It's Decided

After oscillating between INSEAD and London Business School, I've finally decided to accept my offer to LBS.

It was by no means an easy decision given that they're both elite schools, and my post-MBA goals involve the field that INSEAD is strong in (consulting) in the location that LBS is strong in (London). It came down to evaluating which would give me the highest chances of attaining my post-MBA goal: switching to consulting in London. After all, the whole purpose of a MBA is to help you achieve your future career goals.

For those in the tough position of having been accepted to both LBS and INSEAD like me (now and in future), I found that hearing why people made the school decisions they did helps. So here's why I ended up deciding on LBS:

1. I'm planning on switching job function, location and industry, which is said to be doable in 10 months for consulting, but is definitely a stretch. Hence, it seemed less risky to give myself more time for job hunting with LBS's longer program and there's the added benefit of being able to better absorb the information that I'm sure to be overloaded with.
2. Networking is very important in business, and is certainly far more effective when you're actually living in the same city and can meet face-to-face. Plus, based on my experience, there's nothing like local immersion to actually understand the local culture and markets, which would allow me to gel more quickly with my future colleagues in London. Hence, I felt I had to be in London itself.
3. Looking at INSEAD's placements in consulting, in particular Bain, their students are distributed over various offices around the world, whereas for LBS most went to the London office. This information was gathered from the Bain careers site which showed how many interns Bain took from each school and which office the intern went to. Sample sizes are small but it did give a bit of an idea how each school differed.
4. mfprado1073 did a rough calculation for me here which showed that my chances of getting into consulting in London were higher with LBS than INSEAD.
5. I like the internship "try before you buy" concept. I've been researching quite a bit about consulting and while I think I know what to expect, I might wind up really not liking the lifestyle. No better way to find out than actually doing it, which I'd be able to do at LBS.
6. I like the people from INSEAD whom I've met and the INSEAD network is certainly outstanding, but that just means finding a way to tap into that network by making sure I keep in contact with all these INSEAD alumni :)

I'd like to credit the people I've met through the GMAT Club forums as their views definitely helped make my decision.

Anyway what this means going forward is that this blog is going to revolve around life as an MBA student at LBS :) Class of 2018 here I come!

An Unexpected Call from INSEAD

Round 2 results for INSEAD were due to come out by the end of this week. Updates on acceptances started appearing on the GMAT Club forums from Tuesday. Surprisingly though, 2 fellow Round 1 waitlisters also reported getting accepted from the list. This made me wonder whether I should actually just go ahead and accept the LBS offer since I hadn't heard from INSEAD.

Last night while I was in the shower the phone rang. My Significant Other brought the phone in saying it was an international call. So I jumped out of the shower and called back. Yes, it was INSEAD and yes I was accepted for starting on the Singapore campus! Unbelievable!

Thinking about it though, it is somewhat unusual to have such quick movement from the waitlist, given that in previous intakes waitlisters have suffered months of uncertainty. I'm wondering if perhaps the attacks in Paris might have yielded INSEAD fewer applications than usual in Round 2? Or maybe I got lucky and there aren't actually many marketers remaining amongst the applicants.

I'm stoked regardless. I'll admit the part of me that also cares what other people think is doing cartwheels because now it feels like It wasn't a fluke that I'm being recognised. Not that an acceptance from LBS is anything to sneeze at. Just that as an overachiever, 2 acceptances is always better than just 1! Though it does present the difficult dilemma of which school to attend. That is however a problem for another day. :)

Scholarship Results for London Business School

So apparently scholarship announcements have been going out over the last 2 weeks since LBS handed out acceptance offers. Not having heard from them, I thought I'd better confirm this on the slim chance that maybe I didn't hear from them because they were a little slower this year.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. I was told though that while majority of the scholarships had been given out to other recipients, there was another round of scholarship announcements in May, when all offered candidates from Rounds 1 through 3 will be considered once again. I also learnt that as a student on a full-time MBA in the UK you are allowed to work 20 hours per week in term time (realistically feasible from terms two or three onwards) and full-time in vacation periods.

