Fang Guo
MSc Management, 2006
Country of origin: China
Employer: Lottery Operating and Management Co., Ltd of China National Sports Lottery Center
I graduated from the MSc in Management at Lancaster in 2006. Lancaster is a friendly and lovely town in the north of England. I cherish the days spent there as the most valuable memory and even now I often dream of the blue sky beneath which are the sheep and cows wandering in a leisurely way on the nearby farms.
LUMS has top teachers, modern facilities and an atmosphere very suitable for studying. As a student on the MSc in Management, I was often under high pressure, working assiduously, and spending extra time to improve my oral English skills.
The effort paid off, and both the knowledge and soft skills I gained at Lancaster University have played an important role in my daily work. When I came back to my motherland, China and began job hunting, I was able to communicate with companies in English without any difficulty during the job interviews.
I got a position at KPMG in the Tax Department. After staying there for some time, I resigned because of the very heavy workload. I experienced working for some other WOFE (wholly-owned foreign enterprise) before being introduced to the general manager of my current employer: a state-owned enterprise which runs a business in corporation with HKJC. Thanks to my business sense and finance knowledge, I grasped this opportunity and now I am enjoying the job and the handsome pay (though the workload is perhaps even heavier!). I know that if it were not for what LUMS gave me, I would not have such a capability because LUMS really helped me to find what I was lacking – confidence.
I need to say that I was not a good undergraduate in Peking University. Because of a lack of interest in physics, which played a big part of my major (EE), I only had a GPA of 2.2 when I applied for the MSc in Management. Of course I understood that my GPA was too low, but LUMS admitted me while some other universities turned me down.
I've no regrets about choosing to come to Lancaster. One should not count on the university to give you anything: you personally need to make every effort. Lancaster University is such a university in that it will pay you back for the effort you put in. I hope one day I will have the opportunity to return to Lancaster for another degree and contribute yet more to the University.
