Students Share is a new series of contributed articles and answers shared by students who are currently enrolled in our programmes. The goal is to give prospective students and readers first-hand understanding of the programme and learn about real experiences directly from a current student.
The following answers are shared by Nadya Yanyan Huang, a concurrent double masters’ student. In June 2013, she was conferred with three degrees: Bachelor of Sciences (Honours) in Communications and New Media from NUS FASS, MSc in Management and CEMS Master’s in International Management from NUS Business School. Thank you, Nadya for sharing your thoughts!
Q: Why did you choose this programme?
When I was doing my bachelor’s degree, I went on an exchange programme in Australia where I met many other exchange students from around the world. It was fascinating to be around them as the group on a whole gave me many different perspectives on one situation. Hence, when I was looking for a master’s programme, it was very important to me that the course had a central element of being international. The CEMS programme was a great fit, especially as it was not only incredibly international, it also had a strong partnership network with some of the best business schools and corporations in the world.
Nadya (first on left) and her classmate in Lisbon to catch a football game
Q: Why did you choose NUS or Singapore?
I had looked at other master programmes in other universities in Singapore. However, none of them seem to offer the international experience that the CEMS programme could offer. Furthermore, as I was already a NUS business minor in my bachelor’s course, I already had first-hand experience of the high quality curriculum and professors that the NUS School of Business delivered. The dedicated career office team also gave me a lot of advice on how to kick-start my career and was a huge bonus in the programme. Not to mention that NUS is already a recognised brand. People I met at work frequently tell me they’ve heard about how good the university is and it makes me really proud to call it my alma mater.
CEMS graduation in Barcelona, Spain (November 2013; Nadya in the middle left.) Credit: Jean Collet
How has the learning experience been?
The classes offered by NUS and my CEMS exchange schools (ESADE in Barcelona, Spain and Corvinus University of Budapest in Hungary) have been really interesting. The project groups I had in my classes were very diverse, with sometimes 3 or 4 different nationalities working together. It really pleasantly surprised me that all the students were so stellar and allowed me to gain many lessons even outside the classroom.
Many of them were not only the crème de la crème of their universities, but they were also very well-read (and not just current events but a myriad of subjects like art history, wine, etc.). They are able to apply critical thinking not only to academic subjects but also world events in the socio-political scene, are very open to listening to new perspectives, and many spoke at least 3 languages (I even met one guy who could speak 7 languages!). To top that off, it was very eye-opening for me to see how many of them had a very entrepreneurial spirit – some of them were even starting their own company while pursuing CEMS at the same time! It really motivated me to try to learn and accomplish more – not just for the sake of getting a good grade but to contribute to my understanding of the world! 🙂
I’m currently working in Germany with a corporate partner from CEMS (Henkel) which I interned for before graduating. At the same time, I’m learning German, travelling a lot (currently visited more than 40 different cities in the last 4 years) and experimenting more in the kitchen (building life skills yo!). It’s a pretty great feeling. 🙂
If you want to learn more about our MSc in Management and CEMS MIM programme, please click here. For more information about the Concurrent Double Master Programme, click here.