I must say it is quite disappointing to not have received a scholarship because the numbers after you convert British pounds to required NZ dollars do not look very palatable! I have been looking at currency forecasts though and the British pound is predicted to go down in value over the next few months so fingers crossed there.

Wheee!!!

So after the disappointing email from INSEAD on Thursday, I woke up early on Friday morning to do more research around dealing with being waitlisted. Then I noticed on the Clearadmit MBA update feed that some Round 1 results for LBS were out even though they weren't due for a week . Unlike INSEAD who calls accepted applicants, LBS conveys results to everyone via email. So with held breath I checked my emails and...

Yes! I was accepted!!!

That email totally made my day. I went from upset to ecstatic in less than 12 hours - what an emotional rollercoaster. It certainly made the waitlisted outcome from INSEAD much less of a disappointment. It is such a relief to know that no matter what, I'm going to get to do my MBA come August 2016, which is what I set out to do. Even better - no need to do more applications! Wheee!!! It would be nice to get accepted to INSEAD as well before the deposit for LBS is due in January, but at this stage I'm planning my actions as if I'm heading to LBS.

Note: You are most welcome to skip the following paragraph.
Indulging my conspiracy theory delusions here: I wonder if LBS planned this early release to time it with INSEAD's announcement? LBS and INSEAD often compete for the same candidates. By releasing their results at almost the same time, it cleverly steals some of the limelight from INSEAD. Those who got accepted to both would potentially face the tough decision of decided which to pick diminishing maximum happiness somewhat. Those who get accepted to INSEAD but not LBS would be happy they're going to INSEAD but still think about LBS (since it would've been the later news). Those who were waitlisted at INSEAD but admitted to LBS would be happier than they would've been if they had been accepted to both due to the additional happiness from the relief after the prior disappointment. Plus if INSEAD later decides it would like to accept a waitlisted candidate after all, it might be too late and the candidate might have decided to go with LBS. Ok yes I'm rambling!

In any case I've an acceptance pack on it's way to me soon. So excited! Scholarship offers are due to come out in the next couple of weeks. I'm really hoping I do get a scholarship given the astronomical cost of both the tuition and living in London. Sadly, the NZ dollar doesn't stack up so well against the British Pound. Next thing to tackle - financing!

And the INSEAD Results Are...

INSEAD Round 1 announcements started coming out a day before the deadline. During this time I kept willing my phone to ring. Unfortunately, that never happened. Instead, I received an email in the evening informing me that I had been waitlisted. Bummer! Ok I was really really gutted.

Yes, being waitlisted means that I wasn't rejected so there's still hope. But it also means that you're left in limbo. According to the email from INSEAD, the offer could come anytime between "now and right before the program starts in August 2016". That's an 8 month window! For someone like me who is a hardcore "planner", this is pure torture. Plus, those who have researched INSEAD would know that INSEAD generally discourages reapplying if you are rejected unless your situation changes dramatically, which is rather unlikely in my case.

After receiving the announcement email, I had a minor panic that if LBS waitlisted or rejected me, I would end up in the horrible position of having nowhere to go. Luckily, because I'd applied in Round 1 it meant that I still had the chance to do another round of applications for Round 2 in January to other schools. I dreaded this though because applications take so much time and energy and not just on my part, but on the part of my recommenders as well. On hindsight, it probably would have been more prudent to have prepared my Round 2 applications when I was doing Round 1 while I was in the "application zone".

I accepted my place on the waitlist and proceeded to then spend a few hours calculating the likelihood of getting accepted from the waitlist based on the previous year's intake (ok yes it was a pointless exercise, but I really couldn't help myself). I also looked up advice for being waitlisted, of which there's plenty online. The most useful ones I've found are from Accepted.com and Poets and Quants.

One thing I've been actively checking myself on is to resist the impulse to dash off an update letter immediately. As mentioned in Poets and Quants, it's best to wait till a bit closer to the Round 2 announcement deadline, which isn't actually all that far away. Fingers crossed I'll get an acceptance notification really soon!