Sponsored by IE Business School

Top business schools often offer both master’s in management (MiM) and master’s in business administration (MBAs). While either degree would give you a solid grounding in most areas of business and boost your earning potential, MBAs and MiMs are designed for different types of candidates at varying stages in their career, so it’s important to understand the differences before you send off your applications.

How much work experience should you have?

The best MBA colleges recruit top candidates looking to supplement existing knowledge and skills, who already have a number of years of work experience on their CV, a string of professional achievements behind them and academic distinctions.

MBA candidates tend to be older than MiM students. For example, at IE Business School, the average MBA student is 30 years old and has around seven years of work experience, while the average MiM student is 23 years old and has around one year of work experience, with ages on the 10-month MiM program ranging between 21 and 25.

In fact, work experience is rarely a deciding factor in the admission criteria of most MiMs, where having more than a year’s work experience on your CV could even disqualify you from admission. The MiM is reserved for fresh graduates looking to fast-track their career.

Of course, if an MiM makes more sense to you at this juncture in your career trajectory, the degree wouldn’t necessarily disqualify you from pursuing an MBA program a few years down the line. One does not necessarily exclude the other, and it’s actually quite common for students to consider doing both. According to a 2017 survey by GMAC, as many as three in four business school candidates with a master’s degree were thinking of applying to an MBA program.

What teaching style should you expect?

MiM programs feature a strong independent-learning component, with classes often held in lecture-halls. Most MBA programs, on the other hand, involve a great deal of group work and discussions and unpicking real life problems and case-studies in small groups of students.

Another difference between the two degrees is that MBAs tend to cover a broader range of business disciplines, while MiM programs will give you an opportunity to specialize in a business area such as marketing or human resources.

Will you be expected to pick a specialization?

MBAs are designed to prepare you for all the issues that may arise in a business that you might be confronted with in a managerial role. But if you are starting a master’s in management this year, you will almost certainly be expected to choose a specialization toward the end of the course.

For example, at IE Business School, the first two semesters are spent learning core modules, such as financial accounting, organizational behaviour, and entrepreneurship, which lay the foundation of management

In the third semester, students are asked to select between five specializations to deepen their knowledge in a specific business area, such as digital business or sales and marketing based on their interests and career goals.

Having specialized in a business area as part of your degree could give you an enormous advantage and even open up opportunities in that field, so it’s really important you start thinking about what career you might be interested in pursuing right away.

If you’re hesitating between specializations, IE Business School offer students the possibility to extend their MiM by a few months to take up a second specialization or spend three months abroad at a partner institution.

The bottom line…

Both MiM programs and MBAs have their unique selling points and target applicants, and both will open up opportunities, but depending on your situation, you may be more suited to one over the other.

The QS Best Student Cities evaluates the world’s best cities for international students, based on six categories: University Rankings, Student Mix, Affordability, Desirability, Employer Activity and, most recently, Student View, which is based on a survey in which students themselves rated their student city.

Do you agree with the top 10 list above? How would you rate your student city? Share your thoughts and help us create next year’s list!

Video by Kai Song for TopUniversities.com.

The United States has been named as the strongest country in the world for higher education, according to the QS Higher Education System Strength Rankings 2018.

Released today, the HESS ranking compares higher education systems around the world and ranks them according to four indicators: System strength (how universities perform in rankings), access (how easily people in that country can gain access to higher education), flagship institution (how well the country's top university performs) and economic context (impact of national investment in higher education).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the United States achieves a perfect score in each of the four indicators. The United Kingdom is the only other country to rank in the top five for each of the four, while other countries such as Singapore and China perform particularly well in some indicators more than others (in Singapore's case, it's ranked fourth for flagship institution, while China is ranked second for economic context).

75 countries are included in this year's ranking in total, and you can learn more about how it was put together by reading our methodology.

The HESS ranking launches at the same time as the QS Best Student Cities 2018, which assesses the top cities for students around the world. To learn more about this ranking, click here.

London has been crowned the best city in the world for students in the QS Best Student Cities 2018.

Released today, the cities ranking features the top 100 study abroad destinations around the world. They're ranked according to six different indicators: affordability, desirability, employer activity, student mix, student view and the performance of the universities within that city in university rankings. 

London has climbed two places since last year's ranking and performs particularly well for employer activity and university rankings. The city is home to 17 different universities which are ranked in the QS World University Rankings® 2018, with UCL (University College London) the highest-ranked of these.

