HKUST campus in Hong Kong Thank you to Sherring Ng, Head of Marketing & Admissions at HKUST Business School, and Pimluck Suvitsakdanon, a second year HKUST student, for an excellent admissions Q&A. The following excerpt offers some HKUST program highlights, a great introduction if you're considering applying to this top Asian business school: Linda Abraham: Sherring, what is new at HKUST? Sherring Ng: There are so many new things at HKUST, but I will highlight a few things. We noticed that more and more recruiters at HKUST expect graduates to speak some Mandarin. In the past, we have only had three weeks of Mandarin training courses for students, just as an exposure. But starting from this year, we actually have a one-year Mandarin training program at HKUST with different levels. So a student would need to pass one level in order to take another level of Mandarin training. But eventually they can take the Business Mandarin, which is credit bearing, to learn Mandarin in business settings; like how to do interviews, how to do presentations, make reports, etc. This is one of the new things. Another thing is that we have started a pilot this past winter. We call it Professional Week. It is a very intensive training that lasts 4-5 days for students, from morning till evening. They need to do a lot of presentations, case analyses, business analyses, etc. The purpose of that is for students to really drill their skills in analyzing the different scenarios in a very short time; to do presentations, to work in teams, etc. And we are very happy about this pilot because the feedback has been very positive. And then after that training, we have sent many students overseas for different kinds of case competitions or business plan competitions. One of the competitions is the USC Marshall Global Consulting Challenge. It was held in Los Angeles, and our students won the first place. Another one is the HULT Global Case Challenge, which was held in Shanghai. Our students also won that regional competition. So it seems quite effective. Starting from our year-one students, we give an iPad to all students. And this coming summer, we plan to have something like a portal or platform for students when they are attending classes. They no longer need to bring all the notes, the package, or books; they can access all the reading materials, PowerPoint, etc. on their iPads. So it really facilitates a learning experience and also is very environmentally friendly. To learn more about this rising Asian business school, please see the full transcript or listen to the audio file here. To listen to the Q&A recordings on-the-go, please check out Accepted's Admissions Podcasts. Accepted.com ~ Helping You Write Your Best