The highlights of my MBA at INSEAD were as follows:
* Incredibly diverse community. INSEAD succeeds in bringing together a class of young professionals from incredibly diverse walks of life from all over the world, which makes for a remarkably rich learning experience, both inside and outside the classroom. I learned as much from my fellow classmates as from the faculty; it is a very dynamic community and INSEAD students are as engaged socially as they are academically.
* Supportive and geographically dispersed alumni community: Half way through the program, I switched my job search focus to Indonesia, as my partner had just transferred to a Jakarta based position. I reached out to all the INSEAD alumni in Jakarta and each of them responded with offers of support and introductions. This enabled me to kick start my job search, which soon landed me a position with the International Finance Corporation. The alumni network is an incredible resource, and as I have moved countries a number of times since graduating (from Indonesia to France to India to the USA), each time I have hugely benefited on a personal and a professional level from the opportunity to tap into a ready-made local network.
* Campus exchange opportunity: I spent four periods on the Singapore campus, and one period in Fontainebleau. I would encourage all applicants to plan on participating in the campus exchange: it enables you to get exposure to vastly different parts of the world, yet the academic experience is seamlessly integrated.
INSEAD has succeeded in attracting many of the world’s best and brightest faculty - they are drawn to the stimulating environment of such a diverse community. The pace is very intense; INSEAD has really mastered the art of enabling students to absorb vast amounts of knowledge and develop a wide range of new skills in a short time. I personally really appreciated the balance between the core curriculum and the electives, with the core enabling me to build a rock solid foundation of business knowledge across all the key areas, and the electives enabling me to go a lot deeper in my areas of interest (I took several electives in marketing, entrepreneurship and business in Asia-Pac).
INSEAD is a great springboard to a truly global career. Sometimes, potential candidates are concerned about whether it would be hard to achieve a dramatic career change during a 1-year program, however 84% of INSEAD students change sector, function or country, and an impressive 25% switch on all three dimensions. The school has built relationships with a huge roster of regular recruiters from across the globe, and each year graduates take up positions with over 400 different organizations in over 60 countries worldwide.
I personally went from a career in strategy consulting in France pre INSEAD, to working for the World Bank Group in Indonesia post MBA - a career switch I would never have imagined before going to INSEAD - a testament to the transformational power of the programme.
Overall BSchool experience (5.0)
Schools contribution (5.0)
Classmates rating (5.0)
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