Discussion on University of Toronto

Get real-time information about University of Toronto and the associated schools from seniors who have gone through the whole process

This webinar session will be hosted by Abhyudai Shankar, who completed his MBA from University of Toronto - Rotman School of Management. He will volunteer an hour of his time to answer your queries. Before Toronto, Abhyudai completed his BTech in Computer Science Engineering from the Jaypee University of Information Technology. Post-undergrad, he worked with companies such as EY, KPMG at different capacities. Currently, he is working as Senior Management Consultant, Deloitte, Toronto, Canada Area.

Here is how the Senior AMA works:

  1. Ask Qs now: You can start asking your questions right away right here.
  2. Answers via video: On Saturday, October 5th, at 6 PM, Abhyudai will answer your Qs via a webinar, which you can join here.
  3. Answers transcribed for future reference: We will transcribe Abhyudai ’s answers and post them in response to your questions on this page

Rotman, ivey, HEC as per reviews are top ranked colleges but do you think they are overhyped… Is it fair to compare Ryerson business program with Rotman School of management?

Please evaluate my profile?
GMAT : 559 - Q: 35 V: 30 essay : 5.5

CGPA : 7.721/10
2.5 years work experience as of today
TOEFL Overall-105; Reading-26; Listening-27; Writing-25; Speaking-27;

Target institutes
University of British Columbia- Sauder school of business
McGill University
University of Toronto - Rotman school of management
Schulich business school

Hi this is a question from our group…we are in our last year of Btech… I am asking it on their behalf…
In terms of salaries…MBA graduates are on the higher end…but if we consider job satisfaction as a factor as well…So should we prefer MS in our field or MBA after our undergrad…if we consider Canada as our option for masters…

Are there any universities in Canada that offer 1 year MBA program…
And what should we prefer One year or Two year MBA?
Can you suggest some points we should keep in mind while choosing MBA program in Canada.?

Is 3 years of work ex enough for Rotman?

What is the internship scenario in Rotman? Can Indian students get internships easily?
Also can you shed some light on the job prospects @rotman?

Thanks…for ur response…Abhyudai

What should be the ideal GMAT score
BTECH (IT)…2 yr work ex at cognizant (Pune)

Posting it on Attendee’s behalf @Rohan_Sethi

How were you able to get a scholarship at Rotman since the competition is quiet intense at the particular moment. How can we portray ourselves differently in order to get a good scholarship?

Hello Abhyudai,

Here is my profile - GMAT - 700. I am a Indian MBBS doctor, with 2 years of experience and a good extra curriculum in Non-profit sector. I plan on applying to Rotman and Ivey.

How good are these schools for management in Healthcare sector and which one is better for healthcare? Also, how good is my profile for Rotman and Ivey?

Thank you.

Posting it on Attendee’s behalf
hi my percentage in btech(EEE) is 70%. I have been working in software field for 2.5years.is there any chance I would get a spot in masters in UoA , UoT , McGill

Thank you.

I think the return on investment for finance and Consulting is good. But is the investment in MBA worth for healthcare?

@Sid

When you look at the Canadian landscape of the schools then Rotman, Ivey and Queens are generally considered all in tier 1 league.

You will find colleges like McGill, Schulich and probably UBC as well in tier 2 league, then comes the HEC and Ryreson. Definitely they are not comparable.

One important thing while choosing business schools is that you should be clear about what is it that you are trying to get out of this MBA course!

I was mostly applying to universities in the USA, I applied to 10 universities in the USA and only Rotman in Canada.

Me choosing Rotman was a blessing in disguise for me, as it really turned out well for me.

Out of all the schools I was admitted to according to Fortune ratings Rotman was the lowest I was admitted to. Schools like UCLA which are the top 20 universities in the USA and are in top 40 ranking in the Fortune. Rotman ranked from 60 to 65 in the Fortune rankings but Rotman turned out well for me as I was very clear about what I wanted from MBA I knew I wanted short and top consulting firms.

When I looked at the schools I was getting in US these firms did not recruit there. The way these firms recruit is that they go to top colleges in each country and Rotman is the top school in Canada They recruit from Rotman but the schools I was getting in the USA were the top 20 schools so they do not recruit from there. As I was clear in what I want I choose Rotman and have given interviews to all these firms so it is important to know that what you exactly want from your MBA.

My fees was also lower at Rotman as compared to US schools. But if I would have gone to any other University in Canada it would have been even lower.

So there are many parameters which one should consider while choosing, just ranking should not be the criteria because often that ranking is based on the criteria that don’t even matter to you.

So geography, the cost in business school, the scholarship you are getting, what the school is known for, which firms recruit there are some of the important criteria which should be taken into consideration.

