The INSEAD MBA Experience

The first four months of the program are almost over, another short break is in sight – but also the first mass movement of students across campuses is ahead. At the end of Period 2, the people who have spent four months together will now split, as some of them move to Fontainebleau, and others stay in Singapore. From now on students will be able to tailor their program by choosing a variety of electives offered by INSEAD – the same on both campuses. Some of these people will not meet again soon; others will become even closer friends.

My partner and I came to Singapore with the idea to stay for the whole year. However, after an interesting conversation with an INSEAD friend, I slightly changed my view about the advantages of the two-campus model. He said that since INSEAD offers the opportunity to see two completely different lifestyles on two different continents, staying throughout the year would give you only half of the experience.

This conversation inspired me to ask around and collect more reasons why people move across campuses. This is what came out:

1. Explore two different lifestyles. The 12J students and partners, who have been on both campuses, converge around the opinion that student life in Singapore and Fonty is completely different. Singapore is a big, cosmopolitan city with lot of options for entertainment, art and leisure – helped by the fact that INSEAD is only 15 minutes  from the heart of the city by public transport. In Fonty, most of the social life and parties happen around campus and at the homes of the students. Paris and its attractions are not that close, so it is useful to have a car – by train it will take you about an hour to get to the heart of the city.

2. Meet new people. A significant number of the students and partners will move across campuses, so if you switch campus you will not be alone in the new environment. Of course, to make the most of the experience you should also be looking for new friends at the new campus. If you do not move after Period 2, you will still experience an influx of unknown people who come from Fonty to Singapore (or the other way around), but at least the setting will be well known for you. It is up to you what you prefer. Just keep in mind that forging friendship needs time, so if you are switching campuses only for one period it might be more difficult to establish close relationships.

3. Visit new countries in Europe and Asia. Travel time with friends will bring many unforgettable moments during the MBA program. Spending some time on both campuses gives the opportunity to explore countries on two continents. Coming from Europe, for me Southeast Asia is much more exciting. Before moving to Singapore I never thought that I would be able to see so many different places in four months. I recently traveled to Myanmar with a group of 17 people from INSEAD and I am looking forward to the next destination. What makes each journey unique is the diverse group of friends who change the perspective and experience of the travel.

4. Look for a job. The job search process starts in Period 4 and continues till the end. Most of the students change campuses during that time in order to explore the business opportunities in Europe or Asia – whichever their preferred destination is for a job after INSEAD. One needs to plan ahead – to find a job in some industries requires efforts to network and build closer relationships, for which you need time and personal contact. Switching campuses for one period? Well, sometimes two months might simply be not enough to look for a job and network with key decision makers.

5. Be closer to family. One year is a long period, especially for maintaining family relationships. That is why it is not surprising that one of the main drivers for moving is to be closer to family and loved ones. Moving with children is more complicated, especially when they are at kindergarten or school age.

I am sure that you will eventually find your own reason among these five. Whichever it is, make sure you plan ahead and fully enjoy your experience at INSEAD, because time passes amazingly fast.

Now I realize it has been a long time since I last wrote a blog entry. It is not that I didn’t have anything to tell. It’s just that P2 has been more intensive then I expected. Don’t get me wrong, I had more fun in P2 than in P1. But the nature of this period makes it seem shorter. Ok, it is shorter. But feels like two weeks. Last time I wrote I had just made my decision to spend the rest of the program in Asia and now here I am, writing from Charles de Gaulle airport lounge as I wait for my flight to Singapore. I have mixed feelings. It feels a little bit strange that I lived a good four months in France without noticing it. INSEAD has the power to change your time and place perception. Time flies and the intensity of the program gives you the impression that you have known your classmates for ages. Since our time is spent either on campus or with INSEADers elsewhere we keep joking that we could be virtually anywhere in the world and it would not make a difference. Meaning this is good news if you don’t speak French but bad news if you are expecting a “France experience”. It won’t happen. You are at INSEAD and once you get here you will understand what I mean. I have to admit that I am very excited about the new experiences I will have in Singapore, but at the same time the thought of having classes with different people scares me a bit. I think it would not be exaggerated to say that I have made some good friends for life in my section. I can’t help but feel nostalgic already.

If there is one thing that I will miss about Fonty itself it is the fact that here I didn’t have to plan my evenings. No matter where you go in Fontainebleau and the villages around, you will always find INSEADers. It seems that we are everywhere. I am expecting some “big city anonymousness” in Singapore. Which I usually appreciate, but I realize now that it was quite convenient to just go out and meet friends everywhere even when you haven’t planned in advance. Well, they are calling my flight. Merci Fonty. Singapore, here I come!

The last two months were a delirious marathon of group works, internship-hunting, and campus events! Thank heaven INSEAD has given me permission to breathe for a few days.

