INSEAD JANUARY 2011 INTAKE

Ok, here's my coles notes version of my current journey for you R2 applicants. Good luck!

What my former boss (and insead interviewer) said the interviewers would be looking for:
Can you articulate the INSEAD value proposition?
What is your story to date and what is the going forward picture? How does INSEAD/the MBA fit in?
What do you bring to the table? Is it industry knowledge? International outlook? Etc.
Do you have poise and confidence in your communication?
Based on the interview, your interviewer needs to be able to answer these four questions. The fourth one mainly comes through when you turn it into a conversation and not have it a one way interview.

First interview:
Interviewer: Director at an Investment Bank
He hadn’t reviewed my profile prior to meeting and asked me to articulate my career history to date. We spent some time with me explaining the kind of work I do as it was very different from his line of work. He also asked my future plans and why I needed the MBA to get there, and why INSEAD. We used the whole hour, and he was genuinely a nice guy.

Second interview:
Interviewer: VP at a large North American products company
She had read everything I sent her – my profile, my essays, and my 1 page CV. We didn’t spend any time talking about where I’ve been and instead focused on where I’m going and why INSEAD. We spent about 15 min talking about her current job and it was completely conversational. By the end, she told me I shouldn’t have any problem getting in.

Information session/Campus visit:
I visited both the fonty campus and went to two of the information sessions in Canada. Basically, the same information was presented at all three, except the campus visit was good to get a feel for Fontainbleau itself and get a feel for how international the class was really likely to be. They all talked about how international their alumni network is, and how they were seeing trends of ppl going into industry instead of the traditional consulting and banking fields. They displayed a list of their most prominent recruiters. Showed one student life video – an insead dash in s’pore (you can search youtube for this)

Application Pointers:
The most important part for ppl applying is their explanation of how profiles are scored. 25% academics, 25% leadership potential, 25% international outlook, 25% ability to contribute. Academics are almost exclusively focused on GMAT. Not so focused on the total GMAT score, more focused on the verbal & quant percentiles. 70-75 percentile is the general minimum across V and Q, but exceptional strengths in other areas of your app may compensate. Leadership potential may include teams you actually lead, displaying leadership styles, and your ability to move up relative to your industry/peers/country (e.g. a Japanese accountant might move up a lot more slowly than a North American consultant working for IBM – key is you’re getting promoted in time or ahead of your peers relative to your profile). International outlook can be stuff like how many passports you have, how much you’ve lived/worked/studied in other countries, how many languages you speak, etc. Ability to contribute is somewhat linked to your diversity profile, but not the same thing. Things you contribute might be your knowledge of diff business functions, industries, or general backgrounds. Extremes of ability to contribute might be indian engineer who has never worked with international clients or stepped outside the country vs a top ivy undergrad turned international concert pianist that ran her own brand as a business and was active in its management. Overall, if you can weave the 3 non-academic areas together throughout your essays as much as possible, you have the possibility for a very strong app. The reason why I say possibility is because it comes down to your actual experiences, your writing style, and the experiences you choose to put in. It's possible that your actual experiences could get you in, but the latter two could hold you back and you may get dinged before your interview invite.

My spreadsheet:
I've stopped actively collecting profiles across bweek and gmatclub boards for the R2&R3 applicants, but anyone else is more than welcome to keep the spreadsheet up to date, and I encourage those who already have their information in the spreadsheet to update it. Thanks!