Responding to the news, London mayor Sadiq Khan said: "Boasting more of the globe’s top universities and welcoming the most international students, London is the higher education capital of the world and I want to make sure it stays that way. People who come from abroad to study in London leave as ambassadors for our city, spreading the message that the capital is a fantastic place to live, work and visit.

"I’m saying loud and clear to the world that London is open as the best place to study, do business and innovate, and a city where all Londoners can take advantage of these opportunities."

Despite its table-topping performance, London struggled to compete with many other cities when it came to affordability. According to this year's ranking, the most affordable city for students is actually Budapest, in Hungary.

The rest of the top 10 student cities can be seen below.

Sponsored by emlyon business school

Marketing departments, these days, have more in common with Inspector Gadget than they do Mad Men.

The days of broad-brush marketing campaigns built around a single idea or the perfect slogan are long gone. Creativity still has a part to play, of course, but many marketing executives are now armed with an impressive arsenal of sophisticated weapons and reams of data about consumers ranging from their shopping history to their real-time location.

If you’re interested in getting involved and shaping the future of marketing, you’ll love these six campaigns, which all won Shorty Awards in data visualization, and made it to the annals of marketing history. Continue reading to find out how Netflix, Grubhub, Happify, Trulia, Spotify and Bloomberg used digital data and data science in all sorts of imaginative ways to tell a story and draw in consumers.

#Cokenomics

Brand: Netflix

The overall winner of this year’s Shorty Awards in data visualization, the  #Cokenomics campaign sought to promote the Netflix original series Narcos, which tells the story of the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar’s ascension to power and fall as he becomes the target of a DEA investigation.

The #Cokenomics campaign was a series of fascinating charts, each one about a facet of Pablo Escobar’s life, such as how much money he could stuff into an IKEA sofa.

Spotify.me

Brand: Spotify

Spotify listeners were directed to a shareable page with unique information about their top artists, tracks and genres and their streaming behaviour such as what demographic their streaming history suggested they might belong to and how often they listened to music. Spotify.me also compiled a personalized playlist for every user for further listening.

Did You Know?

Brand: Grubhub

Did you know that Chicagoans love Italian beef and hate deep dish? The online food-ordering company based in the US made a series of short videos to share on social media about food trends across major US cities. They worked with a data scientist to extract interesting bits of information about consumers across different cities, using data gathered from their app and website.

The Science Behind Happy Relationships

Brand: Happify

Did you know that the biggest determining factors in whether couples feel satisfied in their relationship is the quality of their friendship with each other? Or that people in the happiest marriages spend at least five hours a week talking to each other?

The emotional wellbeing app, Happify, released an infographic ahead of Valentine’s Day about trends in happy relationships, which was nominated for a Shorty Award in Data Visualization. If you’re still unsure which career is right for you, note that a happy marriage is worth an additional US$105,000 a year in terms of life satisfaction….

Trulia’s 25 most appetizing cities for zombies

Brand: Trulia

Launched by the real-estate listings website Trulia, this campaign, which won last year’s Shorty Award in data visualization, centered around an original concept: which US cities are the worst places to seek refuge during a zombie apocalypse? The list was compiled based on hospital density, transport links and congestion, and the end result was covered by NBC, HuffPost, USA Today and other national media outlets. Unsurprisingly, this earned the campaign a lot of social media attention.  

Tracking the World’s Richest People

Jeff Bezos is the biggest mover on our Billionaires Index. The richest person on earth lost $826 million today https://t.co/f2J8T9P9Nz pic.twitter.com/WXsX2fEhoD

— Bloomberg (@business) November 15, 2017

Brand: Bloomberg

Based on the Bloomberg Billionaire Index which tracks the world's 500 wealthiest people, this campaign consisted of a series of automated videos posted daily about the amount of money a billionaire gained or lost that day, along with a comparison of that figure to US gross domestic product (GDP) or the price of barrels of crude oil.

Want to help shape the future of digital marketing?

Apply to emlyon business school’s MSc in Digital Marketing and Data Science. The 16-month program is designed to train the next generation of digital marketing specialists and covers data and business analytics, coding, database access, data science and machine learning. It’s based in Paris, with a learning trip to Boston and a semester abroad in Shanghai.

Did the top 10 best student cities change in 2019? Click here to find out!

