sm332 wrote:
Unless you can provide evidence, anecdotes, etc abt why all of us are juvenile, unsuccessful, etc - I am not sure what you are adding to the compendium of information on this thread?
Thanks sm332 for trying to focus us back on the reason for this thread, helping each other with information. One piece of (unsolicited) advice for anyone posting on this thread - if you are going to say something which you may not want traced back to you if someone figures out who you are, you probably shouldn't say it at all. That being said, if you have a low opinion of a school, by all means you should say so. I have met alums on the extremes of the spectrum - an alum that's a managing director of a top strategy consulting practice, and an alum who could not find any better job after graduating so she went back to her old, less than remarkable job. I'm sure INSEAD has its fair share of H/S/W rejects, that simply weren't "good" enough (by H/S/W definition) to make it. I also know there are people that picked INSEAD because it is the right school for them, based on their own values.
I'll be honest - I didn't bother with any of the top 3 because I wasn't the right profile and likely wouldn't even have been offered an interview. I didn't have a pedigree school or pedigree job (mainly because I didn't even know about the existence of such paths until just a few years ago). I'm older now so being in a class of mostly early to mid 20 somethings doesn't appeal to me at all, nor would they want me there as I'm more of a fossil by comparison. The reasons why I am going for INSEAD are numerous. I am looking for a critical mass of bright, worldly people. I'm looking to improve both my French and mandarin Chinese, both which I have studied in the past. I want to make real friends that I share core values with, not people I simply mingle with because I need to network. I also want to meet hard workers, who choose to have 70 hour study weeks over a slower paced 2 year MBA. I don't believe I'll ever make it beyond VP in industry, nor do I care to... I'd rather spend the time with my wife and kids (if I have them). I'm not going to have a career like Fabrice Tourre, who despite all the media attention surrounding Goldman Sachs, struck me as impressive that he's a VP at 31 years old. I don't know much about IB, but being VP in your early 30's at a Fortune 50, or even a Fortune 100, just makes me think of the personal sacrifices he must have made to get there. Maybe all of this makes me an idealist pansy, but I don't mind the label if that's what it is. Hopefully I get the opportunity to meet more people like myself at INSEAD, only better, more accomplished, and have a thing or two to teach me about how things work in other countries.
And I understand and appreciate that you, prasetogosho, would be disappointed if you felt the alumni that are going to interview you are beneath you. If you feel they are beneath you, then by all means, get yourself into H/S/W, if that's where you belong. Or perhaps you belong in IMD, which probably has a higher concentration of talent and even more impressive resumes because they probably didn't switch countries, industries, or careers, so they stayed on their respective tracks. Know what you value, and go to the school that will get you closer to what you value. Good luck, and I hope you get into the school that aligns you closer to who you want to be, whether it be the title you need to have, salary you want to make, or hooked in to the kind of people that matter to you.