June 12, 2008. Shanghai campus - There has been a significant increase in the number of applicants to the CEIBS MBA programme this year, especially from international students who accounted for 41 percent of those vying for a chance to study at Asia’s #1 business school. Last year, international students made up 38 percent of the MBA class.

This year’s applicants are from more than 50 countries and regions. In addition to those from the US, Canada, India, Spain and Korea there are also first-time applicants from Ethiopia, Kuwait, Latvia, Panama, and Moldova.

This year’s figures indicate a continuation of a trend of CEIBS attracting top calibre students who have both solid academic and professional backgrounds. At an average age of 29, applicants are graduates of outstanding international universities such as the UK’s Cambridge and Oxford; the US’s Yale, Princeton, MIT, Cornell, Columbia, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania; and Canada’s University of British Columbia, McGill University and the University of Waterloo. Others are alumni of top-flight local institutions such as: Tsinghua, Peking University, Fudan, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Zhejiang University, and Nanjing University; plus Singapore’s NUS and NTU.

Their professional backgrounds include employment at well-established firms such as: Accenture, McKinsey, Morgan Stanley, Alstom, Lehman Brothers, BCG, CICC, UBS, Deutsche Bank AG, Merrill Lynch International, Swiss Credit, PWC, E&Y, KPMG, Deloitte, HSBC，ABN Amro Bank, HP, Microsoft Corporation, SAP, Siemens AG, Tata Group, Boeing, Emerson, Focus Media, LVMH, Maersk and China Mobile. Others are entrepreneurs, while some have worked with the General Administration of Customs, China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, CEIBS, and the United Nations Development Programme.

CEIBS’ increasing attractiveness to b-school applicants stems from the administrations’ successful efforts at offering cutting-edge China relevant knowledge with a global impact. This has also helped ensure CEIBS’ impressive placement in the FT rankings - #1 in Asia since 2004 and #11 globally for the last two years.

Applications closed on May 11 and the 2008 MBA class will begin in August.