School Applications Part 1: Picking Schools

MBA applications take a lot of work and each application carries a cost (especially with the exchange rates) so to work out which ones are worth investing in, I found you really needed to have a clear idea of the following:

• Your short term and long term goals
• Why you are really doing an MBA and what you want out of it
• Where you want to work post-MBA
• Your strengths and your weaknesses
• Your personality and learning style
• Your priorities
• How you'd like people to perceive you 

By understanding yourself and what you want, selecting which schools to apply to becomes much easier too.

I started off my journey thinking an MBA would be a great way to get a boost into the next career level. Tons of research, discussion and reflection later, I finally came to the conclusion that

• I wanted to move into consulting and somewhere in future I wanted to start my own company
• I wanted to work in a new country - New Zealand was starting to feel too small, but not work in the US
• I wanted a really international business school that was good at developing soft skills not just hard skills

From there I found myself leaning towards the European schools - INSEAD and London Business School in particular. INSEAD because it was a 10-month program; is a well-known top school in both Europe and Asia; and is famous for placing graduates in consulting. Plus, as an added bonus, since I have family in Singapore, I could save on accommodation costs for the time that I spend on INSEAD's Singapore campus. LBS was attractive because it offered Global Business Experiences; is a well-known top school in Europe; and is located in London where I do eventually think I'll end up working.

I also considered HEC Paris and IMD but ended up planning to apply to HEC Paris as an option if I didn't get into INSEAD or LBS. IE was attractive, but the Jan 2016 intake would've been too soon for me and the Jan 2017 intake was later than I wanted to start. Thus IMD, like HEC Paris wound up as an alternative for if I didn't get into INSEAD or LBS in Round 1.

As for US schools, I did consider applying to Harvard initially just because it is the top business school in the world. I didn't in the end though because Harvard uses predominantly the case study method of teaching, which makes it more challenging for my less outspoken personality. Also, other than its name, there wasn't really anything in particular that jumped out at me. The only US school that caught my attention was Yale and that was due to its integrated curriculum. I liked that its thinking was quite different from other business schools. So I applied to Yale even though it is known as a predominantly NGO school, whereas I have a preference for working in for-profit organisations.

Perhaps I would have chosen schools differently if I had the opportunity to visit various business schools. However, being located in NZ made travelling a major challenge. On hindsight, if I started looking into doing the MBA 2-3 years ago I would have had the luxury of time to plan a visit to 1-2 schools each year. As it is I ended up basing my decisions on school sites, videos, webminars (mostly middle of the night/extremely early mornings in NZ), MBA student blogs and speaking to current students and alumni where I could.