greater Toronto Area. Rotman should admit more students from around the world who plan to go back to their home countries after graduation. Otherwise, the alumni base will always be concentrated in Toronto. Moreover, Rotman should fund formal alumni chapters around the world to encourage more students to go abroad after graduation. Without a strong global network, students will likely stay in the Greater Toronto Area.

-Rotman is unique because it is based on the principles of integrative thinking, a way of working out business problems developed by the current dean Roger Martin. Rotman is also unique because it is the only Canadian university that sees value in paying a premium to get faculty that are world class and are considered at the top of their respective discipline. Rotman is also the only Canadian school located in the downtown core of Toronto, the country's financial hub.

-The school must integrate teamwork into the curriculum, and not make it the ugly stepchild. This could be done by making grades more dependent on team work, rather than the current state of being near completely dependent on individual work, and giving team's dedicated workspace at least during the core year. In addition they need to integrate the curriculum and move Integrative Thinking from a tag line to an actual practice. Lastly, they need to completely rethink the Career Centre, and how it sources jobs as well as prepares students for interviews. In general if the school focused more on the end users' needs, i.e. the student's need to become employable, and less on other agents' needs they would be a lot further along in becoming a top 20 school - perhaps even no. 1 internationally.

-The best thing about Rotman is the quality of the education and the faculty (especially for electives). My focus was Finance, and apart from 2 disappointing courses (and instructors) Rotman exceeded my expectations. Coming from a computer science and mathematics background, I was really impressed with the very structured and logical approach that the instructors used. Indeed much of the material I learned in my 2 years at Rotman helped prepare me for the first two levels of the CFA. The financial risk management and derivatives courses are also proving to be a great foundation for the FRM exams. From exchange students and candidates in US schools (that are considered top tier), I was amazed to learn that their academic programs were less rigorous. I strongly believe that Rotman provides a high quality education in Finance, Management Consulting, and Operations. Unfortunately, it is in full time job placements that the school falls short.

-Integrative thinking is unique (although this does not make the program better than comparable programs).