Lisa Piguet, Associate Director MBA Admissions & Marketing (My interview with her is here.), was kind enough to take time out of her schedule to meet me and give me a tour of the campus. As this meeting was off the record, in a future post, Lisa will be answering some questions that I will be posing to her. What follows are just some of my general impressions.
IMD’s campus occupies a very lovely spot on Lausanne’s lakefront. IMD’s corporate
education programs occupy a considerable portion of the beautiful campus. The MBA students directly benefit in terms of
the quality of the infrastructure. In addition to a beautiful campus, there is
free coffee everywhere (Nestle is a major corporate contributor to IMD), water
fountains that offer water with or without gas, and the legendary lunch buffet.
The day I visited, classes were not in session. Instead,
students were working on projects. Some were on-site around the world. Others were meeting with their teams. Each team has a room, where they essentially
live a great deal of the time. Their
study area also includes a nap room. Partners are well integrated into the program and play an active role in
student life. As IMD students are quite
busy, it is the partners who typically organize parties for the class of 90
students.
Anyone who knows about IMD’s intensive interview process, a
day-long event held either on or off campus knows that IMD carefully selects
students. The essays and written
application are comparatively the easier part of the process. Given the class size, there is very little
room for error.
While I could not observe the formal interview process, I
was fortunately on campus during an interview day and got to see the applicants
at lunch. Dressed in suits, on a hot
spring day, while everyone else was wearing business casual, I felt sorry for
them. The applicants were having lunch
with the students. This is part of the
interview process. I guess one advantage
of interviewing off-campus in Singapore would be air conditioning in summer,
but seeing the campus is itself is quite something. Just assume that whatever
you do during interview day, you are being observed.
Lisa was kind enough to invite a group of students to have
lunch with us and answer my questions.
Some members of IMD’s class of 2012 were kind enough to have lunch with me (from left to
right): Aswini Gauthama Sankar, Hidefumi Hatakeyama, Me, Xose Diaz Queijeiro, He
Yang (Lotus), Thibaut Girard, and Jorge Ortega.
IMD is a highly self-selecting program, given its intensity
and leadership focused general management education. The students seemed quite happy with the
program and embraced its intensity. They
were a very mature group, many intending to make major career transitions,
while others were focused on further developing their careers within the same
industry. They all seemed to really
enjoy the unique leadership focus of the program, which addresses the
interpersonal and psychological aspects of leadership. All had very positive things to say about the
therapy sessions that are part of the leadership program.
Having lunch with so many corporate education students, also
gives the MBA students opportunities for networking on a constant basis. It was easy to see how lunch and coffee
everywhere would provide easy opportunities for networking.
Lunch at IMD is equal to that of any great hotel’s buffet.
The cuisine on offer was highly international. No other MBA program can even
come close in respect to lunch. Both an
alumnus I talked to in Brussels (a former client) and the students I met with,
emphasized how much the 1.5 hours they have for lunch is really the only major time
they have to relax during the day. It
seemed like a very nice 1.5 hours.
-Adam Markus
I am a graduate admissions consultant who works with clients worldwide. If you would like to arrange an initial consultation, please complete my intake form. Please don't email me any essays, other admissions consultant's intake forms, your life story, or any long email asking for a written profile assessment. The only profiles I assess are those with people who I offer initial consultations to. Please note that initial consultations are not offered when I have reached full capacity or when I determine that I am not a good fit with an applicant.
