There was a party hosted by the Sydney Lord Mayor for the international students yesterday evening and I was there to grab my free food and to socialise with the rest from the rest of the universities. There are three big universities in Sydney. University of New South Wales, University of Sydney & University of Technology Sydney are the three, may be even in terms of rankings inside Sydney. Macquarie University is also not too far behind. I would say that UTS and MacUni are just in a big fight for the third postion. Since UniSyd and UNSW have a common school for their MBA students, which is the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM), I will say UTS and MacUni have their positions sealed in the next two available spots. But UNSW, UTS and UniSyd together hosted the party.

AGSM is the best b-school in Australia closely followed by Melbourne Business School which is a part of University of Melbourbe. These b-school's are quite similar to that of US universities in terms of requirements to be fullfiled. They expect you to have worked for a certain amount of time and also hold a very good GMAT score to get into. UTS GMAT cut-off for its MBA program is 550, according to B-School sources. But they have two tiers of MBA, the one for the students who have less than 6 years of work experience and for those who have more than that. Excepting the degree being called as a 'Classic MBA', there seems to be utterly nothing significantly different about the courses. There would be few differences where in the students who are undertaking the classic program are adviced to do some assignments which are based on real time situations, like an Organisational Analysis. In OAD they have an edge of getting into an organisation and finding out relevant facts. But on a broader outlook both the courses have similar structures and are being taught by the sam e lecturers.

Coming to the reception that we got from the Mayor yesterday, I made optimum utilisation of the veggie snack which ever was available out there at the party. Australia by itself have shortage of vegetarian eateries in general. If you get into even an Indian restaurant, you will be suprised to see just few dishes which are vegetarian. So it is increasing difficult for people like me. Luckily I have some company in the form of desi's again. Some times I begin to wonder if GSB (Graduate School of Business- UTS B-school) is Gujarat School of Business. That's because of the number of Gujarati's I found studying at this school. There is a small crowd which speak tamil and are totally against socialising with the rest & there are the usual Northy gang, as mentioned by Magnus Anand in one of his posts, who just prefer to talk in Hindi. So for me I am trying to be like a chameleon moving sides whenever I want to.

I mix with all the people who ever I can, especially with students who have come from all over the globe, so that I will get a healthy knowledge of what's happening out there at the other end. There was an exchange fair today in which few US universities showed up. I was very impressed with University of Arizona and Californian State University Sacremento. Lets see if things go on well, I may try to get into an exchange to do one semester else where in the globe. So that it will turn out to be a real global MBA!

Few snaps of the party....