Yashraj Chhabra

Postgraduate Diploma in Applied Management

India

Yashraj Chhabra loved the practicality of his programme at OPAIC and is putting the skills he learned to use in his banking job.

Yashraj came to New Zealand from India in 2015 and completed a bachelor’s degree in business at AUT majoring in accounting. Soon after graduating, he began working in investments at Westpac Bank.

When Yashraj decided to return to school to complete a postgraduate qualification, he weighed up his options and decided to try a new institute.

“Otago came to mind because one of my friends studied here earlier,” he says.

Yashraj says one of the best things about OPAIC was the practicality of the programme. Lessons and assignments were based on real businesses and case studies.

“That helped me the most and that was the most interesting part.”

He gained top marks for some courses he’d initially thought he wouldn’t be interested in, including Analytics for Managers and Corporate Governance.

“Going from aiming for fifty percent to getting ninety percent in the final assessment is because of how my interest was developed because of how the courses have been set,” he says.

“So that’s what I love and that’s what I’ve kept saying to my lecturers. This is the best that I could have hoped for.”

He says he received outstanding support from his lecturers. Even academic staff who weren’t teaching him at the time were available to help him.

“So those long-term relationships are what I’ll be taking away from Otago,” he says.

Much of his programme was delivered online due to Auckland’s lockdown but Yashraj says he enjoyed the online experience.

He was, however, grateful to get onto the campus and finally meet his classmates in person and make some friends.

Yashraj has continued to work part-time at Westpac during his study and says he’s already putting lessons from his programme to use at work.

Just before he completed his course, he secured a new full-time position at the bank, which he will begin this month. He is excited to be moving from investments to the lending side of the bank.

Long-term he hopes to stay with the bank as there are so many different opportunities there. He would like to become an adviser or mortgage specialist one day.

“If you work for a bank, you never get bored,” he says.