Just another day at school

Some people asked me how does a day at IESE look like, here is a good example from today:

8:30 Team meeting, discuss today's cases and the group assignment that we finished for today
9:15 Class 1
10:45 Class 2
12:00 Lunch
12:30 Meeting regarding my summer internship
14:00 Lecture by an Executive Vice President of a major Semiconductors company
15:15 Spanish class
17:00 Group project meeting
19:00 Rugby training, we have a game against ESADE soon and we need to be in shape (they won last time but rumors say that some of the players were hired semi-professionals from around the city...)
21:30 Dinner with my girlfriend at home
22:00 Work on group project, my part involves financial analysis of a small company
23:45 Read 2 cases for tomorrow

00:30 Write this post, final pre-sleep stuff

00:50 Go to sleep

I think that in total I've spent about 90 minutes on non MBA related stuff today. Just in case you got the impression that all we do is party and travel around Europe (which we do also of course!!!)

Keep on bloggin'

So after a few months of silence and hesitation on whether I should keep this blog alive by writing about my MBA experience, I decided that my willingness to share is bigger than my laziness to sit down and write. From now on I will try to write (hopefully) funny and/or interesting stuff from this amazingly tiring but extremely fun and rewarding period of my life.

This weekend IESE is hosting the annual Doing Good & Doing Well conference, which is the biggest student-run Social Responsibility conference in Europe (Net Impact are our partners). You can check the website here: http://www.dgdw.org (I believe that registration is still open).

I am volunteering to help so I will try to write some interesting stuff after the conference.

IESE Ranked 3rd in Europe

IESE was recently ranked 3rd best MBA in Europe by employers, according to TopMBA:

http://www.topmba.com/research/global_200_business_schools/top_business_schools_2009/

"Welcome IESE 2011" - A video made by the Class of 2010

Check out this amazing video created by the Class of 2010 to sum up their first year, and to welcome us to school:

The MBA Oath

Have you heard about this Harvard Business School Alumni initiative?

http://mbaoath.org/

Basically it's an oath to be signed by MBAs, like the one Medical Doctors sign. I think that it's a nice idea in a certain way, but might acknowledge the current trend that says "MBAs are responsible for the current crisis" - which is of course plain dumb.

IESE MBA Admitted Weekend for the Class of 2011

Last weekend about 30% of our class went to Barcelona to attend the Admitted Weekend. IESE had organized this amazing two-days event as a way to help us know each other and the school better.

Some future classmates arrived as early as Wednesday to the city, and were lucky enough to watch Barcelona beat Manchester on the Champions League Finals, the city apparently went wild after the game, and I wish I could have been there and be a part of that historical night..

The actual Admitted Weekend started on Friday afternoon with a coffee at the school’s cafeteria followed by a welcome session with Eric Weber,  Associate Dean of IESE.

We then went to the Terrace in the northern campus (which has an AMAZING view of the city) and enjoyed a nice cocktail and dinner, with the participation of some students of the Class of 2010.

By 10pm the official part of Friday was over, and we started the “unofficial” part. First we went to grab some food somewhere in the city (I don’t really recall where it was, the Spaniards of our class took us there) we had great Pizzas and laughs. Then someone mentioned a party at Motke’s place, Motke being someone from the Class of 2010. We went to his flat (which was awesome, about 250m2 and a huge balcony) and saw that some 2010ers and 2011ers were already enjoying the party. By the peak of the evening we were about 70 at that party. There was a live DJ session and beer-pong, as well as nice chat and we got to know each other a little bit better.

I grabbed a cab and got some sleep at about 3am, but some people stayed even longer.

The following day started early with a breakfast and a nice presentation regarding MBA logistics (Global Loan, IT services etc.) then we had a great presentation of the student counsel and of the different social activities that we’ll be having throughout the year. I don’t really know when we’ll have the time to sleep but I guess that you just get used to studying until 4:30, doing 3 cases, attending presentations or cocktails, doing some sport activities and then going out. It seems that IESE students sleep about 3 hours a night…

Next up was a big lecture where we joined IESE MBA Alumni and learned about the Financial tools behind the Global Crisis. The lecture was fascinating in my opinion, although I’ve heard some classmates saying that it wasn’t the best idea for a lecture on Saturday morning (they were the ones who stayed at Motke’s party until sunrise I guess).

After the lecture our class went up to the terrace again, this time for Paella lunch (yes please!). We got a nice tan and got to talk even more with each other. Conversations became a bit more interesting than the basic “Where are you from?” “When are you moving to Barcelona” etc. We actually started getting to know each other, here and there people burst out laughing and the general atmosphere was great.

At about 2:45pm two tourist buses arrived on campus. These were these open buses with two decks and a guide. We had the COMPLETE city tour, saw all the interesting parts and got a nice tan (it seems that sun is always high up in the sky in Barcelona).

After the tour some of us went to have early drinks, most of us went back to the hotels to get some rest and get ready for the evening, where things got serious…

The Bar of the Week (BoW) committee organized an awesome evening for us. First we went to a bar up on the Tibidabo mountain,  events are a bit blurry for me from there on. I believe that we went to a night club where we had a special area only for IESE students. Drinks were a bit expensive (or at least I believe so, as the next morning I woke up with 45 cents, and a chewing gum, in my pockets) but we had so much fun. I think that some classmates went to the beach to watch the sun rise, but I was sleeping in my bed by that time J

 

That’s just my angle of the Admitted Weekend, there must be at least 20 more events that happened during those crazy 72 hours… Anyway I had so much fun! I am eager to start the MBA already and meet up with the rest of the class, who couldn’t make it to the AW.

Confirmed : precourses for the Class of 2011 are cancelled

I just received an email from Javier Munuz,  Director of Admissions, confirming that the precourses for this year are cancelled. Although some classmates are concerned about missing out important subjects, Mr. Munoz made it clear that all precourse material has been integrated in our classes.

Until our promotion, IESE has offered optional precourses before the official start of the program; Students were able to freshen up their Accounting and Statistics skills, or learn them from scratch if they came from a non-technical background.

This year, IESE has decided to avoid having students come at different times to start their MBA, by beginning the year with Business Spanish followed by the Orientation Week.