MBS in Review: Electives

Continuing from yesterday's post about MBS core subjects, today I'll talk about the electives, which are half of your subjects at MBS.

During orientation, different study strategies were suggested. The first broad view, taking different subjects in different areas without any specialisation in mind. The other option, of course, was to specialise by selecting multiple subjects in the same area.

In my opinion, specialisation is really not much of an option. With the exception of marketing and possibly finance, there are simply not enough subjects offered in a given discipline to specialise.

This is further complicated by popular electives being frequently oversubscribed. If you did have your heart set on finance, for example, it is likely you would have been unable to take the Financial Institutions subject this term. MBS generally offers places to those graduating the soonest so, presumably you'd be able to take the subject some time before you graduated. Of course, that only works if the next time it is offered, it doesn't clash with another class you want to take or, if you are a part-time student, taking a leave of absence for work-related reasons. Personally, I was excluded from both Business Law and Social Policy this term and will not have a chance to take these subjects at a later date unless they offered when I am on exchange (not likely, and I doubt Israeli business law will be very useful in Australia).

I must say, though, that I have taken some excellent electives at MBS. Standouts include:

• Managerial Judgement - examines the psychology of decision making
  
• Brand Management - an MBS staple taught by renown brand guru Mark Ritson
  
• Business and World Trade - a half subject (we call it a unit) taught by Gary Sampson, a former WTO official. My final exam is Friday.
  

It is unlikely you will take any bad electives because you can drop a bad class relatively easily assuming a replacement class isn't oversubscribed. MBS also provides the quantitative assessments of prior classes so you can check what your peers thought of the subject the last time it was taught by the same lecturer. This helps, but word-of-mouth is much more powerful. For example, I was strongly advised against taking the Entrepreneurship subject by several people. This was reinforced by a last minute information session run by the lecturer for future students of his class at a time that was nearly impossible to make. I wasn't impressed and dropped the class shortly thereafter.

I also found one elective had the wrong prerequisites. While I really enjoyed a subject called Managerial Accounting Control Systems (sounds bad, I know), my mark was less than spectacular. One reason is that the final exam favoured those with finance experience, or those who had completed the Financial Management core subject. I hadn't. This remains, by far, my lowest mark at MBS.

Let me sum up what I've been saying. In general MBS electives are pretty good – some of are excellent – and you aren't likely to be stuck in one you don't enjoy unless it is the first time it is offered, the professor is new or you haven't asked around. An MBA from MBS is more for those who want a broad perspective; if you want to focus on HR or innovation, for example, you are out of luck. Students frequently complain that subjects are oversubscribed. This has certainly been fodder for unhappiness this term and I expect it to continue. Expect some frustration in this area.