@Nikita

I will suggest that if you can retake the GMAT, if you can slightly increase your score, even if you get to the range of 630 or 650, you will have very good chances than at your present score. Because at this point I think your GMAT is the reason for your disqualification, other than that I think it’s mostly fine.

Another important aspect that you haven’t mentioned here is what is your profile? What is it that you bring to the table in terms of your experience and not just the fact that it is 2.5 years.

What interesting work have you done and how can you demonstrate it to the school?

What impact have you made in the past? These are the important factors that the school will generally consider.

I had a colleague of mine in Rotman who got a similar GMAT score, but she was really able to sell her experience but she was the only one who had the advantage.

So I am suggesting to have a better GMAT score. So you are not in that exception category but you should be in that real competing category, you should be able to showcase what you can do.

@Ahna

That is a good question, salary should not be the only criteria to determine which job is the best. At the same time I wouldn’t say that jobs that people get from MBAs are not satisfied.

So the difference is what satisfies you, different people draw satisfaction from different things and if you feel that you will be able to draw satisfaction from a job that requires you to put in less number of hours, not to say that MS will definitely get you a job where you need to put less number of hours or MBA will get you a job that requires more number of hours of you but that’s the likely thing.

If less hours give you satisfying feeling even if the money is less then MS can be an option. So you need to put down that what is satisfying job for you? And then you need to compare with the job you will get after your MS or MBA. None of them is better than the other, it’s about what you need.

I knew people who are extremely happy after doing their MS and never even think about an MBA and then there are people like me who never even had an MS on their charts it was always an MBA. And I am happy with the degree I had.

It’s all about what is your criteria.

@Manav

There are few schools which offer one year program, Ivey is one of them and there are a few more as well.

What you should consider while choosing a 1 year or 2 year program is, what is it that you want at the end of the MBA?

If you want to stay in the same line of work you are already doing then one year MBA can work fine for you. But if you want to switch careers then generally a 2 year MBA is better than a 1 year MBA.

A lot of time when you want to switch industries, you want to take a little time like a pilot program. Internship allows you to do that, you go to work in that industry see what it feels like. Lot of times people say that it sounded great from outside, but it’s not what I want I would better be going off to the industry I was working in. So those are few important criteria that help you decide If you want a career change or not.

That’s the one criteria and the other one is the number of years of experience you have. So the ones who choose or are selected for 1 year program, are the ones who have experience of four plus years.

@Anne

I know people who have three years or less than three years of experience at Rotman so yes it is enough for Rotman.

@Saket

It’s difficult to answer.

Almost everyone got the internship but what really qualifies as a good internship is very subjective. So everyone got an internship most of them were paid, some of them were not paid, so it’s an entire spectrum. It was extremely easy for me to get an internship.

I knew people who found it difficult to find an internship both of us were Indian.

Talking about the job prospect at Rotman, any good firm in that has a decent presence in Canada recruits at Rotman. Almost all the firms in Canada recruits at Rotman.

If you want to know about how many people got the job, then it has been 3 months since I have graduated from Rotman and almost 75 to 80% of people have got the job.

@Rohan_Sethi

Right answer to this will be that I don’t know why I got the scholarship because I wasn’t the one deciding, Why I think I got the scholarship might be because I had a strong profile for the school like Rotman, the average GMAT score was 690 to 700 and I got 720 so I was among the few students who pulled the average up. I had a decent amount of experience, I think I was able to demonstrate the value I wanted to bring into the school in a classroom and was also able to showcase my employability after completing my degree, those I think were the important criteria they must have used when deciding whether or not to give me a scholarship.

Having said that I had a very good friend who had the same profile as me, whose GMAT score was higher and he enrolled at Mackenzie and he didn’t have any scholarship.

So I really don’t know why I would have got the scholarship and he wouldn’t, so maybe the criteria I am talking about really were not the reasons because of which I got the scholarship.

It’s very subjective to each person that how you can portray yourself differently depending on the type of experience you have but I would suggest that you introspect and think about your experience in detail and bring out the aspects that are different from everyone in your organisation or everyone who has the same degree as you, would have in there job profiles.

For example in India, a good job profile for an engineer would be working with Infosys or TCS or Cognizant or working with any technological firm that provides services across the globe.

But in that case one would like to talk about the experience you had like who were the clients you worked with and what was the impact you were able to bring through your project and what was your exact role in the team that brought about that impact.

That is going to be very unique and not everyone will have the same impact on every client, and the way you are able to demonstrate showcase that impact and how it ties up with your future aspirations is actually a good way to showcase.