INSEAD -January 2014 Intake - Calling All Applicants

I was asked to complete both interviews by the end of May.

Very interesting. How old are you? If you are a young guy it's a good sign.

I've been pre-selected for an interview. I was worried I might get something similar from them, actually, I'm still worried that they might say that to me even after the interviews. My biggest nightmare is that they will waitlist me and tell me to bump my score up and admit me conditionally based on whether or not I improve my score. I took the test once and got a 660. However, I'm 29 years old and have already been accepted to a few other schools so I'm not interested in reapplying next year. I'm not really interested in taking the test again either. Way too much going on!

My work profile is pretty perfect for INSEAD (7 years of overseas asset management experience, co-founded a company investing Swiss PE guys money in Emerging Markets). I speak a half a dozen languages well enough to get by and 3 foreign languages almost fluently. But, I have lame undergrad grades from an IVY and a lackluster GMAT score.

Hi what school did you choose between esade and hec . As I had the same option and picked hec for fall this year.

Received my invite from SH today. Looking forward to receiving the interviewer details.

I'm 32, 9 years WE in different areas, last 4 years managerial position. Did a lot of international business (because of the job nature). To be honest when you are long time away from school it is difficult to improve your score. I gave gmat 4 times and still could not manage to improve it much (well different excuses all the time, but the main one is that i work from 9 till 9, mostly on weekends as well so not much time and energy - i know this is not an excuse).
In your case i think GMAT is not an issue, because 660 is somewhere in the border of their minimum, if you have been selected for an interview it means they like your profile and need to check/confirm/reassure some details, i do not think that you will be rejected because of the GMAT. So do not think about it and concentrate on interview preparation! Trust me, 29 years old is not that old!
The best luck!

Yes, well I hope you're right about that. Lots of people tell me this - but when I see the score distributions its hard to find too many people with such a **** GMAT score getting admitted (although I'm hoping there is a self reporting bias towards people with high GMAT scores reporting them to this website).

I hear you about a) too much else going on to retake the exam and improve and b) it's tough teach an old dog new tricks.

Check/Confirm/Reassure details? What do you mean by that? Are we going to have background checks done on us? Do they really have time for that? I'm not sure they do. I'm not sure what the xfactor is at this point that gets you through to admission.

My rec was written by my chief investor and Chairman who is an Alum. He says they don't seem to pay much notice to his Alumni Interview recommendations. He told me they reject people who he thinks are perfect for the school all of the time. The only time he actually told them not to select someone they actually admitted the guy. This leads me to think that the interview is largely a formality where they just want to see if you have basic social skills or maybe get an idea if you had someone write your application for you (which is a pretty pervasive problem these days).

Which then brings us back to the question of, then how do they decide amongst the interviewed? Well, all I can come up with is that they will go back to your application and your GMAT and look at that. They will take that and see where you add value to other people in the program who they are looking to admit much in the same way a portfolio manager might see how one asset is correlated with another. This is all just my conjecture, however. If anyone has any real insight feel free to share it.

Received a mail about 2hrs ago. Got dinged.

Sorry to hear that. WIth a 760 GMAT you are clearly very bright and I'm sure you will do well so hang in there.

I got an e-mail of "encouragement" as well, asking me to re-take the GMAT to improve my Quant. grade and re-apply. I have a 680 on the GMAT (57% Quantitative, 93% Verbal). I do not think I will be re-applying, as I already have an acceptance from another top b-school and I need to move on!

Good luck to everyone still in the process.

ChickenTikka, a piece of support to you. Being in the top of the class in my previous schools and scoring above 700 on GMATprep I was very disappointed with my 680 actual score. Was eager to schedule another test but then changed my mind. With INSEAD average score of 702, 80% range is in the 650-750. Assuming normal distribution within this range I thought that there is roughly the same number of students with 680 score as with 720. Here on the forum in online application tracker you can see quite many with scores above 740, I assume there are at least as many with 660 and below.

So taking it into account I decided to apply without retaking the GMAT. In my case, I guess, it will not make a big difference.

Thanks. I'm not sure if you can assume the normal distribution when you look at the applicants. For one, people have the ability to take the test more than once. I would expect some skew and a very leptokurtic concentration around the mean. How many people are gonna score above a 700 and keep taking it? (Sure, I know a few who did). By and large I would expect there to be a few guys scoring very, very, high and a lot of people getting to that 20/80 range and stopping once they have something "good enough." This is what I did at least, although my "good enough" is probably lower than most people's.

Seeing the number of people with astronomical GMATs getting rejected it does say something about GMATS. They are very clearly not an end all be all. The fact that I'm still in the game also supports this theory. But yeah, I don't see the GMAT being the make or break thing at this point. I'm still waiting for anyone to propose a theory or refute my own with regards to what is gonna matter from here on out.

Your profile is impressive. I am sure you will get in. I am in the same boat as you (650 GMAT). Actually, you are in a better boat cause you already have accepted from other schools; I only apply to INSEAD, so I am all in and more nerverous. Don't worry too much about getting in INSEAD. From what i get from reading your post, and if it is true, you don't need business school to succeed lol.

vjkumar,
How old are you ? and how much time you spend on writing the essay ?

I get this question in the interview a lot.

Dude,

It wasn't a question. It is a statement of facts base on your profile. Also, you mentioned you have a lame undergrad from an Ivy League school, what is it ? Just curious.

well its not an outright rejection,i suppose they are encouraging u to re-apply..go ahead buddy

Well, I just had a really good chat with a friend of mine who graduated from Insead two years ago. He did not have much insight on the interview. But the things he told me about the program and the school sound great. I'm really pumped about it now, which is kind of bad because I don't want to get disappointed. Oh well!

He said the GMAT wasn't that important but of course he got a 760 'cause he's really smart. If I got a 760, I'd be happy to tell people with a score that's 100 points lower than mine that the "GMAT doesn't matter" too.

How are you guys doing at curbing your excitement?