The London Business School 2011 Thread

I think the portal is fine, but nothing stellar.
I'm comparing with Booth's, which is much better.

Its funny you say that - I've had access to the Booth portal for a month now(I'm on exchange in Chicago till March). I had the same impression when I first accessed Booth portal. But as I started using it more for bidding for classes, looking for courses, seeking out alumni, I found the Booth portal not quite as easy-to-use as the LBS one. My biggest gripe was that it doesn't have single sign-on. You need to maintain two sets of usernames and passwords and need to enter usernames and passwords as you access the different sub-portals. There is a separate sub-portal for alumni access (instead of just the directory which is well incorporated in the LBS portal) and yet another sub-portal for the iBidding. The web-outlook email is similar and both allow for forwarding, however, I couldn't locate any IT-help or instructions on how to setup MS-Outlook to access the Booth e-mail. I haven't seen the jobs board on Booth yet, but I suspect it may be yet another fragmented component. Booth will no doubt fix these over time, but I'd like to hear some thoughts on what you think LBS can do better in terms of its portal.

I didn't want to create any controversy with that post.

I had read some post before about how good was the portal, and when I finally received my login credentials and log in the system, I didn't like it as much as I thought I would. That's why I said I was a bit disappointed.

I didn't have time to go deep in any of both portals. If you are LBS student in an exchange in Booth, you will probably know them much better than me.

Anyway, as I said, in my opinion, the first impression I got after playing with them is that Booth's was far better.

In fact, I have the impression that at Booth everything is very well organized. Since the day I have been admitted to both schools, Booth is doing much better job than LBS to convince me and my wife to join the school (apart from the scholarship stuff).

By the way, I would love to have your opinion about Booth vs LBS, as we are still considering both options. In any case I'm very interested in exchanging in the other.

Sure - I think I share the view of the administration. The Booth administration has impressed me over LBS as well and I have only dealt with their international office so far. Comparing the two schools is not easy. They both, although competing top business schools, represent two very distinct experiences. Its like saying I'm an Angelina Jolie fan v/s I'm a Scarlett Johanssen fan. Each of these beauties have their own quirks and the folks that get attracted to Angelina would be attracted to her for reasons very different to the reasons of folks attracted to Scarlett - but that doesn't make either a bad choice. Neither does it qualify one as a decidedly better choice than the other.

LBS administration and marketing lets it down. But people dont go to school for its administration or for its spin doctors. People go to a business school for its faculty, its student body and the opportunities it provides (not necessarily in that order). Ironically for such a poorly marketed school, LBS has a rockstar marketing faculty (Nirmalya Kumar, Marco Bertini). It also has rock star Finance and Strategy faculty. It has fewer electives than Booth - but lets get real, how many b-school students want to do Phd level Applied Regression analysis anyway (I kinda did and hence I am using the exchange programme to Booth ). The electives at LBS cover all major bases and are extremely well taught.

The student body at LBS is unbelievable. You will not find such diversity anywhere else in the world - not at Harvard, not at Stanford or Wharton or any other 2 year programme in the world. Stern markets its collaborative community. LBS is just as collaborative if not more. Wharton prides itself in the student run nature of campus activities. Well LBS is absolutely driven by students - everything from the Asia Business Forum to the Private Equity conference to the Mexico trek. The kind of guests we are able to attract just by being in London is unreal.

Almost all top recruiters hire from here and some exclusively so. The alumni base is all over London and most part of the world (owing to the international nature of the students). We will see some pretty amazing placement numbers for my year (2011) because recruiting has really picked up after the crisis. Even during the crisis LBS has been one of the better performers.

Anyway I'll post more about Booth later as I start classes there. Good luck with your choice and feel free to pm me with any specific questions.

great thanks!

hey guys, congrats to all the R1 admits! i wanted to share a couple of points regarding scholarships as I see some disappointment after not getting $$ in your offers.

i am a first year student at LBS, and I am on annual fund scholarship. I had a meeting a couple weeks ago with all the scholarship recipients at school, and we had a lecture room entirely filled with people (ca 80 ppl). Admittedtly this included a couple of MiM students but most were MBAs. Only around a third of those were annual fund scholarships - the ones you would have received over the past few days. That means there will be around 40 or more additional scholarships for which you can apply separately. I never did, so i dont really know the process, and how many you would see on Portal right now, but the numbers are roughly right. I understand of course that this doesnt necessarily help for decision making, as you will have to put down your commitment fees now, but i just wanted to give a heads up, that there are a LOT of additional scholarships up for grabs. Also, when you calculate your chances, dont forget that around 20% of students are sponsored, and they are excluded from the scholarships. So if you have a strong profile, you have a decent chance for landing a scholarship later.

anyway congrats again and good luck with the decision making! happy holidays everyone!

bsd, what a brilliant analogy!! made me laugh but actually spot on!

