Saïd Adds Scholarship for Chinese Students

Recently, top business schools have been increasingly proactive about drawing international students to their campuses, including by adding more scholarships specifically for international students. Cue Oxford University’s Saïd School of Business introducing a new scholarship for Chinese MBA students.

The school announced the scholarship a couple weeks ago as a partnership between Saïd and the IDEALITY Technology Group. Fittingly, then, the new scholarship will be called the Oxford-IDEALITY Scholarship.

Saïd awarded the first round of scholarships to students in this year’s MBA cohort and will offer additional scholarships to students in the next two MBA classes.

Besides partial funding, the scholarship will give recipients opportunities to network and develop their career plans.

Oxford Saïd dean Peter Tufano lauded the new scholarship, saying: “Ensuring that the School can attract and support the most talented students is crucial to us as a world-class business school community, embedded in a world-class university, tackling world-scale problems.”

Indeed, the Oxford-IDEALITY scholarship joins several other scholarships Saïd offers to students from specific regions of the world, including Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America – and, of course, the United Kingdom.

The school’s international efforts seem to be paying off. Ninety-four percent of this year’s MBA students are from outside the UK, and 58 nationalities are represented in the class altogether. Twelve percent of the students are from East Asia.

Ran Jiao, Executive Assistant to the Chairman and Head of International Mergers & Acquisitions at the IDEALITY Group expressed hope that his company’s contribution would “encourage more Chinese applicants to take part in this truly transformational experience.”

And when Jiao refers to Saïd’s MBA as “transformational,” he’s speaking from first-hand knowledge: he graduated from the program in 2015.

In his words, “My education at Saïd Business School not only equipped me with the knowledge and confidence to make more informed business decisions, but gave me lifelong friendships.”

Dr. Jasper Jia Liang Jiao, Chairman of IDEALITY Group, echoed these sentiments, and elaborated on the values the company hopes to foster with its scholarship:

The Oxford-IDEALITY promotes the spirit of pursuing one’s dreams, exploring knowledge and serving the world. We want to support Chinese students at the University of Oxford to learn, develop and apply their studies to make positive contributions to humanity.

For students interested in the Oxford-IDEALITY scholarship, there’s no separate application process to go through. Rather, these applicants should complete the standard MBA program application but remember to express interest in the scholarship by checking the appropriate box.

For more information about Saïd’s international scholarships, see the school’s scholarships web page.