Tag: MBA scholarships

Newstalk MBA Scholarship

Newstalk, in association with UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, is offering one exceptional candidate the chance of a lifetime – an MBA scholarship to an upper value of €34,500 for the full-time or executive (part-time) MBA programme, starting in late August 2017.

Over three weeks from Monday April 24th to Sunday May 14th applicants for the scholarship must complete a short online entry form.

Previous Newstalk MBA Scholarship winner, Peter Hynes, discusses the impact that winning the scholarship has had on his career and personal development, and offers advice to anyone considering applying to the Newstalk MBA Scholarship at UCD Smurfit School this year.

Learnings from year 1 for Newtalk scholarship winner 2013 Niall Twomey

One year down (almost!), one more year to go and what a year it has been! Looking back on the past twelve months the experience has been both fun and challenging. I don’t think any applicant can fully appreciate the opportunities the Smurfit MBA offers until they experience them first-hand.

The MBA is all about teamwork, and understanding your strengths and weaknesses in a team setting is vital in order to develop your career. The calibre of your fellow students is second to none. You quickly realise you are being given the opportunity to work with future leaders from different industries. Through team interactions I have come to recognise that because I have only worked in the IT sector my opinions were actually quite fixed and need to be challenged and matured. My teammates certainly helped me there.

The style of classroom learning is very different to anything I have experienced before. You are expected to have completed a large amount of self-study and research before class. This means the classroom is an interactive learning experience where you learn from your lecturer and your classmates through discussion and debate. You realise that you need to be on top of your game in order to participate, but it is a lot of fun to challenge yourself.

The academic content is just one strand of the MBA; the leadership development programme, speaker series and society events are just as important. The connections to industry mean that your network goes far beyond your classmates.

Having the good fortune of receiving the 2013 Newstalk MBA scholarship has opened up the Smurfit MBA experience to me, and one which I will always be grateful for. The opportunity to be interviewed by Bobby Kerr on his “Down To Business” show was a great way to finish off the first year.

Niall Twomey

EMBA Weekend Year 1

Newstalk scholarship for 2014 now open for applications

My colleagues in Admissions have reminded me that the MBA Newtalk scholarship is now open and accepting applications.  This scholarship is a 100% fee scholarship and is available to those considering either full-time or EMBA programme.  The closing date is 26th May so get working on that application, you know the old saying ‘If you aren’t in, you can’t win’.

Further information on the application process and entry criteria is available at http://www.smurfitschool.ie/newstalk/

By the way if you are considering doing your MBA this year, and we hope you are, get that GMAT test booked as the slots start booking up later in the summer and doing this at the last minute puts unnecessary pressure on you.

Smurfit/Irish Aid ‘Ideas’ scholarship enters its 2014 interview phase and heads for Vietnam

This is the 6th year that the Smurfit School has been involved with the Irish Aid “IDEAS” programme. Irish aid provides scholarships for candidates from Irelands developing country partners such as Vietnam, to further their education in Ireland in subject areas which are relevant to the development of the individual’s home country. Since the start of the scholarship programme we have welcomed over 72 Vietnamese students to the school.

This April, the director of the MBA Orla Nugent and I will fly to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to complete the interview process to select the top 20-25 students for both the MSc and MBA programmes. This will be my first trip to Vietnam and I’m really excited. As a lifelong foodie, I can’t wait to try some of the local food- Phở (Vietnamese Noodle Soup), Bún Bò Huế (Beef Vermicelli Soup), Bánh Kẹp Lá Dứa (Coconut Pandan Waffles) to name just a few! There was a huge volume of people that attended this year’s têt celebration that the current Vietnamese students held in the school in February, so I’m confident that next year’s cohort will be equally embraced by Smurfit and it’s students.


Olivia Moss

Smurfit Admissions 

Inaugural Mwangi MBA Scholarship – A great opportunity for women from Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania

The Mwangi scholarship which is being offered for the first time this year has been named as a mark of solidarity with the people of Kenya, and  in memory of  Mbugua Mwangi and his fiancée Rosemary Wahito who were tragically killed in the Westgate attack in Nairobi in September 2013.   Mbugua Mwangi was the only son of Ireland’s former Ambassador of Kenya, Ms Catherine Mwangi.  The Scholarship is in conjunction with the Irish Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs.

This scholarship is a great opportunity for female African citizens from Kenya, Uganda or Tanzania to apply for a full scholarship and stipend for the UCD Smurfit MBA for the upcoming academic year 2014-15.  The closing date is April 15th and further details and application  procedure and eligibility criteria are available at http://www.smurfitschool.ie/scholarships/mwangimbascholarship/.

We particularly encourage applications from public sector, ethnic minorities, people with disability and other marginalised groups. In exceptional cases, work experience may compensate for academic experience. This scholarship is intended to support candidates who would otherwise be unable to access overseas postgraduate opportunities.

If you are interested and eligible we encourage an application and if you aren’t but know anyone who is please let them know this opportunity is out there waiting to be won.

Image MBA scholarship and the Women of the UCD Smurfit MBA

Image evening 25th March, Brian and the panel doing their thing

On Wednesday 25th the UCD Smurfit School hosted the official launch of our annual Image Scholarship with an open evening in our ‘Women on the MBA’ series. We and Image are very keen to increase the numbers of women undertaking our programme because while there are increasing numbers we still don’t think there are nearly enough. Brian Marrinan, MBA Careers (who confessed to feeling outnumbered) did a short presentation on what the MBA careers services does to help students move to the next level and he then moderated a panel of current students and alumni who gave the benefit of their experience as women of the Smurfit MBA. It was a really interesting discussion with good insights and could have gone of far longer if time had allowed.

