Friday, March 14, 2008

Application Veil

I'm beginning to think that the entire application process comes down to the following question:

"How well can INSEAD market you to the companies that hire from them?"

The reason this question is important is that INSEAD is a business whose customers are companies (pay for research, collaborate with professors on projects, pay for recruiting) and students (pay tuitition). Now, how can you have a marketable application/profile/resume

  • Big Brands on resume - Worked at IBM, Intel, Mckinsey, Microsoft, Google, Nike, Disney etc. If you've worked for them before then you've got something going on.
  • Big Brands in education - Degree from Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, IIT, etc. etc.
  • Big numbers - 4.0 GPA, Summa cum laude, distinctions, 760+ GMAT (I have 720 and I think that's a commodity score)
  • Personality & Communication - That's what the interviews are for. Can the school put you in front of these companies and get you hired by them?

And the essay's and such are fine - you need to show them you're connected and influential. I think someone who is strong in the above criteria has to work much less harder to get an admit anywhere..

Ofcourse, I could be completely wrong since all this is pure speculation...

3 comments:

Albert said...

Hey,

Great blog you have here, found some good advice in your posts.

I have a question: did you get your interview invitation on the actual interview decision notification deadline or earlier?

I'm waiting for my notification for round 3 and, as days pass by, I'm becoming more and more pessimistic.

Thanks,
Albert

Creative said...

hey Albert,
I got my notification about a week in advance. I suggest being super patient until the very last date. There really isn't much of a pattern as far as INSEAD or any of these B-schools go.

Strangely, I think the lack of transparency reflects badly on these schools. As a management school, you'd think that these guys would better manage their admission procedure :-)

Albert said...

thanks for the advice. luckily I don't need to exercise my patience anmymore, got the interview invite today.

if it goes well, hope to see you in the classroom :)