INSEAD September 2013 - Calling All Applicants

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GMAT is just one small part of overall application. Your essays, professional experience and leadership potential also count.
Recently, after all those financial crisis, schools are concerned with their reputation. So schools are putting a lot of weightage on your post-MBA success potential. If you're just a typical Indian, working in IT on L1 visa on a "monkey" job, what INSEAD MBA could do for you to make you successful in your career objective? It's for you to find out.
Carefully review your profile (and potential) and apply to other schools and don't make the same mistakes which you made in INSEAD application.
Diversity is a grossly misused term when it comes to business school admission.
A country of 3.5 million population can have 17 candidates
A country of 4.8 million population can have 27 candidates
A country of 7.9 million population can have 25 candidates
A country of 1210 million population can have 83 candidates
A country of 1353 million population can have 36 candidates

What would be the diversity among those 17 candidates and 36 candidates? If you see the career report, you'll get it.

Good luck for your other admission applications.

Good luck to all those who have interviews for R2. To those asking about how the interviews are and what role they play in the selection process - well basically if you have been invited to interview it means that you have passed the "paper test", i.e. your application looks good. During your interviews, INSEAD is trying to find out, through alumni, whether:

1) you are truly the person you have represented yourself on paper (the credibility test)
2) you have confidence and are someone who has communicated with or has the potential to communicate with senior management without getting fazed (the confidence test)
3) you will maintain and add to the culture at INSEAD (the "do I like you" test)

If you are someone who truly wants to go to INSEAD for the right reasons (refer website) and have not misrepresented yourself in your application, you should be fine. The interviewers are very good at weeding out people who they feel don't truly want to go to INSEAD and have just applied there as one of many other schools.

Although this is not what the official correspondence suggests, my hunch is that your "paper application" becomes irrelevant if you have reached the interview stage UNLESS you get wait-listed and are being compared with another candidate for a single spot.

I have also read somewhere (and this matches with what I have observed) that if both your interviewers recommend you, you get in. If one recommends you and the other doesn't, you get wait-listed and if neither recommend you then you get dinged.

Hope this helps and good luck to all those who have interviews.

I agree. Recommenders do not have access to essays, for example. Indeed, they only receive what you send them (the interview instructions specify clearly what you are allowed to send) which is a very small subset of the entire application. This is your opportunity to start from scratch. Make sure you understand and communicate clearly what INSEAD can do for you, and what you can do for INSEAD. Very good luck to everyone.

Well, from my current experience this is a misconception. I know that both my interviewers have recommended me (as they have asked me to keep in touch and I have) and I have been waitlisted. When I called one of them the reaction was literally: "Wait, what? How is that possible?!"

So it varies, the major thing is the diversity of the class and if there are just too many <gender> <ethnicity> <nationality> <background> (fill in the blanks) as good or better than you, you get waitlisted or even rejected.

Hope this helps and good luck to all R2s on your interviews!

Didn't get a follow up with interview details yet. How long does it usually take to hear back with details?

I have received my interview details this afternoon, exactly one week after the interview invitation email.

But there's no rule as it mainly depends on how long it takes your coordinator to contact alumni and then alumni to accept the interviewer role.

Just be patient and relax

I am afraid this tread might be biased, but I will still present my dilemma.

I have been admitted to three schools: INSEAD, Copenhagen Business School and University of Florida (UF). INSEAD was my #1 school, and I was super-excited to be admitted. But UF has offered a 90% scholarship on tuition fees, resulting in the difference to be approx. EUR 65,000.

What to do? Is INSEAD worth the extra EUR 65,000 or will I do OK with an MBA from UF?

All replies are welcome.

@12345av

Congrats and an enviable position to be in.

I admittedly dont know much about UF. However, I think to make your decision you have to weigh what it is that you want to do when you finish with your MBA. I believe as with most large state schools (I could be wrong in this case) that they place generally well within their region. I also think if the companies that you want to work for recruit on campus at the school you are going to, then you should have at least a decent shot of joining them post MBA.

With that being said though, INSEAD was your number one school. There are reasons for that. I am sure most of us on this thread have similar motivations for wanting to attend. I would still go to INSEAD unless there was a clear reason and advantage (besides money - this is a life long investment, spread out over the rest of your life the difference of 65k should be minimalized) to attending UF.

I dont know if that helps or not. I could also be way off here. Anyways just my .02

Guys, I understand that interviewers receive only a copy of our profile but not our essays. Am I right?
Thanks

I wrote to my admission coordinator last week and she told me that it's not necessary to send your essays but it's up to you if you wish to share them with your interviewers. Now I wonder what the best strategy is...

I live in Europe and plan to work and live in Europe post-graduation (i.e.: not in Florida so recruitment at UF doesn't really appeal to me). My only concern is the money... I try to tell my self that I only live once etc. and that money is paper, paper is wood... and we got a lot of wood But it is still a tough decision. Thanks anyway for your point of view.

Go to Insead. That's it. Nothing to think about. 65,000 dollars over a 30 year career is peanuts.

Only provide what's asked for. Let the interviewers decide what info they want to ask you in person, that's what the interview is for.

has anyone done an interview yet? i have an interview tomorrow and was wondering what questions i should expect

Good luck mate ! I heard from the guys who got admission that the interviews last for around 90 mins or so and they usually ask general questions. They do not grill people in interviews !

I am planning on applying for September 2012 in Round 3.

From other forums, I see that people who have registered to Insead MBA connect can view the number of admitted candidates and the nationality distribution. Considering the fact that, more than 4 weeks have passed since the admit notifications of Round 1, could someone please share the number of admitted candidates on MBA connect?

Thanks