Many thanks to all who attended and to our panelists Catherine Butler (current EMBA class), Aoife Lucey (current full-time class), Paula Thomas (class of 2010) and Fionnula Croke (class of 2002).

The Image Scholarship is a scholarship to encourage women to undertake the MBA and is open until April 30th details are at http://www.smurfitschool.ie/imagescholarship/

A perspective on part-time MBA

It’s hard to believe that we are entering into week 5 of semester two already. After the initial burst of excitement and adrenalin last term, I think we are all beginning to find a rhythm. As a part-time MBA student, lectures two evenings a week seems like the norm and I can hardly remember what I did on those days before starting the programme.

The semester has brought us new teams, new subjects, new challenges and new opportunities. One of the most interesting things I have got from the MBA so far, is learning from the group work and team dynamics.  I think most of the groups felt at the end of Semester 1 that they had become a strong team and had gelled well together. So it was with a little trepidation that we all found our new teammates at the start of Semester 2 but I’m glad to say that it’s working out really well. It’s amazing how the prospect of assignments and work focuses the mind and facilitates real teamwork!

This semester we are studying Management Accounting, Information Systems, Competitive Strategy and Financial Management and it’s fascinating to see how they all interlink. I think that’s one of the great benefits of the MBA – getting a holistic view of business issues and being able to examine them from a variety of different functional perspectives.

The first class of Financial Management involved heated discussions about the property market. It was interesting to discuss the factors that led to the boom and bust in recent years. I think the property market is something we can all identify with and I hope to come away from the module with some useful lessons should there be another boom in the future!

For those considering an MBA, it is a wonderful opportunity to broaden your skill set, knowledge base and contacts and there is no better place in Ireland to do it than Smurfit Business School  which is triple accredited and internationally recognised. If you are considering an MBA, don’t forget to take a look at the Irish Times/Smurfit Business School MBA scholarship which is open for another couple of days – see www.smurfitschool.ie/irishtimes – you never know, you might just win it!













– Conor O’Donovan, EMBA

ADMISSIONS MBA BLOG

That New Year sense of anticipation and excitement is currently palpable in the UCD Smurfit Admissions Office. This is because the recruitment cycle for the 2012 MBA class is officially underway! There is a tremendous energy and buzz within the office as the Admissions Team connects with many uniquely qualified and diverse candidates who have an interest in undertaking the full-time or part-time MBA (Executive MBA) programmes this fall.

I have had various opportunities to meet with prospective candidates at events such as our first ‘Taste of an MBA’ breakfast lecture which took place on Wednesday, February 1st, the Career Zoo Jobs and Postgraduate Fair in Dublin’s Mansion House, various Universities and Institutes of Technology around Ireland in addition to the Masterbeurs Career and Postgraduate Fair in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Given the success of the aforementioned events and, in particular, our ‘Taste of an MBA’ breakfast events, I very much look forward to our second and third lectures in this series which are scheduled to take place on Wednesday March 7th and Wednesday the 2nd May respectively. Next week the School will host our first Open Event of the 2012 calendar year at our Blackrock campus with a number of C.V. Review sessions scheduled to take place the following week. Finally, I look forward to meeting with candidates at the eFellows MBA Day which is due to take place in Munich on Saturday March 3rd. Details of these events and others can be found on http://www.smurfitschool.ie/events/.

Applications to each of our Scholarship competitions are also being submitted at this time as the deadlines for our GMAT, Regional and ‘Ideas for the Future’ Scholarships are fast approaching. For those of you who are currently working on perfecting your Scholarship application essays its time to focus on finalising those applications and collating the required documentation as March 15th is just but a few sleeps away!! Based on the applications received to date I am most excited about the diversity, experience and personal attributes of this years applicants and I look forward to connecting with those candidates who are currently in the process of preparing their applications for the forthcoming academic year.

– Gillian Durnin, MBA Admissions Manager

My Ideas for the Future Scholarship

John McInroy, scholarship winner of the “Ideas for the Future” scholarship 201o updates us on the progress of his winning idea. Deadline for MBA scholarship applications for 2011 is 21 March

Having completed my MBA on exchange at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India I returned to my homeland, South Africa via the United Kingdom, to pursue my dream of spreading www.redsockfriday.com around the world. I was awarded the Ideas for the Future scholarship at Smurfit for this initiative and during my Smurfit MBA the concept was formally launched on redsockfriday 9th April 2010.

Just over 10 months later there are over 1,200 redsockers worldwide in 43 different countries and we continue to work towards the dream of connecting all passionate positive people in the planet by wearing redsocks every Friday wherever you are in the world and whatever you are doing! Each sock that is sold through the site, part of the sale goes towards various redsocker charities which we are actively involved with. We are also involved with various global events such as the Comrades Marathon (Unogwaja2011) and the Put Foot Rally. All information and ways to get involved can be found on www.redsockfriday.com

Recently I was lucky enough to be interviewed on two national television shows in South Africa talking about the redsockfriday UNOGWAJA2011 which 4 redsockers are attempting later this year, involving a 1,730km cycle from Cape Town to Durban in 10 days followed by running the gruelling 89.1km Comrades marathon.



John McInroy Smurfit MBA
John McInroy celebrating redsockfriday


Being part of the Smurfit MBA class of 2010 gave me a great platform to start to realise my dream.

shoOops!

– John McInroy, Full-time MBA 2009/2010

To see me in action,

Expresso live breakfast show (SABC 3) ; Supersport Sports Trust round up (Supersport1)