St.Gallen SIM 2017

My GMAT score is 720 but i have a very poor GPA . I think it barely meets the 4/6 they have in switzerland. Well the selection process i would say is unique. They require an argumentative essay(which is unusual). And the the interview which is 30% in terms of weight is not the standard interview process because the questions are designed to make you think on your feet and formulate a structured answer.
Bottom line, the assesment is more hollistic and i liked it but it leaves little to no room to say a personal story apart for anything you wrote on your CV.

Hello ! First, congratulations on your successful acceptation !

So, I'm applying to the SIM 2017 intake too. I'm due to do my interview before the R2 deadline, and I'm actively preparing for it. However, what you are describing is absolutely not what I had expected. The application process left us no room to describe our personal story, motivation or goals to the commitee before the interview, so I figured the videos questions would fill that gap.

But you said "it leaves little to no room to say a personal story apart for anything you wrote on your CV", so it seems I was wrong. Are the questions then based on mini case studies, or scenarios you have to solve/react to ? Or are they based on news commentary ? Or moral values/dilemmas ? What are they trying to achieve ?

Thank you so much for your help, and I hope I'll be able to meet you next year in St Gallen !

Yeah, i was under the same impression and i was preparing for a lot of soft skills interview and background story. Well it maybe be cliche but i thing what they tried with the interview was to really know you. It wasnt scenario based or case study , it was opinion questions. The last question i got was " Tell us 3 aspects on the war on terrorism and why they are important"

I can only imagine that this kind of question was supposed 1. Get me off balance a little 2. See my general knowledge on hot world issues 3. see how i can think fast and make a structured answer.
Not all questions were like that , i dont rememeber most of them unfortunately. But when you have 30secs to prepare and 1 min to answer , you have to really just ANSWER the question, no room for backstory , second thinking or stalling. If you want any more info just tell me

Hi Vadok, congratulations. Could you please share more details about your background? And what do you think are your success factors in this admission?

The St. Gallen Interview round can be very peculiar.

The question range is very diverse and ranges from personality based questions to opinion based questions.
As the questions are not specifically personalized to you and are pulled from a question bank, don’t expect specific profile based questions.

Mostly the questions are about understanding you as a person, understanding your thought process, seeing how spontaneous you are.

For example, one of our past client was asked the following questions: -

1) By choosing St Gallen you demonstrated your interest in an international career. what does an international career mean to you and why this is important
2) If someone were to critique your essay, what he could say?
3) Tell us 3 aspects on the war on terrorism and why they are important

There were 6 questions in total

The timing given to prepare and answer also differ question to question
For some of the above questions, he was given 1minute to think of an answer and answer it in another minute.
For some questions, he was given 2-3 minutes to answer and 1-2 minutes to think about it.

In conclusion, know your profile well and practice with several mock questions. Ask someone to evaluate your responses as well.
Can work wonders for your coherence and confidence.

Hope this helped.

Hi Vodak! Congratulations!

I am applying for SIM 2017 intake too and have already finished all processes. I am waiting for the decision now. I just wonder that how long you got accepted by St. Gallen after you finished the interview. May I ask you to share more information about this?

By the way, here are the questions I was asked in the video interview. Hope these can help other applicants.(Note that they are not the exact description.)
1. how your cultural and personal experience shape the person you are?
2. how you define "high performance", when you think you achieve this standard?
3. what are the steps you prepare your essay?
4. tell us 2 or 3 perspectives of refugee crisis in Europe, and why they are important?
5. what are the steps you estimate how many golden medals will Switzerland get in the next winter Olympics?
6. Please choose one of the experiences you listed in your CV that can best describe you ability.
7. I forgot this one:(

I've been accepted !! I'm so happy. I'll be sending my acceptance of admission offer soon.

Thank you so much Vadok for your answer last time. I'm excited to be able to meet you next September ! Meanwhile, do you know if there is a group set up for the SIM 2017 intake on Facebook or elsewhere ?

Good luck to everybody else !

Hi! I have been admitted too!!!! So happy about it!!! Cannot wait to see you guys!!! Btw, I am also seek out the group for SIM 2017 intake too. Please inform me if you have any information about it:P

Good luck to other applicants!!

Hi guys,
I'm also preparing my application for the SIM 2017: hopefully I'll take the gmat before March 10th, so that I'll be able to submit everything before the final round. Would you mind sharing your personal background and work experience? I heard several people saying that St. Gallen usually prioritize such experiences!

Hi Nipson !

The University of St. Gallen has different admissions conditions and processes for each of their masters. If you're interested in the SIM, then you must already know that they rank the candidates by giving them points for the different parts of their application. Here are the four parts and their respective weight (you can find the grading system for the GPA and GMAT explained in a file available on their site) :

GPA : 20 pts
GMAT score : 20 pts
CV : 20 pts
Essay : 10 pts
Video ITW : 30 pts

As you can see, only the CV really allows you to briefly present your personal background and work experience (I personnaly used the "social and other skills" part of the CV to develop in more details how each item of my personal background, work experience and extra-curricular activities helped me grow and what competencies/lessons I learned from them). Moreover, you might get one or at most two questions during the interview which could enable you to quickly mention those, but even that is quite limited, as 1 to 2 minutes questions don't give you much time to elaborate.

