Jon Chen, HKUST MBA, Class of 2015
[email protected]
Pre- MBA: Financial Specialist, DaChan Great Wall Enterprise Co., Ltd.
GMAT: 730 TOEFL: 101 Work Experience: 4 years
A) About me
Native Taiwanese. 台南人
Graduated from NCKU 成功大學 at 2008
Used to work in a capital investment analysis role for a Taiwanese food
company for a few years in China before relocating back to Taipei
MBA goal:
1. Industry switch to financial insitution/i-bank with better prospects
2. Work outside Taiwan in Hong Kong or Shanghai
B) MBA journey so far
1. Courses
‧ Even for courses which focus in training hard knowledge e.g. accounting
and finance, the professors use a lot of case studies and many classroom
discussions are involved. Personally like the case studies very much.
‧ Quite a number of examples used are about Mainland China. It is important
to know more about the PRC economy for future career in Asia. For example,
in the macro economics class, Prof. Rao clearly demonstrate the economic
relationship between Hong Kong and China, and the triangular trade between
Taiwan and China.
‧ Since personal goal is to focus in financial insitution/i-bank, joined many
career workshops on industry overview, interivew and networking skills for this
industry.
2. Student diversity
The cultural diversity is very impressive at HKUST – definitely better
than other schools in Asia.
My classmates are from more than 30 countries and get to know each other
in a close-knit community (2013 intake size:109 students).
My team consists of classmates from different countries (Russia, Japan,
Chile, Canada) and professional fields (automobile, i-bank, logistics,
marketing).
3. Networking & career preparations
Networking is not as common in Taiwan. In Hong Kong, it is very common and
convenient to do so. E.g. joined 2 networking sessions organized by HKVCA,
the Hong Kong Venture Capital and Private Equity Association. Met a lot of
people and keep in touch with them. The networking opportunities
are out of expectation.
C) Advice for Taiwanese candidates
‧ Think clearly about what kind of job and where you want to work –
important to your MBA decision.
‧ Take myself as example: I want to work in HK because geogphically it is
close to Taiwan, and the culture and people are not very different from
Taiwanese.
‧ Even though I applied to US schools, later thought it would be hard to
work in US with a foreign passport so chose an Asian school instead.
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