Fontainebleau Survival: Tip #2

Bring them bags. Grocery stores in France charge for plastic bags (which is great, increase the price, I say). This just means that it would be good to carry with you either some plastic bags or some regular bags with which you can do groceries. It makes a lot of sense to get plenty of them.

Fontainebleau Survival: Tip #1

Since I'm getting ready to pack up and get started @ INSEAD, I thought I'll start posting survival tips as soon as I get them. The first one is thanks to a peer of mine (Vivek Peshkar) and is about eletric plugs. Basically, France supports type E plugs.

http://www.kropla.com/!e.htm
http://www.kropla.com/electric2.htm

The most important learning for me atleast: Standardization is friggin hard.

1 in 5 ding

I think I need to get to used to getting dinged for 80% of the things I apply to. Resetting expectations reduces so much stress.

Scholarships Update

I got dinged in 4 out of 5. I've been shortlisted for the L'Oreal Scholarship (http://www.insead.edu/mba/schlmgmt/index.cfm?fuseaction=dsp_list_schl). There are 3 other finalists besides myself. The final round will be conducted during the orientation week.

The objective is to share with a committee of INSEAD & L'Oreal representatives your professional objectives and be prepared to answer their questions for 10-15 minutes.

While I'm excited about getting a step closer to some scholarship, I'm properly educated on how INSEAD designs everything to be so competitive. All the finalists duke it out right there and then. And the results are announced at the end of that session.

And in stake, 'Partial Tuition'! Now, I just need to demonstrate to the committee that I'm creative and have a clear vision of my professional goals.

Exciting times.

Scholarship decisions

I got dinged for 1 scholarship - Sasakawa something. Basically, I was asked to describe a situation where I demonstrated leadership in a culturally conflicting situation. I got dinged - thought I put in a valiant situation. The challenge is there's always that someone to upstage you no matter what you put in.

4 more to go.

Lehman Brothers pre-MBA internship

INSEAD July 2009 students can take advantage of a pre-MBA internship. It's a really unique concept that Lehman Brothers is piloting @ INSEAD.

For future students enrolling into INSEAD, it might be useful to view http://www.insead.edu/mba/careers/FinanceTraining.cfm, to get more information on INSEAD's finance stream.

Although I applied for this internship, I am not even 20% sure if Finance is the right stream for me. I aspire to become an entrepreneur and it's useful for me to understand how money is raised. I therefore value this internship.

One nice thing about this offer is the quick turnaround - within a few days the interviews would start.

INSEAD & Student Loans

Really getting squeezed dry for financial aid. Here's my list of candidates
1. Prodigy Finance - credit crunch has squeezed them dry.
2. Sallie Mae - needs US cosigner. Interest rates are pegged of the LIBOR..
3. Wachovia Bank - loans suspended until May 19th (new notice after that)
4. IEFC - suspended indefinitely
5. HSBC, Bank of America - on hold
6. BNP Paribas/BRED - 2 to 3% but they require a French Citizen to cosign. I don't know any French citizen's
7. PARAS - they charge $500 in the form of fees which are positioned with all random terms (processing fees, communication fees etc.)