INSEAD September 2013 - Calling All Applicants

Just woke up and found my Pre-selection letter waiting for me, so today's not all dings..

Posted from my mobile device

Ack - This wait is no fun at all... I can't keep watching stuff on youtube all night till 4:30 am here...

Hey, i see you've applied to ISB as well. How did that interview go? (i just got done with mine last week. Went just about average i felt)

Congratulations! All the best for the interview!

It was not too bad- The interview actually began late and they gave me some case study after all the normal questions- It was not too bad- I think I did well on the case study... Good luck to you, sundawns....

Ok- Just got the ding- cheers peeps- and all the best to you all...

Just got the dreaded email from Stephanie Hanny. Not picked!

Rejected

Received my "pre-selection" e-mail from AN this morning
Good luck to all!

Sorry to hear about the dings.

And good luck to all who got interviews.

D

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