Tuesday 24 May 2016

Overview | LBS Admits Weekend Part 1

I recently returned from attending the London Business School Admits Weekend held last week. Let me just say upfront - for those who are planning to apply for the MBA programme at LBS in future, you really don't want to miss the May Admits Weekend! It's part of the whole amazing MBA experience at LBS and is worth every penny and km of travel...at least that's how I felt. So I'm really glad I flew halfway around the world to attend it as I would have been kicking myself otherwise :)

I'll be doing a bit of a series regarding the event, including all the very useful information about the MBA programme itself that I can recall from the event - answers by the program team & current students. It should hopefully provide some helpful information for anyone researching the LBS MBA program and current admits who missed the event.

A bit of a run down on what I did in London last week leading up to the event:

Sunday
  • Arrived in London mid afternoon completely exhausted from over 14 hours of flying from Singapore. Couldn't sleep a wink on the flights so I'd gone almost 48 hours without sleep due to the time difference.
  • Managed to last till 8.30pm London time before I fell asleep mid conversation with the mate kindly hosting me. I tried very hard to stay up to a decent hour to minimise jet lag.
Monday
  • Woke up at 7.30am London time ~ yay not really jet lagged!
  • Planned to get a UK SIM so I could get data connection rather than using auto roaming - made sense to just get one now since I'd be moving to London later anyway. As I was staying in East London not far from Stratford, I headed out to explore Stratford and the huge Westfield Mall there that was developed for the London Olympics. I'm also a Westfield stockholder so I figured it would be nice to see one of my investments in person ;)
  • Spent the day wandering about Stratford, visited 4 different supermarkets and picked up my SIM before heading back for dinner with my mates.
Tuesday
  • Woke up early too but felt kinda lazy and tired. Considered going to town briefly but didn't feel up to it.
  • Spent the day instead exploring Canning Town and er...the supermarket >.<
  • Headed back earlier for another night of good home cooked dinner and interesting conversation spanning risk management, London real estate, Michelin star restaurants and politics.
Wednesday
  • Woke up early again and the weather was pretty lousy. Had a mid-morning nap while waiting for the rain to stop so I could go out :p
  • Headed to central London to check out the Museum of London. I love how most of London's museums are free. Interesting fact: in excavating to build the Crossrail line, they discovered a tradition Maori weapon artefact. Seems NZ has followed me to London ;)
  • Headed to the National Portrait Gallery to escape the rain. The Tudor gallery is highly recommended!
  • Met an old schoolmate for dinner in Covent Garden
Thursday
  • Met up with another MBA admit for lunch and to wander around Paddington/Little Venice in the afternoon. We'd arranged it via WhatsApp.
  • Around 40 of us who were already in London then met up at a rooftop bar (very pretty views and highly popular with the professionals) for some pre-Admits Weekend socialising. This was followed by taking over another bar (much cheaper drinks) and then splitting up to have a very late dinner. Met amazing people and marvelled over the background diversity.
  • Some of the group headed out clubbing afterwards. Was getting late and felt bad if I got back really late and woke my kind hosts up, so headed home with people going in the same direction to arrive at midnight.
Friday
  • Met up with new friends from last night for drinks in afternoon...and met a few more new people
  • Wandered around the area before heading to a pub near the LBS welcome reception venue in Shoreditch.
  • Met more new people at the very packed pub and had very loud conversations over the din. Did not make time to have dinner - big mistake
  • Headed to the LBS welcome reception starving. Good thing there were nibbles but unfortunately they were nibbles.
  • It was a massive turnout with current student ambassadors. Met even more new amazing people and had more very loud conversations over everyone else's very loud conversations. Repeated where I was from, what I did, what I wanted to do over and over and over...you get used to it.
  • Had an amazing time but passed on the post event clubbing/partying as I wanted to be awake for the full on Admits Weekend day.
Moral of the story - plan to be in London early for unofficial pre-event socialising! It's much easier to meet and remember names and faces in batches.

Next up is a detailed post on the first official day of the Admits Weekend :)

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