Byline ICS

With ten elected positions, the MBA Student Board at Hitotsubashi ICS offers students the opportunity to lead, support, and shape program activities throughout the year, such as Open Campus and Auction Day. Its contribution to the Hitotsubashi ICS experience has been extremely valuable over the years, as they embody and promote our positive, familial spirit.

Al, who just graduated from the MBA Class of 2019 this past August, shared his year-long experience as an MBA student with us in this blog post. Six months of his MBA life has been shifted online due to COVID-19, but what did he learn from the year he spent at Hitotsubashi ICS?

* This entry was written on Sept 30 2020 by the author.

If you want to work in Japan, the first step is choosing the best program to prepare you for it. Hitotsubashi ICS is committed to helping our students establish themselves in Japan, a commitment reflected by the fact that 72% of our graduates work in Japan after their studies. 

Since 85% of the students in the MBA course at Hitotsubashi ICS are from overseas, we haven’t had much opportunity to talk about the life of Japanese students. Today, we sat down with Haruna Yamamoto, who is currently enrolled in the 2-year MBA program to find out why she decided to pursue an MBA at Hitotsubashi ICS and what her life at the school is like.

一橋ICSのMBAコースでは85％が海外からの留学生ということもあり、日本人学生がどのような学生生活を過ごしているのかお伝えする機会が多くありませんでした。そこで、現在MBAプログラムに在籍している山本春奈さんに日本語で一橋ICS受験までの経緯や一橋ICSでの生活について話を聞いてみました。

＊このインタビューは6月に行われました。

We sat down with Prof. Hiroshi Ono,  the new EMBA director from September, for an in-depth interview on the “many corrections in his life trajectory” in which he turned his childhood passion for math into an engineering degree and then switched to sociology, economics, and statistics after falling in love with social sciences. Drawing on his deep learning in these diverse fields, Professor Ono also publishes award-winning research on human behavior.

The coronavirus pandemic has had a significant impact on businesses around the world. Everything from a company’s marketing to supply chain may have been impacted by the pandemic. With so much change, uncertainty, and nuance to be accounted for, how can professionals working in business and management advance their careers or make a successful transition into a new field?

Bespoke MBA programs are accommodating and adaptable, enabling students to customize aspects of their studies to suit their needs as an individual. Students in the Two-Year MBA Program at Hitotsubashi ICS can pursue several different trajectories during their customizable second year: 44% of students choose to pursue a combination of an internship and an exchange program, 22% pursue an internship, 17% pursue a double degree, 13% enroll in an exchange program, and 4% conduct an independent research project. Here are just some of the benefits that such an education can provide during uncertain times.  

Chinmay and Sai, two MBA students of class of 2019 interviewed Shingo Oue, ICS Professor, and from this autumn, our new MBA Director. They asked deep, penetrating questions like “What is the one thing from your childhood that has impacted you the most?” before diving into his vision for Hitotsubashi ICS. Below are excerpts from our interview, edited for brevity:

Interested to know what careers do alumni take after the MBA program at Hitotsubashi ICS? Then take a peek at the Alumni Talk Session held online on Saturday, June 27! We welcomed three alumni panelists:

On this Byline ICS piece, Aiko Tokiyama, one of the MBA Coordinators, interviewed two current MBA students and one alumna on their experience of studying for an MBA during the first years of motherhood. Doro started the program when her daughter was around 2. Hong found out she had been accepted to the program soon after learning she was pregnant; she began her MBA studies when her daughter was three months old. Aya welcomed her son in the same week the program started in September 2019, so joined her MBA class in March this year.