The payout has varied widely among 12Ds though. Some have gotten plum internship offers at their target firms. Others are still struggling to find one due to the scarcity of positions or personal constraints. And a vast majority still don’t know what they really want in life – which has no relation to whether or not folks have secured internships, mind you. The latter has simply become an enduring quality of bright, curious INSEADers exposed to a multitude of ideas.

Whatever happens to me and my batchmates though, I hope we don’t lose sight of what’s important. I’m actually writing this on a plane from Paris to Manila, with the realization that my time in Fonty is over just barely sinking in. As I transfer to Singapore for the remainder of the year, I can’t help but be a bit sad at how quickly the past 4 months have whizzed by… at how I’m already saying goodbye to friends I’ve just started getting to know. Some, perhaps, I will not see again this year.

I thought the hardest part about INSEAD would be the career management, academics, or even adapting to different cultures and environments. But perhaps the biggest challenge – at least for me – would be slowing down once in a while and cherishing the people and experiences.

As Ryan mentioned, a few of us are moving to Fontainebleau and it is with a heavy heart that I say goodbye to a wonderful group of people here in Singapore and to the batch in France, I look forward to meeting you all. It will be strange to start afresh in a much larger campus that will be filled to the brim and buzzing in its own special way. It will be interesting to see how the cultures of both campuses compare.

Case in point, last night was an epic Queen’s Day celebration organized by the wonderful Dutch contingent on the Singapore campus. It was a good way to celebrate the end of exam periods or as my friend calls it: the z-curve fitting ceremony, and just let loose. The Dutch really do know how to throw a party for the Queen.

This morning, it is time to reflect on the 4 months that have gone by and today I`m just looking back at all the material I have absorbed. Like Irina mentioned, the one thing that makes INSEAD classes stick out is the interaction between you, your classmates and your professors and the way they craft their classes to keep 70 students engaged every day. It is a testament to the strengths of the professors and the amount of time and dedication they put in on top of their own research and papers to publish. I feel really grateful for having had some of these profs in Singapore and I am sure that the same can be said about the faculty in France. So in no particular order here are the classes that have had the greatest effect on me so far:

Prices and Markets by Pushan Dutt: By far the class that has infiltrated our brain and our lives wholly. There does not go a week where somehow, something by Pushan has been scattered into our conversations. Whether it is simple things like marginal cost and marginal revenues, economies of scale or Aliens Vs. Predators. His teaching style is very self-deprecating and extremely entertaining but more importantly, the lessons he shares are so intuitively presented that they are easily absorbed and very practically applied. I can`t tell you how many times I have used the phrase `sunk cost` and moved on to bigger and better pursuits. His teaching of game theory really impressed me the most and I do hope to be able to take more classes in that field. Perhaps they`ll name a theory after him and I can say `That`s a Pushan!`, I for one, can`t wait.

Uncertainty, Data and Judgement with Anil Gaba: This class thrived on Anil`s personality alone. UDJ is not an easy class to master, especially those without a quant background but by far, it is those that come from non-quantitative backgrounds that got the most out of this class. Anil has this style about him that just exudes charisma even if he is talking about regression analysis. He too, like Pushan, can make complicated matter, seem almost obviously simple, at least from a high-level view. We lost a few dollars betting against him but in the end we learned a lot. He offered to give us a mini-stats primer in P3 and it is no surprise that the lineup to take it was long.

Organizational Behavior II with Henrik Bresman: OB2 was an interesting class if only because it was taught at a different pace from OB1. It focused greatly on institutions instead of individuals and yet we found ourselves drawn to the human side of things and how it related to us. Henrik really does spend a lot of time preparing his lessons and delivers each lecture with passion and wit. His presentation of the Milgram experiments was one of the tougher classes for me to handle but provided valuable insights into the abuses of power and how to avoid them. The readings were always interesting and he somehow knew how to keep providing knowledge without overloading us. I think it also helped that he dressed up as Neo from the Matrix for one class and added a super-cool factor to his whole aura.

Marketing Management with Monica Wadhwa: This was probably the one class that upended my expectations completely. Coming from my background, I did not think I would enjoy this class nearly as much as I did. Like Henrik, she puts in a tremendous amount of time into the class and it shows. Whether it is from her presentations, her interaction with the class, or even her session summaries, you can tell she genuinely loves teaching. By the third class, she had memorized our names, who had said what from the last to last sessions and tied them back into her lesson plan. Although it is a class that is less quantitative in nature, it did provide some insights that we could apply and gave us a glimpse into the very interesting world of marketing.

And with that, it is time to say thank you to the core curriculum professors, it has been swell.

I was honest with myself when I joined INSEAD: this was going to be one of the fastest, most intense years of my life. Within 10 days of starting the program I had already sent out my first résumé. Less than six weeks later I was sitting final exams in subjects I had previously never studied.

