New GMAT date

I decided to change my GMAT exam date, from 5 May to 22 April, as I feel that I'm getting as ready as I can be, and don't want to lose the momentum. so we're D-25! Good luck to me.

INSEAD visit

Driving through the forest of Fontainebleau and into the small countryside town center, I tried to imagine myself living there for 10 months, going to the market first thing in the morning to buy fresh cheese and fruits, then sipping a coffee in the Café around the corner as I watch old women carrying bags full of wine, sausages and huge tomatoes. Only later on in my INSEAD in-house event, I realized that any connection between INSEADers and the "outside world" is happening when they go out drinking late at night, after having spent the entire day learning, discussing and having fun in one of the most amazing campuses I've ever seen.

I arrived early to meet with some current students and take lunch with them. The food was great and one could choose between Italian, Grill, Veggie, Asian, French, and much more. The prices for students are a joke, for an entire meal you'd pay no more than 4-5 EUR drinks included. The chat with the current MBAs was fun and I started to feel great about this place.

At exactly 15:00 the event started, in a very nice amphi where 60 of us were sitting. First to talk was Antonio Fatas, the MBA program dean, who basically showed us the standard INSEAD presentation with stats available in the website. He then was BOMBARDED with tons of questions, that had nothing to do with what he talked about. At first it made sense but then it kinda got annoying and I though people should wait a bit and let the guy talk before attacking him with endless amount of very detailed questions.

After his short session, we had a sample class. The subject was Finance and more precisely: Introduction to options, Antonio (we're buddies now :-) ) called the professor, Pascal Maenhout and I saw arriving a guy that looked no more than 25 years old. I don't know the dude's real age but he sure isn't your typical finance professor. Regarding the class itself, I think INSEAD were very brave to choose a subject that can be very dull, and in which people's knowledge in the class can vary from none to expertise. They took a challenge and Pascal showed us that even a finance class, if taught the INSEAD way, can be actually fun and interesting. I don't know if I'll be admitted to INSEAD, but at least I know what exactly is a short put position and what happens when it's out of the money. Kudos to professor Pascal, who gets very highly scored by INSEADers every year.

Next was a coffee break thatI really can't compare to HEC's coffee break a few days ago. INSEAD guys (and I think Andrew Bueno was the brain behind the day) prepared an extremely stylish coffee break with small cakes, fruits, cocktail snacks etc. I was impressed (later on in the cocktail I was even more impressed).

After the break we had a short session with Romauld Gallet from Career services. His presentation was kinda standard as well, but he stressed out two important points in my opinion:

• INSEAD's career services count 22 full-time employees. (whereas HEC had until recently only one person, and now has 6 and 1 part-time). Even if you take into account the great size of the program (>800 students per year) it still is a lot of time put into helping you find the perfect job after graduation.
• Nowadays INSEAD tries to enlarge the Industry recruitment offers, as it detects a global shift toward that direction. The major domain remains of course consulting, with 35% of the promotion going into consulting positions worldwide.

Next was maybe the single most important lecture in the entire day, with Leila Murat from admissions. She said that when an application is reviewed, four criteria are measured:

1. Leadership potential: you have to emphasize the dimensions in your current position, to show steps you have taken in your career and to explain why you took these steps.
2. International motivation: living or traveling abroad is not enough, you have to prove that you're open-minded, and are basically a global creature willing to live or work anywhere in the world.
3. Academic capacity: your academic history (GPA, reputation of the institution) as well as the GMAT scores are taken into consideration. Regarding GMAT: she said she didn't even look at the general GMAT score, but only at the split percentiles (Quant and Verbal apart), and both must be above the 70th percentile in order to be considered for admission.
4. Ability to contribute: through your personality, personal achievements, things you've learned from mistakes and failures. All of these are assessed mainly in your interviews as well as in the different essays.

Some other minor points that were interesting in Leila Murat's session:

• AWA score in the GMAT exam: almost meaningless for admissions at INSEAD.
• You must speak at least two languages upon entry and at least three when graduating. You can take language classes during the MBA year but it is highly recommended to complete the language assignments before entering INSEAD.
• Recommendations should show leadership potential as well as talk about your personality.

After admissions we were sent to the restaurant where a cocktail was waiting for us. As I mentioned earlier, this was even more impressive than the coffee break. I took an orange juice as I needed to drive back home, but beer, red wine, white wine, sodas, etc. was also available, as well as little cocktail snacks, we were joined by current MBA students with whom we could mingle. The cocktail was very nice and I got some very important personal insights from current MBAs, but the time was already past 20:00 and I was getting very tired. I took the car and drove out of the forest and into the highway, singing to myself "born to be wild" and wishing I could drive back into the magical forest of INSEAD, as a future INSEADer.


Visit highlights:

• Free coffee at the bar, will turn you into caffeine addicted in no time.
• Overwhelming experience, the campus itself is amazing with sports facilities, new and highly equipped buildings, and of course the gorgeous Fontainebleau forest and its Château.
• A cell phone rings during the sample Finance class, and the teacher says "that's Champagne", explaining later that it's an INSEADers tradition to buy a bottle of Champagne for each time their cell phone rang in the middle of a class. The bottles are later consumed in special evenings.

