[Laser]

Bocconi has a good reputation in Europe. Its also well located in the heart of Milan. Milan as a city isn't the best for "culture", but its a cool city and fun to party in. Plus Italian girls are generally pretty hot. Milan is also in the north of Italy close to the Swiss border, so its easy to travel to all of the continental countries. There are also many major Italian cities within a short train ride - Rome, Florence, Torino, Venice, Verona, Sienna, and others.

[Wahawahwah]

I'm currently in the process of applying for MBA, so I've gone through similar conundrums recently.

Would do a full detail, but cibo and paninaro have covered everything that I wanted to say.

On topic : INSEAD(fontainbleu) is a fantastic place to be. So is Barcelona(IESE), London (LBS) and Milan (Bocconi).

See, if you wanna go chill, go IESE,LBS,Bocconi.(and the school in Madrid, although the name escapes me)
Work on the language and culture and game, you should be fine.

If you were to network (which you should, MBA is a heavy investment in terms of money and time), I'd choose INSEAD and LBS exclusively.

Rotterdam is middle tier,so unless you're dying to live in Holland, ignore it. You'll network with lesser, and slightly less driven people.
(you can always visit holland from any other school in europe anyway).

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Slightly off topic : Ensure you get a decent GMAT score (unless you have high level contacts/your family are alumni/you run a multibillion hedge fund etc). While its possible to get in with average scores in these schools, a high GMAT just smooths out a lot of things. Since you have 1-2 years to start out, i'd say hit the books asap, the score's valid for 5 years.

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Completely off topic, if you do somehow end up going to Barcelona, make sure you catch a soccer game.
<3 Support Football Club Barcelona. <3

[OSL]

(10-11-2013 01:07 PM)Sharkie Wrote:  

I'm currently in the process of applying for MBA, so I've gone through similar conundrums recently.

Would do a full detail, but cibo and paninaro have covered everything that I wanted to say.

On topic : INSEAD(fontainbleu) is a fantastic place to be. So is Barcelona(IESE), London (LBS) and Milan (Bocconi).

See, if you wanna go chill, go IESE,LBS,Bocconi.(and the school in Madrid, although the name escapes me)
Work on the language and culture and game, you should be fine.

If you were to network (which you should, MBA is a heavy investment in terms of money and time), I'd choose INSEAD and LBS exclusively.

Rotterdam is middle tier,so unless you're dying to live in Holland, ignore it. You'll network with lesser, and slightly less driven people.
(you can always visit holland from any other school in europe anyway).

----------

Slightly off topic : Ensure you get a decent GMAT score (unless you have high level contacts/your family are alumni/you run a multibillion hedge fund etc). While its possible to get in with average scores in these schools, a high GMAT just smooths out a lot of things. Since you have 1-2 years to start out, i'd say hit the books asap, the score's valid for 5 years.

--------

Completely off topic, if you do somehow end up going to Barcelona, make sure you catch a soccer game.
<3 Support Football Club Barcelona. <3

Thank you for your feedback.

I've spent a semester in Fontainebleau in the past for a different masters program. I would not very keen on going back. Have you been there? It's basically a boring suburb with old rich people and Tunisian/Algerian dudes milling about.

I think it'll come down to LBS or San Francisco for me.

[Wahawahwah]

(10-11-2013 10:28 PM)youngmobileglobal Wrote:  

Thank you for your feedback.

I've spent a semester in Fontainebleau in the past for a different masters program. I would not very keen on going back. Have you been there? It's basically a boring suburb with old rich people and Tunisian/Algerian dudes milling about.

I think it'll come down to LBS or San Francisco for me.

Yes I've been there.
That is why I said if you wanna go chill, go IES,LBS,Bocconi.

INSEAD is a fantastic place to network.

Anyway, good luck.

[OSL]

Does anyone think that just staying in the US for the entire duration of the program would be a better investment of time?

2 years is not a very long period of time.

[Brodiaga]

I would choose INSEAD in Singapore, no contest.