However, there was one aspect of this rocket fueled year that I hadn’t sufficiently prepared for—by the end of the second period, four months into the program, I would be bidding adieu to friends who were transferring from Singapore to the Fontainebleau campus. The beauty of this two campus system is that students can get a world-class education in the market they are targeting to work in post-MBA. But the seldom mentioned downside is that while I have chosen to stay in Singapore for the third period and move to Fontainebleau in the fourth period, many of my original cohort have chosen the opposite path.

While good bye in this instance is by no means everlasting, it still came as a shock when students realized the people they spent 18 hours a day with prepping for case competitions, traveled with to mountain peaks and ocean floors, and bled with in sports tournaments would no longer be a part of their day-to-day lives. However, this INSEAD experience mirrors the life we have chosen—one of international careers, frequent travel and continually expanding networks.

The end of the second period marks more than the split from our immediate INSEAD family; it marks a strengthening of the larger community. With each unique experience shared by a group of students grows a connection to the classes before us and the knowledge that at any time, in any place, INSEADers share a bond that few others can either understand or appreciate.

“Buffalo soldier…fighting for survival.” ~ Bob Marley

“Buffalo Soldier” was one of my mom’s favorite songs. A deeply pious lady, she was equally comfortable with reading the holy Quran as she was with dancing to Bob. I try to be a balanced person and I think I get a lot of that from my parents, especially her; she was also full of wisdom, offering adages such as “it takes an eternity to be a good person, but only a few seconds to be a bad one.” If you think about it, a lot of what is passed down to you applies in the business world as well; look at what happened in Wall Street a few years ago- cockiness and confidence are two sides of the same fence, and the balancing act is a tricky one. Ethics and morals are key in life and in business.

My mother also taught me to persevere. P4 is a time when the job-hunting heats up; in a less-than-ideal world economy, MBAs are having a tougher time to find their perfect jobs and the stress is palpable throughout campus. P4 is also when I ended up taking some ‘theoretical’ classes: Managerial Decision Making explores, among other things, ‘metaknowledge’- knowledge about what it is that you know and don’t know- and brings a stunningly psychological aspect to your MBA program, life, and professional career. Negotiations is another elective that teaches you to be an effective communicator; as one becomes more senior in his/her career, its important to bear in mind that an idea is only as good as it is presented (and I don’t mean fancy PowerPoint slides!); revenue generators know how to speak, to sell, and to effectively communicate. Its quite poignant that I’ve been taking these philosophical classes at this junction in my life. There are challenges ahead that are far greater than trying to secure that ideal job, and its important not to be too wrapped up in short-term gains but to look at long-term objectives as well. I’ve been getting ‘dinged’ from a few jobs, but that simply means that there is something else out there that is my true calling.

P4 is coming to an end, and we are entering P5, the last two months at INSEAD; the landing lights are quickly approaching, and the weather is fickle. But I’ll still keep towards my destination, because that’s how my mother would want me to be. I’ll always be your Buffalo Soldier, Jarjina Ahmed, cancer survivor…

What would you think if you saw a group of people standing on the roof of a 3-storey building and throwing down eggs? Those might be kids who just invented a funny game, you might think… Well, you’ll be wrong, as those guys are actually grown-ups. Angry French farmers protesting against cutting down of subsidies? Wrong, as they actually have fun and even put the eggs in nice hand-made paper cars. Patients of a local psychiatric clinic on a walk? Not quite true again! This is a group of INSEAD students at one of the Organizational Behaviour classes trying to evaluate their goal-setting skills.

Of course, not every session is like this. But if I were to choose one adjective which characterizes our classes, it would be “interactive”. The level of material taught in class is not too complicated, since it has to account for different backgrounds of students, but what really differentiates our classes is their practical focus. Every formula and every concept you learn is 100% applicable in practice and you know how to do it.

So, to make our learning process more visual, we participate in all sorts of weird in-class experiments. Want to know whether the Central Limit theorem actually works? Let the whole section calculate a number of brown candies in “Smarties” boxes. Curious to check the variability in the production process? Let’s use catapults to imitate the conveyor belt! Wonder how the pricing is made on the oligopolistic markets? Check it out yourself in a simulation online game with other students.

I’m not sure whether all those mind-stretching experiments have an impact on the quality of our learning, but they definitely increase my willingness to wake up and come to class every day

I don’t usually like to give job advice to people, partially because I am still young and humbled by the incredibly high calibre talents at INSEAD, but mostly because no matter how much we like to legitimize success with marketing buzz words, there is always an element of luck in everyone’s career. Now as an alumnus who successfully made the switch in geography, industry and position post INSEAD, I would simply like to share my good fortune. Whether it applies to you or not, here’s my own experience.

