at Tufts University
Why the Master of International Business?: Because it will equip you with the hard financial and strategic skills as well as network to get the work that you want. As you progress through your career as a global business leader, the global economic, statistical and legal frameworks that you learnt here will help you add value to the global economy.
URL: http://fletcher.tufts.edu/business/default.shtmlRanking: In a joint venture with Harvard University, Tufts University pioneered postgraduate studies in diplomacy and international affairs in the United States at a time of isolationism, economic depression, racism and nationalism. The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy was born in 1933.
The school is as forward thinking today as it was then, pioneering postgraduate studies in the field of global business at a time when we are forced to rethink the assumptions that almost brought us to a similar economic collapse to that in 1929. Since the programme is still so unique, there aren't rankings to compare the Master of International Business with competition - it's in a class of its own.
The Fletcher School at Tufts University is, however,
ranked fourth in the world for its professional master in international affairs (half of the Master of International Business degree) by Foreign Policy magazine.
Scholarships: Recognising, however, that the MIB does compete for students with other elite programmes which have been around for longer, Fletcher provides an added financial incentive for high-calibre students committed to fostering the growth of enterprises in emerging markets and to students who show leadership and promise in the intersection of business practice and global issues:
http://fletcher.tufts.edu/business/scholarships.shtml
Alumni network: There is a lot of chemistry between students of different graduating classes and because the school is so small, the alumni network is very cohesive.
What's responsible for the chemistry? Fletcher's parties. In the spring of 2010, 350 Fletcher students and 70 partners journeyed together to Sugar Loaf Mountain in Maine for a weekend of parties and skiing. We have every a Men's Night Out, a Ladies Night Out, we have a massive Halloween party, we have an Africana night, a Fiesta Latina, Asia Night - celebrating the song, dance, culture and food of the continents, and we have a
Follies Night, where we get to make 400 of our classmates sitting in front of one screen laugh with our
video skits.
I was welcomed to the school by a Fletcher alumnus who graduated in 1973. He introduced himself as a neighbour in more ways than one; he said that he was from Kohat and lived in Surrey. When I
invited the principal of a London private equity fund to campus, I was able to set up meetings with several Fletcher alumni of interest.
Notable Fletcher alumni: From ministers and heads of state to bank chairmen and CEOs.
Exposure to personalities: On the same day, I interviewed two Fletcher alumni and professors: one was Vali Nasir, a
Senior Advisor to the Obama administration on Afghanistan and Pakistan, the other was Rick Thoman, the
former CEO of Xerox and former CFO of IBM. I also argued that day with Dan Meridor, the Deputy Prime Minister of Israel.
I've interviewed Farah Pandith, the
US Department of State's first Special Representative to Muslims, and have also interviewed for Newsweek a professor about his book on global Islamic finance.
Getting published: With the fresh ideas students are encouraged to explore in the classroom, Fletcher is a hotbed for opinion editorials. Almost every week a student publishes an opinion piece in
The Huffington Post. Since coming to Fletcher, I've published op eds on
why Copenhagen failed with
The Friday Times, on
re-branding Pakistan with
The Boston Globe, an
assessment of Islamic financial practices in
The Guardian (also linked to by BusinessWeek), drawing on the expertise of Professor Ibrahim Warde, and a suggestion in
The Guardian (also linked to by the WSJ) to the Islamic Financial Services Board to create
sovereign sukuk ratings.
I've also been interviewed by a Mumbai-based current affairs radioshow
about Pakistan's floods, and was flown in from Paris (where I spent a semester on exchange at HEC) by The University of Pennsylvania Wharton School to moderate and speak in a panel discussion about
market solutions to disaster relief.
Your peers: Within each year group, Master of International Business students (
here are profiles of some of my cohort, while my peers who are
MALDs, LLMs and GMAPs include an Olympian, an ambassador and a future presidential candidate) make up 30 of 250 students, so peers include Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy students (some of whom are also on a business track), LLM students and PhD students. There are also military fellows, which include four US colonels.
My classmates are extremely well traveled, knowledgeable about the world and have come to Fletcher for reasons greater than simply enhancing their own careers. When the Haiti earthquake struck,
students collaborated to direct US coast guards to areas of need.
There are a number of mid-level career diplomats and some army personnel from the USA, China, Japan, S Korea, Turkey, Armenia, and Indonesia, people from top banks, top consulting firms, a former group chief executive officer for finance for a Nigerian petroleum company and
Michelle Kwan. Everyone is at least bilingual. A few students speak 6-7 languages.
Besides being impressive, Fletcher students, as explained above, are fun.
Fall at Fletcher
Mediterranean night
Halloween Cross-registration: Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School obviously offer courses of great value, the schools are pretty close by and Harvard students are also good people doing significant things to change the world. So it's an asset to Fletcher students that we can easily register a quarter of our classes at Harvard, and have access to Harvard's conferences. MIT's Sloan School and Tufts University's Friedman School of Nutrition and Tufts's Department of Urban and Environmental Planning also attract students.
Exchange: In lieu of cross-registration, MIBs can gain further exposure to other cultures by spending a semester abroad at the HEC School of Management in Paris, Instituto d'Empresas in Madrid, CEIBS in Shanghai or the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad.
Pakistan friendly: 9 out of 250 people in my year are of Pakistani descent, and a number of people have lived there, not to mention the number of people who have visited. The two girls who have come directly from Pakistan are both LUMS graduates and are Fulbright scholars (which we have a lot of). Like a number of other Fletcher students, Dania turned down Johns Hopkins and Georgetown to be here. Maria first finished her MSc (also on a full scholarship) at the LSE before coming here.
On the faculty side, we boast Professor of History Ayesha Jalal, one of Pakistan's and South Asia's finest academicians, as well as International Politics Professor Vali Nasr (himself a Fletcher alumnus), a Senior Advisor to the Obama administration on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Many Pakistani ambassadors have graduated from The Fletcher School, as well as Rafeeuddin Ahmed, former Under-Secretary General of the UN for 21 years, and Columbia-SIPA Professor Hassan Abbas.
Interested?: Feel free to introduce yourself to me. My name is Imad and my email is imaduddin@gmail.com. I've talked more about why I chose Fletcher
in an interview with Because Business.
You can also get in touch with the extremely helpful and responsive Associate Director for Admissions and Financial Aid, Kristen Zecchi, by email (
kristen.zecchi@tufts.edu) or by phone (+1 617-627-3240).
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