[cibo]

(10-12-2013 03:32 AM)youngmobileglobal Wrote:  

Does anyone think that just staying in the US for the entire duration of the program would be a better investment of time?

2 years is not a very long period of time.

I think its worth planning to go aboard unless you don't have any secure offers or business options after the program by the end of the first year summer. Even then if if you want to work at a location that is not at your main school, you need to be there to really network.

The standard MBA program is pretty front loaded. Most of the work you do in beginning will set you up for the second year and post MBA. By the end off the first term to mid second term you should have an internship. If you kill it there over the summer, around 70% of interns get an offer, you'll have an offer at the end of summer to come back after your MBA. So in terms of job youre set.

When you arrive you start networking like crazy. By the end of the first year you pretty much have the class networked, have a solid set people to use for your teams/projects and probably can't get too much more opportunities out of that class. You could start moving to the rest of the school if you haven't done that but I feel it would be better to network across schools at that point since the marginal benefit per an hour spent networking is probably less than at another place.

For education, the core of the MBA is the first year. The second year is electives and specializations. You can move around a bit in your education in the second year without it really affecting you. It would probably help to check out another schools just to see how other people teach business. There is a good amount of varation in how it's taught. Quant vs qualitative, case vs lecture, corporate vs entrepreneur focused, etc.

Also there is the second year "don't give a shit factor". I and other people I've talked with have felt the same way. The last year you kind of got things figured out, grades don't matter so you are just trying to get through year. Most of the study aboard happens around this time for this reason so everyone else is gone too.

If I didn't have anything going for me I might double down on my efforts at my main school.

For sf vs London. Both are good choices.
Sv is the mecca for start ups and I'm sure good stuff can happen there. London is also good and underrated for startups. There is a lot of good talent there that would work for 2/3rds the price of the US salary. And the UK gov is going crazy trying to build a stasrt up scene so there's lots of government money and support.

[OSL]

(10-13-2013 05:38 PM)cibo Wrote:  

(10-12-2013 03:32 AM)youngmobileglobal Wrote:  

Does anyone think that just staying in the US for the entire duration of the program would be a better investment of time?

2 years is not a very long period of time.

I think its worth planning to go aboard unless you don't have any secure offers or business options after the program by the end of the first year summer. Even then if if you want to work at a location that is not at your main school, you need to be there to really network.

The standard MBA program is pretty front loaded. Most of the work you do in beginning will set you up for the second year and post MBA. By the end off the first term to mid second term you should have an internship. If you kill it there over the summer, around 70% of interns get an offer, you'll have an offer at the end of summer to come back after your MBA. So in terms of job youre set.

When you arrive you start networking like crazy. By the end of the first year you pretty much have the class networked, have a solid set people to use for your teams/projects and probably can't get too much more opportunities out of that class. You could start moving to the rest of the school if you haven't done that but I feel it would be better to network across schools at that point since the marginal benefit per an hour spent networking is probably less than at another place.

For education, the core of the MBA is the first year. The second year is electives and specializations. You can move around a bit in your education in the second year without it really affecting you. It would probably help to check out another schools just to see how other people teach business. There is a good amount of varation in how it's taught. Quant vs qualitative, case vs lecture, corporate vs entrepreneur focused, etc.

Also there is the second year "don't give a shit factor". I and other people I've talked with have felt the same way. The last year you kind of got things figured out, grades don't matter so you are just trying to get through year. Most of the study aboard happens around this time for this reason so everyone else is gone too.

If I didn't have anything going for me I might double down on my efforts at my main school.

For sf vs London. Both are good choices.
Sv is the mecca for start ups and I'm sure good stuff can happen there. London is also good and underrated for startups. There is a lot of good talent there that would work for 2/3rds the price of the US salary. And the UK gov is going crazy trying to build a stasrt up scene so there's lots of government money and support.

I'm pretty familiar with the London start up scene so feel free to ask me about that too.

Thanks!

