Alright, this is the long overdue post about my visit to INSEAD. Enjoy, or not.
My first impressions: Paris is huge and the locals are not nearly as rude and arrogant as expected. Of course they will not smile to filthy foreigners who dare to approach them in English, but are helpful enough to point the way to the ticket booth or whatever. Fontainebleau is only 40 minutes or so from the city, the INSEAD campus is sleek and modern enough for a top b-school. Now on to the presentation.
Quote Jake Cohen, dean of the MBA program: “INSEAD is a general management school”. Quote some entrepreneurship professor: “INSEAD is an entrepreneurship school”. Now that’s interesting – is it what the dean usually says, or is the school trying to re-position itself because of the recession?
The admissions people said very explicitly that they are looking for at least 75th percentile quant and 70th percentile verbal. The scaled score does not matter that much, only the percentiles on both section. Also, it was a bit surprising and reassuring for me to hear them say that AWA is not important. The word limits for the application essays are kinda soft, they are not looking at the exact number of words, unless it is way off.
I heard that they are rejecting many applicants with finance backgrounds. Of course they will never admit this, but accepted students who have access to some database have confirmed that there are far fewer bankers in the class that starts in Jan 09.
I expected to hear more about how the global crisis affects the graduating students and what can be done about it, but we were given only general statements. The admissions people did talk about scholarships and it looks like they understand scholarships will be especially important for the 09/10 intakes.
Fontainebleau is a charming little town, with a huge park and a castle, many small streets, cafes, restaurants. The forest, which the town is famous for, is rather large, contains many biking trails, climbing spots and according to the students is full of deer and wild boar. The vast majority of students live in ‘chateaus’ outside town, which I don’t understand. For a 19 year old living in a chateau (really a big farmer’s house in the middle of nowhere) with 10 other students and throwing parties every other night must be great fun. To me it would be torture. But funny enough, the average age on campus is 29 and a great many people seem to like living in those houses and even prefer them to apartments in Fontainebleau. And this is despite the fact that you need a car in order to live in a chateau – an additional strain on the already strained budget. One thing I learned from the trip, for some people 50k Euros is just not expensive enough.
The students I met were all friendly and smart. None were arrogant d-bags, although they must have kept those types out of sight. Many of those present were truly international – when asked about where they come from the answer goes like “Well, I was born in country X but I live in Y, however my dad is from Z…”. Not all are like that, however, there were also a couple of ‘normal’ people who were simply from country X, but everyone had interesting stories to tell. The other applicants were not a very diverse crowd, mostly Brits and Indians, with the occasional Asian or American, or French dude. My nationality and region was definitely underrepresented. I hope this means I have less competition and not that I am the only moron in my part of the world willing to cough up the money for the plane ticket.
All in all, I am glad I made this trip. As expected, it did not really give me any exceptional insight into the school but I made contacts that may prove to be useful. If admitted, now I know how to choose where to live and how to budget for living costs in Fontainebleau (note to self: set aside enough budget for drinks). I also established beyond doubt that I would fit into the social life at INSEAD. Now the question is how to say this in the essays.
