Tuesday, November 01, 2005

My visit to World MBA Tour

I was yesterday at World MBA Tour Moscow. All in all: partially useful.
First of all, I came too late (2 hours after the beginning) to attend any speeches, since they were already said, and to collect any materials, since they were already handed out. But I didn't plan to do all that.
I wanted to talk to London Business School, Oxford Said and Cambridge Judge. None of them were present. Harvard and Stanford were not present either.
But INSEAD was there! I talked to alumni and adcom and arranged to visit a special INSEAD presentation scheduled tonight. It has limited admission, I found out about it from a friend, and talked my way to attend it. Disappointing information: INSEAD alumni told me that it is very difficult to get a loan or a scholarship for Russian citizens there now.
Then I talked a bit with IMD and Cranfield. And established in my decision not to apply to Cranfield yet (I'm too young for them, since the average age of full-time program students is 32).
Summarizing (a friend of mine who was there):
I don't really have any questions about the schools, because I have already asked all I wanted to know current students, alumni and adcoms online. Second, all questions I've heard so far at the tour, have already been answered numerous times online, and replies don't change. If you receive a new answer, it means you haven't researched the school properly. The only question I was interested in is loans and scholarships. When I ask it, they all say: have a look at our website.
Of course, it is also interesting to look at alumni and those who want to apply :)