The recently released QS Best Student Cities 2018 highlights 100 of the best places to be a student around the world, based on a methodology which considers each city on six indicators, including affordability, student view and desirability.

But which cities made the top 10? Read on for a countdown of this year’s 10 best places to study abroad and find out why they’ve earned their spot.

10. Seoul

Ranked 10^th in the Best Student Cities ranking this year, South Korean capital Seoul achieves its highest ranks for rankings and employer activity. Seoul is considered a leading and rising global city and is famed for its technologically advanced infrastructure, exciting nightlife, and K-pop music scene, with something for everyone and a 24/7 vibe.

9. Sydney

Climbing from 13^th to rank ninth in the Best Student Cities index, Sydney is unsurprisingly one of the most desirable cities in the ranking (coming fourth for this indicator) thanks to its high quality of life, beaches and laidback lifestyle. It’s also one of the most diverse cities in the ranking, coming second after Melbourne for the Student Mix category, and climbed 29 places to 14^th in the Student View category.

8. Zurich

Also climbing to the top 10 this year is Zurich, Switzerland’s largest city, which is up from 15^th to eighth. The city boasts an attractive spot on the northern shore of Lake Zurich, surrounded by snowy mountains, and is consistently named one of the best in the world for overall quality of life. Unfortunately, living costs in Zurich are very high, but for many students it will be worth every penny.

7. Berlin

Ranked seventh in this year’s city ranking, German capital Berlin is flourishing as one of Europe’s coolest urban hubs, and continues to rise in popularity with students, claiming eighth place in the student view indicator this year. It also receives the highest score for affordability of the cities in the top 10, thanks to lower living costs than Munich and no tuition fees (regardless of nationality). It’s home to some of the best universities Germany has to offer, including Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin at 120^th in the QS World University Rankings® 2018.

6. Munich

Staying in Germany, Munich is up three places to rank sixth in the Best Student Cities this year, overtaking Berlin in the process. It also climbed an impressive 24 places in the student view indicator to now rank second among students, who love the highly enjoyable Bavarian culture on offer here. They’re also very attracted by Munich’s excellent economy.

5. Paris

French capital Paris was the number one student city for four consecutive years until 2017 and is now ranked fifth among the best places to study abroad in 2018. It’s also second, just one spot behind London, in the rankings indicator, with a whopping 18 internationally ranked universities to choose from, including ENS Paris at 43^rd in the world. Not only is ‘the ‘City of Lights’ a stunning place to live, it also offers rich and vibrant culture and cuisine.

4. Montréal

Montréal drops from first to fourth in this year’s Best Student Cities ranking, but climbed to number one in the student view indicator (overtaking fellow Canadian city Ottawa as the most popular city according to students). The city earns plenty of praise in our student survey, with one respondent describing it as “…cultural, young and lively. It has absolutely the BEST foods, a European feel, study cafés everywhere, and beautiful people from all over”.

3. Melbourne

Ranked third this year, Melbourne is known as Australia’s cultural capital, with a jam-backed calendar of cultural events. It’s been recognized as a UNESCO City of Literature and is a major center for street art, music and theater. Melbourne achieves the highest score in the whole index for student mix, thanks to a large and diverse student population.

2. Tokyo

Tokyo is up from seventh to second in the city ranking this year, achieving a higher score than any other city for employer activity, which is perhaps unsurprising as the city boasts the largest metropolitan economy in the world and a reputation as one of the world’s major financial centers. It’s also second, behind Toronto, for desirability and comes within the top 20 according to student’s views, with one student calling it “…an advanced city, also safe and beautiful”.

1. London

Finally, number one in our list of the best places to study abroad is the UK capital London, topping the list for the first time in 2018. London also claims first place in the rankings indicator, with 19 internationally ranked institutions based here. Two of these are ranked within the world’s top 10: UCL (University College London) and Imperial College London (ranked seventh and eighth respectively).

London’s diversity is also a strong attraction for many students, with the city featuring in the top 10 for student mix (1.8 percent of its 13.8 million residents are students, and 41 percent of its student population come from outside the UK). However, the city’s climb to number one this year is likely helped by its improved score in the student view indicator, showing that the city continues to be hugely popular despite concerns after the UK’s Brexit vote.

Think your student city deserves to be in the top 10? Take our short survey, and help create next year’s edition of the QS Best Student Cities index.