All in all, even if they are important, I think you don't need to have a lot of work experience or other personal background to get admitted, as it doesn't seem to me to be the major focus of the application process. Just make the most of what you have by emphasing what they taught you and you should be fine. On the other hand, a weak academic record paired with a GMAT below 700 might make it more difficult to get in in my view.

Finally to answer your question, here is my profile :

22 y.o, with three nationalities (French, Swiss and Tunisian), currently finishing a Bachelor in Business Administration and Finance in a well - but not top - ranked business school in France. I moved from France to Switzerland and back several times during my life, so I have quite a "bi-national" profile.
GPA : 5.4/6 (from 5.4 to 5.7, depending on how they made their calculations)
GMAT : 750
1 semester exchange in Cass Business School, in London.
2 internships : - 2 months in an event management company in Paris
- 6 months in a luxury retail start up in another french city
A few extracurricular activities (dance, lyrical singing), and one voluntary project for a NGO. Nothing remarkable otherwise, I didn't win any medal or other competitions during my hobbies.
Languages : French, English and a bit of German (B1/B2 level).

I hope this helps you ! If you, or anyone reading, are in the middle of your preparation for the application and reading this was a pain, please don't let it bum you out !

I too, before passing the GMAT (and even afterwards !), thought I had zero chance of being admitted. No fancy internship, no top-ranked school, no major achievement in whatever hobbies I had... So I just worked hard to get the best GMAT I could, and tried to present the little value my profile had in the best light possible.
So give it your all !

Good luck for your GMAT and application,
and don't hesitate to ask if you have other questions

Thanks a lot for having shared your bg with us, I've got a clearer view now of what my possibilities are.

I'm a 22 yo student from Italy,
• GPA between 5.4 and 5.7 / 6 ; graduated cum laude in a mid-good Italian university
• IELTS 8.0
• 2 Internships: 6 months at a multinational automotive company + 3 months at a local financial services company
• Exchange semester in Germany
• Founder of an entertainment/event management company
• Several extra-cv activities; I'm currently running an association, I reached the Italian finals of Business contest, I've been elected for two times a students' representative in my uni, ...
• Mother tongue of Italian, B1 in Spanish

GMAT is the only missing thing, and that may be the crucial factor since I always performed well in Interviews and essays.
Well, hope to see you there in Switzerland, I'll keep you updated! (:

Hey there Nipson!
Well you have a pretty well rounded profile as such. A few positive points of your profile are:
1.) Good CGPA overall, so no issues on that front regarding your previous/undergrad performance
2.) Your exchange semester at Germany will do just fine for the criteria of international experience.
3.) You have a solid internship work-ex of about 9-10 months and that should provide some substance as well. Plus, the fact that you have founded a media startup will definitely give your CV an edge above the others, so you have a good leverage point there showing you are a self-initiator which bschools would appreciate.
4.) No issues with the IELTS whatsoever. Plus being a polyglot, that is speaking Spanish, Italian and English surely is a big plus for your CV.
5.)a good mix of extra-curriculars as well, thereby showing the various dimensions where you have excelled time and again and hence all you have to do is highlight how each one has helped you in developing a holistic profile and you are good to go.
Thats all about your profile strength. The only missing piece as has been correctly identified by you are your GMAT and Refferences. Try to aim for 700+ in order to be safe, although with a proper profile you can get in with lesser, but the more the better!

So overall, you have a really good shot at making it to St. Gallens coveted SIM programme. Just make sure you are able to put all this data convincingly in your CV (it has 30% weightage), further your argumentative essay should be coherent and logical, though it has just 10% weightage, with a school such as St. Gallen, everything counts.


If you still want some more info about the program, visit https://www.mim-essay.com/st-gallen-mim-review/ . Also for a more holistic and informative profile evaluation, visit https://mim-essay.com/profile-evaluation?gcf.
Hope i answered your questions. All the best!

Sent from my F103 using GMAT Club Forum mobile app

Yo guys! I can’t tell you how stressed out i am about St. Gallen, I REALLY wanna go there lol.
Also, hello Abhyank! I sent you an email a couple days ago, you’ll recognize it it’s nice to see you here helping us out!

I wanted to share my profile and have your opinion about what you think my chances would be, and specially, HOW CAN I MAKE THEM BETTER?
Background: 27 yo, Venezuelan-Spanish national.
C2 level in English, French, Spanish
B1 level in German and Japanese.

