The London Business School 2009 thread

Hey all I just came across this beaut on the LBS website :
https://www.london.edu/assets/documents/ProfessionalStandards_1_(4)_Edit.pdf

Some interesting points from this doc :
1. LBS follows grade non disclosure (hurrah !!)
2. Companies are expected to honour their offers and not rush students into making acceptance decisions.
3. Students are expected to honour their acceptances

All in all - pretty good stuff.

In other news, London is getting cheaper to live thanks to the recession :
https://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-new ... -7wny.html

You can add me to the list of applicants - I submitted for R2.

It's my first and only application (risky I know) but I'm hoping for the best -- otherwise there's always next year...

*edit - done. Thanks for letting us know and best of luck - bsd_lover

hi bsd...

am applying for the Masters in Management program..

my profile...

gmat 740 Q49 V42 AWA-6
Work Experience -
2 months internship (won employee of the month in the 2 month there - youngest ever in that organization)
7 months of full-time work after graduation
Recos - 2 as required - both are good - 1 from acad and 1 from wrk
undergrad gpa - i am kinda having trouble figuring this out.....may be the others on this forum can help me out....in India, the marks are based on percentage, i have a 72% (which is decent in my course), how is the gpa calculated for that?

e/c are not many, but leadership qualities are visible throughout my academics (was house captain and won the house championship at school)

I am also worried about my essays. This is the first time I am applying, and none of my peers are this time, so my essays might be amateurish i think....

What do you think? And any suggestions to improve my candidacy?

Hey your profile is certainly impressive. To be honest there is not much more you can do in a month to improve your candidacy. Just write great essays and highlight all leadership aspects. I wouldn't be worried about GPA conversion. LBS would be able to work out what your GPA truly is - they are used to international transcripts (esp Indian ones).

Good luck.

there really isnt much you can do in a month to improve your candidacy. I would just concentrate on your essays and make sure that they convey what you are thinking.

On ec's / leadership - high school was probably 4 to 6 yrs ago for you. So while you want to highlight that you were a leader back then you should try to show that this trend has continued.. remember leadership is not about titles, its about what you did.

I am not sure about this particular program but dont bschools usually prefer work recs and not academic ones? I know you are early in your career but just something to consider.

thanks....ur point about leadership is useful....

this program actually mandates one academic reco

I am not going to London but I just signed for a new lease less than 2miles from the LBS campus. I can honestly say accomodation is becoming cheaper in London. It's still expensive according to international standards, but the St Johns Wood / Maida Vale area (the trendy part of town that LBS is sitting on) is about 10% cheaper.

put that next to the good exchange rates for the USDGBP currency pairs, u have yourself a bargain.

so grades don't matter at LBS? : )

The top 10% of the class in terms of grades are awarded the "Dean's List" title, which you can put on your CV. I have also seen CVs with GMAT scores or scholarships won, so those are other ways to signal a strong academic profile to recruiters.

As far as grading goes, it's done on a curve and you're only measured compared to the rest of your stream (or cohort). So you aren't compared to students from other streams who might be taught by a different professor (or even the same professor who happens to teach slightly differently from one class to the next.)

Looks like LBS took my whinging to heart and changed their web site layout. Check out the new and improved www.london.edu.

Also there is a new episode of MBA TV on the london blog :
https://mbablog.london.edu/mbablog/2009/ ... -five.html

I'm heading out to the LBS event in Sydney tonight. Let us know if any other gmat clubber is around.

Hi all:
If the stats about on LBS are not cooked up then, they have really done well. Below is an email from this year graduate from INSEAD. He as put in contact with me during one f the open house. Anyone with 50K euros ?
Hi XXXXXX,



Thanks.



1. There are a few banks in France that will provide loans to INSEAD students. But being a foreigner you will need to have SBI stand as a guarantor to avail this facility. You will be able to find the bank details on the INSEAD website itself.

2. Placements this year was pretty bad. Official stats project a placement of ~65%, but a major chunk of this are people who went back to their old companies.



