Insead Exchanges

Hey Mercutio,

I'm about to start at INSEAD in January, so I don't have actual experience yet, but this is what I've heard: At the beginning of the year you are given a certain number of "points" to use to bid on classes and exchanges. Exchanges are bid on in the same way as classes, and your pool of points goes towards both classes and exchanges. So if you blow all of your points bidding on an exchange, you won't have any for classes and vice-versa. There are some exchanges that are more popular than others (Singapore in the Winter, France in the Summer, Wharton P4 are all probably more "valuable" than France in Winter, Singy in Summer, and Kellogg P4). I don't think it's out of the question to do an exchange in both Singy and Abu Dabhi, but you'd have to play your cards right. I also believe that, especially for the American exchanges, you have to submit a light application of sorts to show why you are interested in the exchange. But it's nothing like the original b-school app.

To simply answer your question- it's not difficult to do an exchange. As a matter of fact, the majority of students do at least one exchange, so to NOT do an exchange would be more uncommon. But to do two exchanges is more tricky than one, and even more tricky if you want to go at "desirable times".

Hope this helps
T