GMAT 20%:
Haven’t passed it yet, but I’m looking to break the 700 mark before I apply. Im not doing very good yet but I’ll be working on it full time.
My opinion: 700 - 14/20 points

Average grade during studies:
They are pretty low. I tried to just get by and concentrate my efforts in other activities. My score is 12/20 in the french system, which follows a bell curve, but it’s still pretty low when compared to other people. It’s a bachelor in economics and management science. I also did a 6 month Erasmus in Germany
My opinion: 8/20

Extracurricular and work experiences:
This is where I put most of my efforts in. When I was younger I attempted a bachelor in law, which I abandoned after 1 year because of health problems. During this time I was in the student council in my university: This means I was part of the university's administrative council and the disciplinary council. I was also secretary of the theatre club, for whatever that’s worth lol.
In my last Uni I wasn’t part of the student council, but given the amount of problems there I decided to do something informally, meeting with students and with the university director to talk about possible solutions. She pretty much liked that, so I asked her to be my reference for my job hunting, and she’ll be my reference again for the master.
I’ve worked around 2 years as an administrative assistant/hotel receptionist, so I guess that doesn’t really give me points. But I did create in 2015 an NGO/Foundation in my native Venezuela to help out poor communities: the objective was to teach them how to solve their own problems, without needing help from the useless communist government. I had 5 full time employees under my command as well as many other volunteers, and I learned a lot about HR, seeking funds, organizing events, etc. My reference for this job is an ex minister, ex ambassador with which I collaborated. For security reasons (I got mugged twice) I decided to stop it after 7-8 months and came back to France.
My opinion: 16/20

Essay: 10%
Im gonna work on making a bloody good essay after I finish the GMAT, but I doubt it’s gonna be extraordinary compared to what others are doing.
My opinion: 5/10

Interview: 30%
Something tells me I’m gonna flunk it, interviews are not my forte. Is there any way to get better at this, other than training in front of a mirror? lol
My opinion: 15/30

Overall: 58/100. Doesn’t sound good, so I’d appreciate any advice you can give me.
Thnx guys!

Hi guys,

congratulations to all already accepted. I'm just finalising my application. Could you please desribe me how does the video interview exactly looks like. I must say I expected something like 'record a video showing why we should accept you and send it to us' but it seems totally different.

Many thanks for your help!

Also if you'd like to share why you decided to St.Gallen vs other unis and what other programmes you've considered I'll be very much interesed. Personally I apply also for ESADE master in entrepreneurship and innovation and HEC master in strategic management having in mind that they offer specialisation in sustaiable business.

Magdalena

Hi all,

congratulations on all of you for getting in.
A few questions with regard to the GMAT and admission conditions... First of all, with regard to the interview, How does it work with the recording? Do we get the questions in advance or do we have to answer live? I don't find it very clear on the internet page.
Also, does anyone know if it makes a difference whether we enrol in third or fourth round? I just took a GMAT, which was average (670) and was wondering whether I should try to apply with it (since i have good grades), or wait for the last round (which may lower my chances) in order to try to take it once again before the end of the fourth round...
Finally, does anyone know if the five days before we get the interview (video interview) must be counted before the 10th of march (i.e. deadline) or if we can submit the documents until then and then do the interview? How is the timing of that?

Thank you so much and have a great weekend!!!!!

Hi all,

Ahead, it's great to e-meet you and thanks for all the encouraging messages shared.

I'm currently finalizing my application and hope to submit my application before the next deadline on 10 March. With regards to that, I was actually wondering the exact same thing as you, Z1303, i.e. whether the video interview needs to be completed before the 10 March in order to qualify for a third round application review; would be great if anyone had any insight with regards to that.

Also, I was wondering if those who already completed the video interview would be able to share any insights as to how long it takes until we receive the recording link. Online, it states that the timeframe would be 5 days but given that I am quite time-constrained with regards to submitting my application, and more info is much appreciated.

Other than that, I'll crack on with finalizing my documentation (running out of time ...) and wish everyone the best of success. Huge congratulations to those who've already been accepted; well done!

All the best and thanks for sharing your insights.

Hi Magdalena,

I unfortunately cannot yet provide any insights with regards to your first question as I haven't had my video interview yet; actually, I'm just about to finalize my application documents.

However, with regards to your second question, I'm currently only applying at the University of St. Gallen given that they let us know the application outcome quite quickly, which would allow me to still apply to other Masters programs should my application be unsuccessful. Having plan B in mind though, I'm also considering the WHU MSc Management or MSc Entrepreneurship in Germany, given it's great reputation for entrepreneurial spirit on campus. Also, I'm considering the ESADE MSc Entrepreneurship and Innovation for similar reasons. I've also visited the ESADE campus and really enjoyed it there; again, great philosophy of teaching practical skills as opposed to theory only. Finally, LBS's MSc Management would be another good match although I believe that it could well be too theoretically structured for my personal aspirations.

All the best for your application endeavours!