Den, a perspective Rotman student, asked some questions on the last post. They are good questions and probably of general interest so I decided to give my answers their own post.
First, thanks for the compliment Den. It’s easy to be “the best” when you’re probably the only source. 
Now the questions:
Are there many people from non-tech/non-finance background (that’s me) at the school?
Well the vast majority of people at the school have an Engineering, Science, Math, or Commerce background. That being said, there are many people who don’t have these backgrounds and do very well in many courses that us Engineers have difficulty with. They showed us a pie chart at the Taste of the MBA, I believe my class is 20-25% non engineering, science, math, and commerce (but I can’t remember for sure). The Rotman site has a breakdown for this years class:
|
Business/Commerce |
45 |
17% |
| Economics
|
25 | 9.4%
|
| Engineering
|
107 | 40.5%
|
| Humanities
|
8 | 3.0%
|
| Life Sciences
|
15 |
5.6% |
| Math/Computer Sc.
|
24 | 9.0%
|
| Other
|
9 | 3.4%
|
| Physical Sciences | 8 | 3.0% |
| Social Sciences | 15 | 5. |
Is student involvement encouraged/supported? I was thinking of organizing a club if I got accepted, but I am not sure if that is a part of the culture at Rotman.
Student involvement is strongly encouraged supported. I remember getting an e-mail back before I started school (after I started this blog) from a second year who was encouraging me to join an initiative to start a new Rotman student newsletter. That, unfortunately, fell through but it’s just one of the examples of the types of things you can do. Other examples are: starting your own club, running for student government, helping the school with initiatives, or just participating in all the conferences and competitions. With respect to starting your own club, that is definitely a possibility. I believe (and don’t quote me on this) that we’ve had 3 or 4 new clubs created since I started at Rotman.
The biggest issue that I will bring up (and I believe it is a theme in quite a few of my posts) is that people are really busy (especially in first year). This becomes a problem when you’re trying to build clubs which requires a lot of involvement. Students love the clubs but when it comes to execution, many pick sleep over heavy involvement in clubs. This is just an observation of mine and it may or may not be a trend you see across the MBA schools.
Regardless, I encourage you to try different things and if building a club interests you, go for it!
The adcom are not very responsive to my emails so it is very hard to communicate with them. Was the situation similar when you applied?
By adcom I’m assuming that you are referring to the admissions people. I didn’t e-mail them very much but I did find that occasionally it took a few tries before I got a response. I’m not sure why. This isn’t a trend I see inside Rotman though. I usually get responses to my e-mails in minutes and at most hours. Consequently, I’d guess that the admissions people are just swapped with e-mails or there is a process in place for responding to e-mails and perhaps the process needs some retooling.
Thanks for the questions. As I’ve said before, if anyone has any questions please send me an e-mail or post a comment. It makes coming up for content for this blog a lot easier. To me all this information is internalized somewhere in my brain and it’s hard to pick it out unless someone asks.
Cheers.
Thank you Riz!
Your meticulousness in answering the questions I raised beats the vast majority of the other MBA students I have interacted with. And I have been gathering information/insights about several top schools in North America.
Well, great — I am looking for the quantitative rigor that will enable me to make a career change from education to strategic consulting, and it looks like I have made the right choice of a school in Canada. Correct me if I am wrong, though
I have however read somewhere that Rotman’s program is not really that well designed to accomodate the needs of those looking to change careers. Some alumni/ae say that the school’s brand is not very strong globally, and that it is difficult for them to compete with MBA’s from top US schools who often get the preferential treatment from employers in Canada.
What do you think about this?
Hey Den. It’s really hard to say the “right choice” but it’s the choice I made (although I’m not going into strategy consulting). I’m quite happy with my choice but if you look a few posts back (http://www.tunerds.com/rotman/2007/10/06/youll-be-happy-wherever/), it makes sense.
With respect to career change, I’ll agree that Rotman hasn’t traditionally been well known outside of Finance. Dean Martin, however, has done a lot to raise the profile of the school world wide and I’d say that the reputation of Rotman is just as high (if not higher) as any other school in Canada. Many people I know in the program have successfully done the career switch at Rotman into banking or consulting. The major consulting firms all come to Rotman to recruit.
Of course the big American schools will have the reputation advantage for the foreseeable future but you have to weigh many things in making your decision: location, where you want to work, what you want out of your school, do you want a class of 250 or 800….
I’m not sure how else to help you. Unfortunately I don’t know the success rate at Rotman vs. other schools for career switchers. Good luck with your decision.