The Application Process

Hello Folks,

ESADE is a school which culminates flexibility, team work and diversity. I got a glimpse of that within the 2 days of my visit.

The first day started early at 8:00 am with an individual case study. There were 7 candidates who had to prepare a paper presentation on a particular case within 45 minutes, which they had to present during their interview in the evening. At around 9:00 am we met all the invited candidates for the day. There were more than 50 candidates representing around 14 nationalities.

We were ushered into a large classroom and received a warm welcome from the directors of adcom and career services. After a short break at around 11:45 am we had a presentation by the members of the 'Consulting Club'. The better halves were invited to a presentation by the 'Better Halves' club. The most exciting part of the day's agenda was a class on Business Model by one of the professors, Luis Vives. It was informative, humorous and probably one of the most interesting classes of my life. After lunch break, we had a formal interaction session with the first year alumni. They provided a nice snap shot of ESADE's students' community and MBA life. I had my interview scheduled at around 5:30 pm in the evening. It was less formal and my interviewer was a nice and decent lady, an Associate Director of Admissions. She made me feel at ease from the very beginning and was interested to know me better without being too intriguing.
I was a bit exhausted at the end of the day, but the whole experience for me was both inspiring and enlightening.

The second day started at around 9:30 am with breakfast alongwith first year alumni and members of the admission committee. We were divided into groups for the day's activities. The first activity of the day was to read, analyse and prepare an individual presentation on an M&A case study. Each individual had about 5 minutes to present their case. After that there was 40 mins preparation time for a 5 mins group presentation on the same case. I had never done a formal case study in my career, but enjoyed the experience thoroughly. The afternoon activity was to recreate an exact replica of a LEGO model kept in the main classroom. The rule was each member can go the main classroom, take a look and then come back and help his group build the model. Two of the groups were really fast and completed the model before the stipulated time. There were prizes for the winning team. We had a wonderful wrap up session with a slideshow of the whole day's pictures taken by an alumnus, an inspiring presentation by the adcom and gift packages distributed to all the prospective candidates.

''It is really important to test drive an expensive German car before buying'' - was one of the concluding sentences by an associate director and I can emphasize that my visit to ESADE has been an insightful experience for me.

Hope to be a part of this great school this fall.

Regards,
Swagata Dhar

Nice words about the school.

BTW, what was the agenda of your visit ? have u applied to esade ?

As I have mentioned, I had my interview on 28th.

Regards,
Swagata Dhar

I am sorry i missed that. Are you a resident of Spain ? or traveled from somewhere ?

Wow !!!! it feels nice to read this story...Any idea when will esade announce interview results...

Some of the results for Round 2 have already been declared.

I am keeping my fingers crossed....did they tell u by when they shall be declaring ur results..

I applied in round 1 and was admitted.

They have some sort of application committee that holds a meeting once a week, as a result you usually get your decision within 7 days after the interview.

Hi Bln 123,

Thanx for the info.

I had a face to face interview with Mary Granger (Associate Director - admissions & career services) last week in Mumbai.According to me , the interview went well , rest lets see what happens.

I saw few of your posts on this forum , so finally where are you going Cambridge or Oxford ?? and how did you decide as I think its not an easy choice to make.

Best of luck anyways.

Got an admit from ESADE for the Fall 2011 MBA Program...Ecstatic !!!!!!

I got accepted at ESADE and I am super excited to start my MBA this September. But I am struggling with financial planning stuff.