I'm increasingly interested in LBS full time as well. I never took it very seriously but I've started to look into it in the past few days.

I definitely like certain aspects about the program:

1. London is a bona fide global capital on the scale of NYC

2. Gateway to Europe means plenty of opportunities to raid EE and France via chunnel and flights

3. It's the UK but it's also packed full of internationals

4. The program demands that all graduates are proficient in a second language by graduation, which says a lot about the nature of the program

5. Way more international students than any comparable American MBA program

Based on what I've heard, London seems like a rainier, more expensive, and more sprawled out version of NYC.

[cibo]

London shares a lot of similarities with New York.
Tier 1 global capitals
Financial and corporate capitals for their continent
Trying to set up a start up scene.
Good public transport
Culture is fairly similar

The real differences are:
more expensive
rains all the time, though milder weather than NYC
service is shit
everything closes by 10PM, except pubs at 12AM, and bars/clubs at 4AM-5AM.
You can get food from anywhere in the world but worse than its original country
International
gateway to the rest of Europe


Most of the world is more familiar with the top American MBA's, If you get Harvard/Standford/Wharton, you should take it.

After that, I think LBS competes well against the rest of the American MBA's, maybe after MIT. While Chicago, Northwestern and Columbia are great schools, they are only really known with business people, the same ones who know LBS anyway so it's pretty even at that point.

As for the LBS itself, like most British schools, it's very international in student cohort and focus. Having a international class of students helps out a lot when you start country hopping since you can get shown around by locals from your program. Also the campus is pretty nice, though a bit smaller than I expected when visited it. It's in North/Central London near Regent's park which is pretty picturesque and pretty easy to get to by Tube.

[paninaro]

(10-13-2013 11:56 PM)cibo Wrote:  

As for the LBS itself, like most British schools, it's very international in student cohort and focus. Having a international class of students helps out a lot when you start country hopping since you can get shown around by locals from your program. Also the campus is pretty nice, though a bit smaller than I expected when visited it. It's in North/Central London near Regent's park which is pretty picturesque and pretty easy to get to by Tube.

Yeah LBS doesn't have much of a campus. It's a couple buildings next to each other, and then the pub next to it is the defacto student watering hole. Note they did just buy the Marylebone Town Hall, which is huge, so that will be up and running in a few years. Their big constraint is the main campus buildings are somehow owned by the Queen/Kingdom, so for that and historical reasons they couldn't really expand them, thus they had to buy a building and expand into that.

Realize LBS is grad students only, so you won't find any cute undergrads running around. I think the nearest university with undergrads is UCL, which is technically a sister school since both are (loosely) part of University of London.

[cibo]

(10-17-2013 10:14 PM)paninaro Wrote:  

(10-13-2013 11:56 PM)cibo Wrote:  

As for the LBS itself, like most British schools, it's very international in student cohort and focus. Having a international class of students helps out a lot when you start country hopping since you can get shown around by locals from your program. Also the campus is pretty nice, though a bit smaller than I expected when visited it. It's in North/Central London near Regent's park which is pretty picturesque and pretty easy to get to by Tube.

Yeah LBS doesn't have much of a campus. It's a couple buildings next to each other, and then the pub next to it is the defacto student watering hole. Note they did just buy the Marylebone Town Hall, which is huge, so that will be up and running in a few years. Their big constraint is the main campus buildings are somehow owned by the Queen/Kingdom, so for that and historical reasons they couldn't really expand them, thus they had to buy a building and expand into that.

Realize LBS is grad students only, so you won't find any cute undergrads running around. I think the nearest university with undergrads is UCL, which is technically a sister school since both are (loosely) part of University of London.

While you won't find that many undergrads at LBS, there are a ton of students in London. UCL, London School of Economics, King's College, are all next to each other and about 15-25 minutes away from LBS. Then there's all those English schools for foreigners all around the town. With about 500k of students in London each year, if you hang around the center, you can hit on students and/or foreign girls all day.