Tsinghua MBA Exchange Forum

Today was the International Exchange Forum at the Tsinghua School of Economics and Management. Danna and I were obligated to present about the glory that is the Sauder School of Business. Danna was almost overcome, while attempting to describe how great Vancouver is. After all it was recently named the number one city in the world for “liveability” by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

According to the introduction Tsinghua currently has 40 partner schools, 74 students currently out on exchange, and 46 incoming exchange students from 21 different schools. It seems some schools don’t require their students to participate in these events. Several notable schools that didn’t present include:

• Kellogg
• Pepperdine
• Rotman

The schools scheduled to present were:

• Anderson
• Sauder
• Bocconi
• Cologne
• Reims
• AIT
• Copenhagen
• Nanyang
• ESSEC
• Stockholm School of Economics
• Chinese University of Hong Kong
• National University of Singapore
• Warsaw School of Economics

I don’t remember the Copenhagen presentation, perhaps it didn’t happen. Although our presentation was good, with the highlight being the awarding of our lucky draw prize, probably the most enjoyed presentation was that given by the Wolfs about Cologne.

I know I learned a lot watching all the presentations. I learned:

• UCLA has no oncampus housing for exchange students
• Cologne has 64,000 students
• At Bocconi they eat an extra meal a day
• Reims had an alumni speak in Chinese, what would the French language preservationists say to that?
• AIT is 40Km from Bangkok
• Nanyang is in the jungle
• ESSEC has students at arch-rival Peking who were thus denied the lucky draw prize, by the powers that be
• Swedes like chocolate
• There are two types of trains in Hong Kong
• I’d rather watch dancing girls than yet another Business School presentation
• Poland is the center of Europe not Germany and has the most beautiful women

About the dancing girls, after about seven presentations I was getting really thirsty so I ventured outside to try and find a vending machine. When what do I see in the lobby of the Sunde building, but a team of girls rehearsing a dance. There were also a lot of pink balloons. Inspired I ran and got my camera to document this, so people will believe me. Luckily the leading dancer Ren Wangyu 任望宇, spoke excellent English and told me that they were in fact undergrads (mmm undergrads) rehearsing for the school festival. They didn’t even have any music, Wangyu just had to call out the time in Chinese. The festival is December 4th, I’m so there.

There was a team of dancing boys rehearsing on the otherside of the lobby, they didn’t have any music either. Tsinghua isn’t sexist. I have no idea what the pink balloons were all about.

Two more things before I go to bed. I’ve joined another online networking site, this one is in Chinese. I had to rely heavily on Babelfish to register and I’m not even sure which classmate invited me, someone I just met last week I think. I signed up on a lark, the only word in my profile not in Chinese I think is UVIC. The site is called Tianji. I invited Danna to join, she might be able to tell me more.

Now in 2024 both Babelfish and Tianji seem to be gone. You have to delete so many busted links maintaining old blog posts.

In other Tsinghua MBA news, Anders, Martin, and Mathias made the finals of a case competition hosted by Booze Allen Hamilton. As a result they will be flying off to Germany on the 17th for the finals.

This webpage seems to do reasonably well in the search engines for “Tsinghua MBA” so I think anyone considering doing an exchange semester there would benefit from reading our official exchange report which I put online complete with pictures and helpful links.

2024 Update

I continue to improve the Quality of this blog after almost twenty years of maintaining it. I haven’t recovered from or forgotten everything that happened back in 2005 and 2006, but sometimes my blog reminds me of things that have slipped my mind. I perhaps should have joined Anders team in the business case competition. Yet another missed opportunity, they did ask me.

If you have regrets about choices you made almost twenty years ago you can leave a comment below.

This entry was originaly posted on November 3rd, 2005, it was last edited on May 5th, 2024 and is filed under: Rambles and tagged: MBA, Sauder School of Business, Tsinghua.