Hope this helps. Good luck with the app process.

From: XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 8:25 PM
To: XXXXXXXXX
Subject: RE: Connecting with a current MBA student



Hi xxxxx:
Best of luck with your start up. I wanted to check on two things based on your experience at INSEAD:

1) Does INSEAD has any tie ups with any bank for loans.
2) How were the placements this year looking at the economic crisis.

thnks,

LBS Information event 2009 (Sydney)

So I walk in with 2 of my friends. We were merely 5 minutes late but the room was bursting from its seams. Obviously LBS didn't expect THAT much interest. The event was organised with the help of current students who are in town for exchange. All the students wore name badges. Me and couple of other admits slipped under the radar as we weren't required to wear any identification. Some folks might remember my reports of the Wharton and Stanford Sydney events from 2007/2008 - so I had a certain minimum expectation of what I wanted this marketing effort to be like.

I am happy to report that LBS exceeded all those expectations. In many ways the presentation absolutely blew the other ones out of water. The presenter was outstanding. She really sold the school - she started with basic information about stuff that I already knew (diversity, location, study groups, course flexibility etc.).

She also gave anecdotal examples of cool stuff that LBS students have done. For instance she spoke of this Egyptian LBS student who decided to climb mount Everest (during the MBA program) and ended up getting corporate sponsorship to do so. He took a term off and became the first Egyptian to conquer Everest (and is a bit of a celebrity now).

Then came the best part - the alumni. Now I remember Wharton event had 5-6 alums, the Stanford event had 7-10. The LBS event had OVER 25 ALUMS !!! Thats right, literally 1 alum for every 2 attendees. To me that showed 2 things: the alums want to get involved and the alumni base is VERY strong in Australia.

There were folks from pretty much every top tier institute - Rothschild, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bain, Mckinsey, AT Kearney, LEK - you name it. Several philanthropists and entrepreneurs were also part of the alum group. Many alums had switched careers a few times after the MBA(they all went around introducing themselves quickly). The alums were not all MBAs; there were several EMBAs, Sloan Executive program folks etc.

The alumni club is about to hold an event with a guest speaker (an LBS prof currently at AGSM). They extended an invitation to any keen prospective LBS students (needless to say yours truly had both his hands up).

There was also some questions around recruiting in the current market (directed towards the current students). Of course the answers were somewhat sugar coated, but it was reassuring to hear that all the current students (who were present) had secured internships But not all of them had full time offers yet. However, the quality of the internships seemed to indicate that these students would secure full time offers reasonably easily.

Lastly it was drinkies time. It was at this point I took my leave. The only bad part about the event was that it was held in a small location not suited for the turnout. I figured I could always talk to the alums later and I'm catching up with the current students for drinks soon so, I wasn't really missing out on anything. So I left, leaving the other propectives use the event for their research.

All in all - I'm extremely happy with both the event and my choice of school.

good luck all r2 applicants on interview invites. i did a lot of research on lbs interview q's before my interview, and would be happy to share my document w/ anyone who receives an invite. pretty much everything i was asked was included in the sheet : )

do you have a sheet for oxford ?

GOOD LUCK EVERYBODY!!!!!

Great report, bsd_lover. +1

Sounds like LBS will be a good brand to have on the resume for Australia. Now the litmus test for me is to find any alums up here in the Territory...

Odds are that you'll still do better than any other school with LBS - LBS has alum chapters in Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide (most other top schools only have one in Sydney, Melbourne). Most of the alums were true blue Australians (as opposed to other schools where many alums were international folks who happened to move to Australia later).

One things I gotta mention is that the alums were incredibly funny. They were keeping it very real with the typical Australian self-effacing humour, and never allowed the presentation to be too "over-the-top" push sell type thing that I've seen some American school presentations become.

There was an interesting current student - he was with US naval intelligence for 7 years prior to b-school. He interned at Lehman and will work full time for BoA. Apparently he had rejected some other top schools to be at LBS. I'll try to catch up with him while he's still in Australia.