Heriot-Watt exams..Any info. or experience with them?

Can anyone tell me how the Heriot-Watt MBA exams are in terms of format etc. I appreciate any info you can provide.

 

Sample exams are provided with each course. During the 7 years I was involved in marketing this program, there was (and I hope still is) a wonderful huge book for sale, including, among much else, dozens of sample exams, along with what the Scots then (probably now) call the "perfect answers," and a hundred pages from the examiners, explaining how they mark questions. A great resource.

The comment we heard most often from the thousands of Americans and Canadians who took the exams -- the roughly 2/3 who passed and those who didn't -- was in the form of "Tough but fair."

 

Sounds like you have a good knowledge of Heriot-Watt. For the cost of tuition, ease of ordering a course at a time etc. How do you rate their program in comparision to US RA programs? Do you find HW to be widely accepted? How about academia in the US should one later pursue to do so?

Also, do you recall if exams are in essay format or are they proctored in written format with multiple choice etc? Curious..

Thank you for sharing.

 

Hi John

The past exams plus solutions have moved on from the printed Handbook you mentioned from your days (still talked about at EBS!).

All past exams and the faculty solutions are posted on the ebs.mba.com web site (our MBA and other courses, MSc and DBA are delivered online). Plus, we also include now what we describe as 'good student answers' taken from the examination diet's candidates' answers (usally scoring in the 'middle' of the passing range) for which the students concerned (not identified) received a reasonable pass under the British graduate exam scoring system (different from the US system and its grade inflation).

With four exam diets a year (March, June, August and December) this service provides near 'overload' in actual exams, plus the opportunity for prospective examinees to try the past exams and then have them scored electronically using our 'Profiler' grading software to see if they are ready to be examined.

Should anybody wish to try it out, there is an open site with seven past exams for core and certain electives accessible as 'guests', and also an independent EBS MBA students' site at forums.delphiforums. com/watercooler where current students may be questioned.

I agree that your description of EBS MBA (Heriot-Watt) exams as 'tough but fair' is about right.

 

Professor Kennedy,

I sent you a provate message. Hope that you can reply.

 

Mr. Nelson, I graduated from the EBS MBA program in June 2000. The typical format of the exam is 20-30 multiple-choice questions and 2-3 business cases that are answered in the form of a written essay. You have three hours to take the exams, and you will need every last second.

In terms of difficulty, my favorite description is 'a tough open book exam without the open book'.

 

The Heriot-Watt Exams were some of the most difficult I've ever taken.

If you are comparing HW to other distance learning programs, I think there is no comparison. HW gives you the most flexibility and I liked how you can pay for each course at a time. You can also take your exams almost anywhere in the world, although the testing dates are very strict.

The only caution I would have against doing the program is if you are doing it in order to change careers or you are currently unemployed. With the HW degree you don't really have the chance to "network" like you could at an on-campus program in the US, and since it's a UK school, their career center won't really be able to help you like an established US school's could. If you are working full time and just need the MBA for advancement, then HW is a great way to go.

Since completing the MBA I've started a PhD program in Operations and Systems Management at the University of Florida. Not only was my MBA recognized (HW has a Royal Charter), but I was allowed to transfer 24 credits from the MBA program towards my PhD requirements. However, depending on exactly what you want to do later on, some schools just don't take MBAs into their PhD programs (doesn't matter if it is from Heriot-Watt or Harvard.) So you might want to consider doing a MS or MA in your field.