Online MBA Degree

Sauder School of Business > University of British Columbia

UBC seeks bright, talented, enthusiastic, and creative individuals committed to a high level of achievement in their academic, personal, and professional lives. The UBC EMBA candidate selection process is rigorous and is guided by the following criteria:

You have demonstrated potential for senior management, and have 8 or more years of work experience, preferably 3 at a management level.
Academic experience: prefer an undergraduate degree or equivalent. If you do not meet these criteria, you may be asked to write the GMAT.
Provision of 3 references.
A personal interview with members of Admissions Comittee will be conducted while the application is being completed.

We recognize that individual applicants often have unique strengths and those strengths can be given special consideration in the admissions process.

Academic Achievements
Candidates are recruited from diverse academic backgrounds. A four-year Bachelor’s degree or recognized equivalent from an accredited institution is preferred. Candidates must have a solid academic record and individuals who do not meet our academic requirements may require academic upgrading.

Professional Work Experience
Individuals with a broad range of personal and professional experiences are selected for the program as diversity in the classroom challenges the status quo and contributes to a rich and stimulating learning environment. Competitive applicants generally have between 6 and 8 years of full-time work experience.

Initiative and Motivation
Successful applicants demonstrate managerial and leadership potential, maturity, ambition, drive, and a clear sense of purpose. These characteristics are assessed based on professional experience, extracurricular activities, personal interests, and written submissions.

Admissions Philosophy

Ivey creates the best possible learning environment through a unique process that is extremely selective. Our exceptional educational experience is designed to exceed the standards of the best business schools and we only select the highest quality candidates from Canada and around the world.

We make a holistic assessment of each individual who applies to the Ivey MBA Program and consider all portions of the application file. We look at academic achievement in a three or four-year university degree, work experience, interview results, recommendation letters, involvement in the world beyond work, ambition, focus, leadership and contribution to the learning of others.

The case study method is our primary pedagogy and is a way of active learning that involves individual thought, team collaboration, active classroom involvement, with a focus on decision-making and action. Students must be able to form an opinion, articulate a position and defend it in front of their peers and the professors. Increased learning results from this dynamic environment and a successful candidate must be committed to learning in teams. The classroom is one of the most important venues for learning and all students must pledge respect for the classroom environment.

The classroom environment is important, however, we also believe significant learning takes place outside of the classroom and we want students to be keen and curious, and to take ownership of their learning process. A good candidate will be one who has had a high level of outside activities and also a high likelihood of contributing to the program through participation in extracurricular activities that benefit the program and their learning.

We believe that full time work experience is a critical factor for the candidates in our Program. We feel that it develops maturity, self-awareness and well-defined career goals. Work experience enables students to make significant contributions to the learning of the other members of the class through clear illustrations of theory and practice. These traits are common among successful students in our Program.

We have dedicated a significant amount of resources to our admissions program to ensure that we have the best students in our program. Every student will be interviewed at least twice (more than most MBA programs) to ensure that they fit within our learning environment and, more importantly, give them an opportunity to learn more about Ivey and how our MBA can help them achieve their goals.