Bath School of Management: Postgraduate courses that get you results

20 Oct 2017

The University of Bath School of Management is a School that gets results. Preparing you for the working world is not a by-product of your study, it’s a central goal that the school, the curriculum and the faculty all work towards.

This excellence is reflected in all manner of rankings, with the school coming in top spot for Marketing and second for Business and Management in the latest rankings from The Complete University Guide. The Good University Guide also placed them second for Accounting and Finance, while their MSc in Management and MSc in Accounting and Finance rank within the Financial Times’ list of the top pre-experience Masters programmes in the world.

Needless to say, with rankings like that, Bath graduates are highly sought-after by potential employers. They are in the top ten universities that Britain’s top graduate employers target and have a stunning 100 percent employment rate. Yep, you read that right – every single MSc graduate is employed within six months of graduation*.

PricewaterhouseCoopers are just one of the industry leaders that actively seek out Bath business graduates.

“PwC has chosen to work with Bath for over four years because of the excellent calibre of students. We continue to recruit talented students year after year.”

With results like that, you’re probably wondering how they do it. After all, there are a lot of business schools out there these days, so what is it that sets them apart and keeps Bath MSc graduates ahead of the pack?

The school is unique in its vision that MSc courses are not the end of your education, but rather the start of your career.

Each programme is designed to give you as much real business experience as possible. You’ll be working with companies from your very first week, so by the time graduation comes around you’re already out of the blocks and running full-speed.

Many of their Masters courses include a Practice Track – a practical alternative to slogging through a dissertation that takes place over summer.

Programmes that include this feature are: MSc Accounting and Finance, MSc Finance, MSc Finance with Banking, MSc Finance with Risk Management, MSc Management, MSc International Management, MSc Sustainability and Management, and MSc Marketing.

The Practice Track allows students to work directly with organisations, carry out research and present their findings at the conclusion.

MSc Management student Natasha Yip was grateful to find a course that matched her interests, seeing the Practice Track as invaluable in honing her professional skills.

“I did a dissertation before in my undergraduate degree and it wasn’t really my thing,” says Natasha. “When I looked at the MSc in Management, I saw I could do the Practice Track instead. Bath has the only MSc courses I could find that offer a practical alternative to a dissertation, and I wanted to do that. It’s a unique thing.”

Taking on both a Case Project, in which her group acted as a FinTech consultancy for a national financial institution, and an Action Project, working to raise awareness and income for a local charity, Natasha bolstered her employability and learnt new skills.

“The Practice Track gave me real business experience, something I didn’t really have when I started the course,” she says. “It builds up your group work experience as well, and how to handle problems. You have to be organised and learn to plan for the unexpected.

These are skills I’ll need in the work environment. It’ll definitely help my employability.”

You can also take your business experience international with the Global Residency Scheme. This enables you to gain incomparable insight into worldwide business by visiting one of the school’s partner institutions in India, France, South Africa and the US.

The school’s ability to cultivate graduates with high-end professional skills urges corporate partners to maintain a strong relationship with Bath, encouraged by the value and fresh perspectives students bring to the company. And these partners represent some of the big names in business, whose standards for employment are incredibly high. But the fact that students consistently step up to the mark is a feather in the university’s cap.

“If I was to pick out some of the factors that distinguish a Bath student from others, I would say that they tend to have a very high level of commercial awareness,” says global cosmetics company, L’Oreal. “They’re also very resilient and able to take on challenges as they come. They’re confident about taking their own stance on things.”

Not only do you pick up constructive practical experience as part of your programme, but there’s also a raft of extracurricular activities and employer engagement sessions that get you in front of your dream employer, and vice versa.

Activities such as the Zurich Community Challenge, Entrepreneurship Challenge and the Future Business Challenge are a great opportunity to develop soft skills that are vital in the workplace.

MSc Management student Qing Yao found it particularly useful and the outcome possibly changed his future career path.

“The Entrepreneurship Challenge was a fun, small-scale simulation of the real entrepreneurial practice which definitely gave me a deeper insight and raised my interest in entrepreneurial business,” says Yao. “One of the guest speakers also offered me an internship opportunity with a business incubator consultancy supporting start-ups. I strongly believe that everything I learnt from this activity will help in my internship.”

With opportunities like these, there’s no wonder that Bath School of Management achieves its 100 percent employment rate. Bath graduates walk into the workplace and generate value from day one.

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