Access MBA, the world’s foremost event offering business professionals the opportunity to have one-to-one meetings with top business schools from across the world, was held in Lagos on Saturday, September 17, at Eko Hotel in Victoria Island, Lagos. The event is organized across the globe by the Advent Group, the leaders in the organization of meetings between business education institutions and candidates looking to enroll in an MBA program.
Representatives of top-ranked business schools were on hand to meet with candidates who had been assigned to them following a matching process conducted by business education experts. The candidates, who came from a wide variety of backgrounds in business, had the chance to interact with admission officers from the schools with which they had been matched, and get better informed about the programs offered by the schools, admission processes, and other information they considered important. These private, one-to-one meetings lasted for 20 minutes affording inquirers ample time to get to know the schools better, and enable them to make informed choices. There was also a panel discussion in which representatives from EU Business School International, York University’s Schulich School of Business and the IE Business School spoke about the advantages of earning an MBA degree especially with respect to the increasingly competitive African market. The panelists provided information about their schools, including scholarships and other funding provisions.
Onyekachi Ekeh, Regional Director (West Africa) for the IE Business School, said she was impressed by the quality of candidates at the event. “Many of them were people looking to improve their career prospects, and some were seeking an opportunity to change their career direction through an MBA program”, she said. She expressed the opinion that universities aiming to have international students would benefit from attending such fairs as the one organized by the Advent Group.
The participants also spoke of their satisfaction with the organization of the program and the outcome of their discussions with the representatives of the business schools. One of them, Aji Daniel, described his session with a representative as “useful”. “I got everything I came here for”, he said.
Fabien Dufil, the Project Operations Director for Access MBA noted that the program provided a unique opportunity for those intending to earn an MBA from a reputable business school to maximize their chances of getting admitted. He said that the organizers planned to come back to Lagos each year with universities from all over the world in order to give more Nigerians the chance to access quality business education.