Hi all,

I am looking for advice (as most are on here!)

Some background info:
I am a Senior Financial Planning and Analysis Manager with 15 years experience in Accounting/Commercial Finance Roles. My goal is to become CFO or General Manager. I live in Sydney, Australia now however used to live in UK and therefore completed the CIMA qualification without doing a bachelors degree.

To get into these top jobs, I need to have an MBA and as I am working full time have been looking into doing a part time online MBA in Australia.

Now, because of the lack of bachelors, Sydney/UNSW/Macquarie are out of the question because they are strict and very competitive.

I have had informal assessments done by Deakin, Adelaide, RMIT, South Australia, Western Australia who will accept my CIMA qualification and I can also get a few units exemption given my CIMA qualification.

Which of these do you think is best? I am gravitating towards Deakin because of the double accreditation but South Australia seem good too.

Or alternatively there are UK programmes such as the University of London online MBA or University of Birmingham but I am worried employers in Australia will not know them and perhaps it is best to stick with the best I can get here.

Or the other thing I have been wondering is, given I don't have a bachelors, should I do another qualification first, say a masters and do really well in that to get into an even better uni here. Does something in the Deakin range suffice or should I really be aiming for UNSW?

Time is not necessarily on my side with being almost 40 and starting a family.

Any advice is much appreciated

I think the CIMA qualification is assessed at or above ACF level 7, and will be acceptable at Macquarie. Macquarie's admissions page makes an explicit mention of the ACF. 
Given the added advantage of a top MBA, it would be worth getting an intermediary qualification simply to enter an MBA. I am sure you can find an top-up BSc or MSc that would accept the CIMA qualification. 

Whether or not it has the same design as the on-campus MBA, an online MBA won't be as effective as an on-campus one without the sort of huge investment of the UNC MBA or the Cornell-Queens MBA. Other things being equal it's a good thing, rather than a bad thing, that an online course is specifically designed for that delivery. 
I never heard of an MBA certificate that said "Global", "Executive", "Online" etc... These adjectives are used for marketing, not on diplomas. 
I don't know what your exact goals are but there is no point taking an average MBA if you can get into a very good one. 

Thanks again for your reply. I shall try and get into Macquarie.
If Macquarie doesn’t work out, what would you suggest? Which uni do you think is the better one out of my list in the first post?

My advice was not clear enough. I don't know your goals or which schools are in your city. But don't assume that you cannot attend a top EMBA or overcome the admissions barrier at the top schools. The CIMA qualification is equal to a master's degree. You have seen that many schools accept that. Perhaps your qualification is new to individuals at come schools, but you can explain, research, question, ask... 
It's a huge investment of time and money, and there is no point going to an average school if you can attend a very good one. 

There are many levels in CIMA.The CGMA qualification is indeed comparable to a UK masters degree. Most people have lower qualification than this one. 


You can see at which level your specific diploma is on this link:https://www.naric.org.uk/naric/News%20Story.aspx?NewsID=1033



You should link uk naric to the university you will apply to, they will probably accept the equivalence. 

[Edited by George Patsoulis on May 06, 2020]