HEC visit impressions

I went to the open day at the HEC campus in Jouy-en-Josas, about 30 km south-west from Paris.

The village is beautiful, with nice old-fashion houses and vast open areas filled with trees and fields. I walked by feet from the RER (train station) to the campus, a distance of 800 meters. I could of course have taken the shuttle bus but I'm an adventurous dude.

On site I quickly found the MBA building (HEC is a big business undergrad college as well) and entered the hallway. People were sitting around in sofas and discussing important looking stuff (although I quickly saw on an open laptop an image of what seemed to be a recent holiday in the mountains). On the tables were the latest issues of the Financial Times and the Les Echos (french economics paper) free of charge.

I took the elevator to the first floor and entered room 106, where I met the person who arrived before me, an American working for an NGO in Africa. In addition people who came later were: a French engineer, a French manager from Shell, a French IT consultant, a French young politician and a French army captain. Lots of French although only 20% of the MBA class is supposed to be French.

The room was new, clean and very well equipped with Bose loudspeakers, a big white board, a video projector, very comfortable chairs, clean new desks. I had the feeling to be in an high-tech firm meeting room rather than a French university (you should see one from the inside to understand how ugly it can be).


The first guy who spoke was in charge of Development for HEC in Spanish speaking countries, he explained what he saw as HEC's strongest points :

• Academics only count for about 30% of the HEC MBA value, the other 70% come from personal development and individual and group experiences.
• FT ranked HEC first in Europe for two years in a row (although true, the ranking he refers to is "Top European business schools" thus including Masters, EMBA, Part time MBA and online MBA)
• HEC is a 16 months program which he believes to be the perfect compromise between academic quality and not being away from the job market for too long.
• MBAT, the MBA sports Tournament seems to take an important place in the school life, and he actually stressed it out as being one of the strongest points of HEC (who is the organizer of this tournament).
• A possibility for a dual degree (two MBAs) with NYU Stern, ITESM and 5 other European schools that I didn't recognize (not top 10 in EU)
• Very strong exchange program with a lot of strong schools all over the world (22 schools only in the US including UPenn, Duke, Darden and more top-tier schools)
• 40% of the faculty were recruited in the last four years, in an attempt to score higher in MBA rankings.

Next lecturer was a French guy from Career Development, who presented the service's efforts to support students and alumni in their career search:

• Self assessment using specific software, seminars with professionals, meeting 1-on-1 with HR specialists.
• They help you build a full and a brief CV.
• Two days seminar with a pro about job search, salary negotiation, etc.
• They have two full times employees who travel around the world and present student profiles to employers.
• They have companies coming to the campus almost every Tuesday to do presentations and talk with MBAs in informal cocktails.
• Most of the class wants to work either in France or UK, last year 57% actually worked in these countries.
• They work real hard on the brand recognition of MBA in France (not known enough yet).

We ended this part of the day and followed a current MBA student from Japan to a classroom to attend a real MBA class. The course was Strategic Management and a case about Domino's Pizza was presented. The experience was AMAZING to me. First it was very informal, with students wearing Jeans and t-shirts. Second, the general feeling was extremely nice; The professor told jokes, made funny comments and was a great performer overall. The lecture was interesting as well, and included a case discussion, a powerpoint presentation and a video who was funny as well as interesting.

My feeling after the class was: "Please let me stay here for two years!!!"


The rest of the visit was not very interesting, we ate at the cafeteria (nice decent food), and saw around the campus and the student residence. The MBA residence is apart from the other residences, and includes new and not so expensive rooms (500 EUR for a single room of about 20sqm), they also have a room for parties called the Piano bar, a washing machines room, vending machines and a very useful foosball table (table soccer).

Visit summary :

• The campus is very nice and the MBA facilities are great.
• Prospective students seem intelligent and interesting, a perfect future network.

Entrepreneurs' street in Jouy-en-Josas

D -60 Study Summary

Solved two quizes from the Kaplan CD.
Critical Reasoning #1 hit 75%
Problem Solving #2 hit 68.75%, and ran of time for the last three question, because I did a stupid mistake of trying to solve one question for over 4:30 minutes. Ignoring the last three questions I hit ~85% which is a great improvement over previous batches of similar level PS questions, so all in all - I start to show strong performance in a previously weak area.


Lesson learned today: Don't put more than 2 minutes on a Quant problem, remain aware of the time passed.

First post

Hello everyone!

This blog is mainly for me to document my progress in my current objective:

To obtain an MBA from one of Europe's top-10 business schools.

I'm currently in the stage of GMAT preparation, and will take the test in 5 May 2008 (60 days from now). I will try to write here interesting insights from my GMAT prep, school visits, essay writing etc.

Please feel free to comment and reply to my threads, you can also ask questions regarding MBA & GMAT and I will try to help if I have the answer.

Cheers