Pre-core is a preparation program for MBA students, which consists of 4 different courses: Financial Accounting, Case methods, Economics and Quantitative Methods, Computers & Statistics. It takes about 2 weeks for all 4 courses, so basically it is just general overview.
At the same time, it was very useful for me, as I have zero experience in Accounting, and very little knowledge of Economics. It is hard to learn that amount of information during the 3-4 days that we had for each course, but it was very good to get an idea about the subjects we would soon be studying and to get a lot of materials to read, when we had time. Though I have to admit, I never read all of them.
Some of the profs, Steve Alisharan for accounting and Paul Cubbon for case study, are now our profs for Core, teaching accounting and marketing respectively.
In our class almost everyone decided to take the Pre-core, so it was another advantage – the opportunity to meet the classmates earlier.
Then Orientation started. It took about a week; we finally met everyone in our class of 2011, and gained a lot of information about next the 3 months in detail and the next 15 months in general.
We also had a session with our career advisers from the Business Career Centre (BCC), a number of workshops on presentation skills and intercultural communications, and the overview of the future career building.
One part of the orientation week that made a vivid impression on me was the keynote speaker, Warren MacDonald, a person who learnt how to overcome his situation and turn his weaknesses into strengths. Here is his web-page: http://www.warren-macdonald.com/vip/
He lost his both legs during one of his hikes in Australia about 10 years ago, but he never gave up, and now he has a life that is as close to normal as possible. He is even able to go hiking again!
I guess the major reason for the school to invite him was to show us that anything is possible, and even when we are having a hard time, we are still strong enough to survive, not necessarily only during the program, but in life in general.
Other than presentations and workshops, we had a lot of fun during the orientation.
One highlight was the day when we had the ropes course. It had two parts – low ropes and high ropes–and both were a lot of fun! It involved team work, the essence of it. We were supposed to turn upside down the magic flying carpet, skipped over the rope and built an A-moving structure. At the high ropes everyone had a chance to try their courage and get full support from their classmates. It was FUN; I guess that is the best way to describe it.
We also had a very fancy dinner at the fantastic venue of Cecil Mansion with the Dean and the Core team. It is a fantastic place with a great view, atmosphere and history. Also it was a great chance to talk to the faculty members and network with our classmates.
And then the CORE started…