I've been asked via pm by several posters to speak more about life at London Business School. So, for the benefit of all, I'll respond with a few video posts :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3seqUa4ztrQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtPVb2Lh ... re=related
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nve7X-ur ... re=related
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRP41eiJ ... re=related
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMt34NZk ... re=related
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL_Y3Q5w ... r_embedded

Thanks bsd. There are many videos by LondonBusinesSchool in youtube that are worth watching! Here is the link to that - https://www.youtube.com/user/LondonBusinessSchool

So it seems there is some hope at the end of tunnel, provided we are able to live that far Thanks for the info vgeri, several of us do need that ounce of financial help from somewhere. pretty seriously.

On another note, got a nice courtesy call from a current LBS student today. Just like my other one-on-one interactions with the school (read my alum interviewer ), I continue to being impressed everytime. I was really impressed by the down to earth tone of the alum, the friendly attitude and just about everything we discussed. We talked at length and when I touched the cliched topic of LBS diversity, he really got into the groove and gave several personal anecdotes of his fascination by the school's unmatched strength on this front...Every study group made up of six-seven different professional backgrounds and six-seven different nationalities is something that very few schools can promise and this alum vouched from the power of such interactions. For a moment, I got lost in the excitement again , forgetting the financial worries

Anyways guys, happy festive season to everyone. Looking forward to celebrating the same time next year with all of you at Regent's Park

I also got a call from a current student few days back, it was quite unexpected and even though the student had called up just to congratulate me we ended up chatting for quite sometime on varied topics........I could really feel the warmth and excitement even from her side. I even discussed my dilemma of lbs vs insead vs wharton and she shared her story of how and why she chose lbs over some other us schools in which she was admitted. It was quite helpful.

Guys, what is the difference between R2 and R3. I am an international applicant. Do I have fewer chances in R3?

Please advice, currently in Panic Mode

Any one knows why London Business School is asking the following question to the recommenders?

What will this individual be doing in 10 years? Why?


My recommenders are IT folks who have been working in the IT field all their life. They dont have MBA degrees either. I haven't told them about my career aspirations and even if I did, I don't think they have enough knowledge about my dream industry which will make the "why" part difficult.

I guess my recommenders plan to write about what they perceive as my interests and strengths and assume that in 10 years i will be in a role that does x and y.. but that doesn't need 500 words!!!

And LBS doesn't give any advice at all about how to write recommendations unlike Stanford and Harvard where they say that they want stories where the candidate's contribution is quantifiable, in fact LBS's questions sound totally different too!


Any tips? My recommenders will be submitting over this weekend because they will be busy after that.

PS - I think I am going to be one of the few who will be submitting their recos before their essays

What I understand is that 500 words is the maximum limit, it doesn't have to be 500. Correct me guys if I am wrong.

Yeah I guess 500 is the max. But I wanted to understand what they are trying to find out by this question. I mean my supervisor probably thought I would be a product evangelist or a product manager till I told him that I am gonna do an MBA. So should they write something like, "srjaidev shows alot of interest in x, y and z and has a and b qualities and I believed that he would become a ABC doing such and such work.......", ie what they thought I would have been doing then had I continued working in the same company, which may not have any semblance with my aim (Essay 1)?

Regarding "What will this individual be doing in 10 years? Why?" Do you think they should answer this question assuming that you'll get an MBA or assuming that you wont get one and stay in the same industry?

Well just tell them what to write, tell them what your career aspirations are and they will back it up with evidence on why you would be successful at it based on your strengths. If you are asking someone for a recommendation, he / she must know you enough and know what you plan to do, it will make the recommendation stronger and more focused. You don't need to tell them exactly what your plans are but at least a broad view of them (i.e. do you plan to stay in the IT industry, or rather completely switch industries, do you plan to become an enterpreneur, etc.) This should match with your career goals essays of course.
That's what I did with my recommenders. We had a quick chat about why I wanted to do the MBA and they were able to tailor the answers better.
And I did get an offer.
Good luck !!