A few months have passed since I completed the Quantic EMBA and since then, I have been getting quite a lot of questions from prospective students regarding my experience and most importantly, whether I would recommend this course. This will be my final post regarding Quantic and I am hoping to touch upon most of your questions to help you make an informed decision.
1. The Capstone Project
I have written extensively about my learning experience for the individual models and if you read my past posts, you will recall that I was not a huge fan of their teaching style. The Capstone Project was a pleasant surprise as it was more engaging and gave me the opportunity to interact more with other students. In a nutshell, the project required us to come up with a viable business plan, something which incorporates most of the concepts that we learned throughout the course. We must have spent around a month in finding group members, a couple of months in discussing and finally choosing the business idea and finally a solid 3-4 months in drafting the business plan.
Overall I found myself in a good group, with professionals from a wide range of industries and backgrounds. I am not saying that we didn’t have any hiccups on the way but I thought that we managed to submit a reasonable piece of work and a very viable business idea (I will not go into details here). We had weekly meetings and worked on market research, developed mock ups of our product, created a pricing plan and finally some very realistic financial projections.
The only disappointing part of this project was the marking. Based on the comments that we received, it was very clear that the marker had not understood or thoroughly read our plan, the comments came across as very rushed and generic. To add insult to injury, the comments that we got from our appeal process were very unprofessional, something that I would never expect from a well reputable academic institution.
2. The Graduation Ceremony
The graduation ceremony was also disappointing; to summarise, it was pretty much just your name being read out in a big ZOOM meeting. While I understand that given the number of students (and cost?) it might not be feasible to organise hybrid events, I thought that some additional work could be done in hosting a more inclusive graduation ceremony.
3. Has the degree been a game changer?
This is a question that I get asked quite a lot but I might not be the best person to answer it as I have not been actively looking to change careers with this EMBA, however I can speak based on what I have seen in my cohort. I would say that the short answer is no (at least in APAC). Unlike past degrees, I did not get the impression that student made big career moves after graduating; as someone who has invested in this EMBA, I would love to hear that I am wrong though. I regularly speak with recruiters and I must say that the brand image is still low so I believe Quantic still has a lot of work to do to increase the perceived value of their degrees.
4. The Network
The networking aspect is where I see the most potential. Quantic have done a very good job in gaining momentum and attracting smart students around the world. There are various WhatsApp groups and communities and they are all very active. The question to ask is whether this momentum will continue to get stronger or whether the networks will fade away. I am optimistic here and as a graduate, I am hoping that the Quantic brand continues to grow. I am also looking forward to exploring the “Quantic network” in the following months.
5. Final verdict
My advice for Quantic is to review the teaching style and add more opportunities for students to interact. The few group projects throughout the course were the most enjoyable experience and the Smart Cases were extremely monotonous and ended up becoming a tick box rather than the intended active learning tool. The tutorials and events are still very US centric in terms of timezone and I thought that greater consideration for APAC based students would have been nicer. As a prospective student you might ask me whether I would enrol in the course if I could go back in time and the short answer is No. However I would like to re-iterate that this will depend on your personal circumstances. If you do not want to get into debt in gaining a degree, Quantic might be a suitable choice but I still think it’s a bit of a gamble. As a graduate I do hope that they keep adding to the learning experience to avoid becoming one of the many degree mills.
TheFinanceNerd 