Our faculty has world-class expertise in economy and business in China. Ranked 13th globally in "international faculty" by the Financial Times in 2005, our faculty members include foreign experts teaching MBA in China for more than 20 years and the most authoritative Chinese scholars such as Professor Wu Jinglian. In 1996, we became the first educational institution in mainland China to have a chair endowment fund. Currently, one fourth of our faculty members are supported in their research by chair endowment funds, each of which values at one million euros or dollars.
Our students and alumni constitute the most valuable business network. For a CEIBS MBA student, the first ring of the network consists of peers of the same class closely knit by the 18-month full-time interaction at the individual, group, section, and class levels. The second ring includes the MBA classes of adjacent years with 6-month overlapping and the EMBA class of the same year with the EMBA-MBA Mentoring Programme. The third ring encompasses thousands of CEIBS MBA/EMBA alumni connected by the CEIBS Alumni Association and its activities.
Our admission process is the most rigorous and draws from the most diverse talent pool. Many of our students graduated from top universities in China such as Fudan, Peking, Shanghai Jiaotong, and Tsinghua and the finest universities overseas such as Columbia, Cornell, Oxford, and Princeton. The average GMAT score of our latest intake is 688 with an 80% range of 620-740. We became the first in mainland China to enrol international students in 1996 and we have participants from over 20 countries in our current student body.
Our international exchange programme expands our classroom to include both students and elective courses of other top schools. We became the first in mainland China to exchange students with top business schools overseas in 1996 and we have been sending over 30% of our students on international exchange since 2000. In 2005, we were ranked 4th globally in "international experience" by the Financial Times. Currently, we have over 30 exchange partner schools, 20 of which are ranked among the global top 50 by the Financial Times.
Our curriculum is an optimal combination of theory and practice, global perspective and China focus, as well as hard skills and soft skills. We are the first in mainland China to offer soft-skill MBA courses such as Business Ethics, Leadership, Cross-Cultural Management, and Entrepreneurship. As a required course, Chinese Economy has been taught by Professor Wu Jinglian for ten years. Every CEIBS MBA student is required to participate in a seven-week, full-time, faculty-supervised group consultancy project in a company.
Our teaching methods are the most engaging and effective. We emphasise on interactive pedagogical tools such as case study, simulation, and guest speech. In addition to hundreds of cases introduced from top case-producing institutions like Harvard Business School, our faculty and Case Development Centre produce dozens of cases about business in China every year. CEIBS is the first business school in mainland China to develop bilingual teaching cases and to have its cases used by business schools outside China.
Our career development service provides the best job opportunities. In 1996, we established the first MBA career development department in mainland China and placed our first class of graduates into some most selective employers including McKinsey. With the credential from CEIBS, our graduates are among the most sought after by leading domestic and international companies. In 2005, we were ranked 1st globally in "employment at three months", 2nd globally in "salary increase", and 18th globally in "placement success" by the Financial Times.