Sept 2011 – I just finished my summer internship at a global bank in Singapore. Coming from an inward looking telco in Canada, I would be psyched just to see a map showing more than North America on a powerpoint slide, let alone actually work on projects related to Asia, Africa and the Middle East. I knew that experience by itself could lead to a new career path, so I was quite grateful to have one foot in a global enterprise even in the absence of an offer at the end. The excitement around my Silicon Valley trek and campus exchange to France quickly swept away any lingering thoughts I had on the internship. Then the Champagne showers and hor d’oeuvres from various recruiting sessions began to precipitate on campus. Between the fear of missing out (F.O.M.O) and chronic obsessions with consulting firms, my fellow classmates had, incidentally, left my summer employer, a major recruiter at INSEAD, high and dry without a host for their visit.

I had held no offers or applications affiliated with this company since the internship, but stepping up at the time just felt like the right thing to do. More than just a host, I wanted to be an ambassador for an organization that I believe deserved far more than being overlooked. I arrived at the session early with a pre-written and rehearsed speech in my pocket that chronicled my personal growth as an intern at the bank, minus the typical MBA fluff. When the recruiters struggled to get the audio & visual running, I picked up the slack before IT support could arrive in perfect French time. It would take all of my experiences with troubleshooting youtube video presentations in the past to maintain the flow of the presentation and every ounce of my composure to calm my guests. When all was said and done though, I simply wanted to say thank-you.

And so thank my guests I did. Although it would have been nice to have received a fulltime offer by the end of the summer, I told them I was counting my blessings every time I looked back. It turned out that some of the speakers who traveled from London sit on the steering committee for MBA recruiting. Three weeks later, their parting smiles and winks turned into a job offer that I could not refuse. And it happened without one single interview.

During my preparation for INSEAD admission, a mentor’s friend and INSEAD alumna voluntarily proof-read my essays 14 times before revealing her professional background. When I discovered that she works for the world’s top strategy consultancy, I asked how I could possibly repay her for her unconditional kindness (when I made 1/3 of what I make now). All she asked of me instead was that I pay it forward.

So if you are still not bored by my storytelling at this stage, I would like to leave you with a video that once inspired me when things got tough. This one is to you, Jackie, my x-factor, and to my fellow classes of 2011, 2012 and beyond. =)

http://vimeo.com/8939365

It is slowly hitting me that there are about 3 more weeks of P2 and then it’ll be time for the great migration where some of us will be leaving to France, others will be going to Singapore. It does seem rather quick and I am sort of dreading it as my section mates are becoming more and more of a family. We just had the BCG Olympics at Sentosa which was quite a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon. We spent some much needed time in the sun playing beach volleyball, soccer, dodge ball and engaging in some photographic silliness. These activities gave us a chance to see each other in a different environment where competition and teamwork really helped bring our section closer together.

In the meantime, classes are slowly congealing together. Cases are being cross-referenced and concepts are being shared across different profs. It seems that a lot of P2′s classes are fitting together to give us a richer picture of these business concepts. On the one hand, it does allow us to look at the same issue from multiple perspectives, on the other hand, it sometimes gets a bit confusing which concepts to apply to each case. I suppose that is the point. INSEAD is teaching us to apply everything we’ve learned holistically and that does seem to be working very well. We are putting those concepts in practice and at times, it even peppers our day-to-day conversations. Somehow I feel that these concepts and these memories will stay with us long after the exams.

Now there’s an often unconsidered, but life-changing question!

For an Asian city mouse like me, adjusting to Fonty’s food situation was initially disastrous. I’m used to 2AM drive-ins at 24/7 fast food joints, scrumptious hawker fare at rock-bottom prices, and groceries at every corner!

Fonty initially felt like a wasteland! Groceries closed at 7:30PM and even had lunch breaks – yegads! They closed by noon on Sundays – who goes supermarket shopping early Sunday morning anyway?

Most restaurants were pricey with very specific opening and closing times. I remember walking into a pizza place and being told they didn’t open until 7PM. But I was famished at 5PM (in Hong Kong they probably would have opened the restaurant just for me to rake in some extra moolah)! And I had to learn just enough French to squeak by ordering “une carafe d’eau”.

After the first month, the charms started to unravel. I learned of a wonderful farmer’s market open Sunday mornings serving fresh produce, seafood, cheeses, and jams (and paella!). I took up cooking on weekends. I did finance cases with a slice of Emmental and a glass of Riesling. And probably the best discovery ever: I went to Picard and chanced upon duck confit for just 3 Euros!

And here’s something INSEAD doesn’t advertise – the canteen in Fonty is AWESOME. I officially scheduled my life around lunch! And as if to prove how much of a devotee I am, I buy their packed leftovers each weekday for dinner. Who in their right mind has ever had veal au jus with a side of gratinated potatoes for less than 4 Euros? Well, I have now.

So city mice – don’t fret! As with most things here at INSEAD, good things come to those who taste.