Meet The HEC Paris MBA Class of 2017

Amalia Bejinaru     

HEC Paris

Hometown: Bucharest, Romania

Undergraduate School and Major: University of Bucharest – Law Degree, Unievrsite Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne – Law Degree; Universite Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne – Master 1 in European Law

Employers and Job Titles Since Graduation: Bulboaca&Associates: Junior Associate, Associate

Recalling your own experience, what advice do you have for applicants who are preparing for either the GMAT or the GRE? Preparing for the GMAT is indeed a very daunting process, especially if you have a full time job at the same time. In my opinion, the key to getting a 700+ score is exercise and discipline. Although I did not take any time off from my job, for three months I submitted myself to a very strict schedule and exploited evenings and weekends to their fullest. Less social activity, more sports, and complete focus helped me achieve a very good mindset when studying. Moreover, I suggest that applicants prepping for the GMAT focus more on plain exercising and understanding the detailed answers to the exercises rather than spending too much time on literally studying math, grammar, and so on.

Based on your own selection process, what advice do you have for applicants who are trying to draw up a list of target schools to which to apply? When drawing up the list of target schools, I think it is ideal to know what you want to do after graduation. However, when you’re considering a career change (as in my case), this is not a very efficient criterion because it is highly possible to change your mind while in graduate school. Therefore, my main criteria were related to location (I only wanted to apply to schools in Europe); rankings (I only targeted the top 5 schools in Europe); and specialisation (I looked up schools well-reputed for luxury industry and consulting). Of course, tuition fees, living expenses, and scholarships were also a decisive factor. So my main advice for applicants is to do a brainstorming and put down on a piece of paper what they wish to achieve from an MBA and then do a very extensive research on schools to see which would be a good fit for achieving their objectives. Last but not least, before applying, one should try to get in contact with at least an alumnus from each of the targeted schools to get valuable insights on how the school actually is.

What advice do you have for applicants in actually applying to a school, writing essays, doing admission interviews, and getting recommenders to write letters on your behalf? As I said before, applicants should start by finding alumni who’ll share their experience and insights with them. This valuable information does not only help in deciding whether to apply to a school or not, but also helps you better tailor your application to the school profile. Writing essays should be an honest exercise where you want to avoid clichés and standard statements that presumably impress admissions officers. Be true to yourselves and this will be appreciated much more than telling the admissions officers what you believe they wish to hear. The same advice goes for interviews. Interviewers are alumni and, in most cases. they only want to make sure you would be a good fit to the school and vice versa. Make the best of the interviews and make sure they are not unilateral. On the contrary, applicants should use them in order to find out more about the school, the MBA experience, career perspectives, and maybe even convince themselves that an MBA is a good choice for them. My admission interviews helped me choose the school and even changed my mind about my initial career plans post-graduation. Equally important, I got to meet very interesting people with whom I kept in touch (including the alumni from the schools I eventually rejected).

What led you to choose this program for your full-time MBA? HEC Paris was the best fit for me for several reasons: Location (not only do I love the proximity to Paris, but on-campus location outside Paris contributes a lot to getting a great MBA experience), reduced size of intake, its great reputation for luxury industry, and the very good progress it has made in both European and global rankings in the past few years. The financial part was also important: Tuition fees are slightly lower than the rest top European business schools and living on campus means lower living expenses. On top of that, HEC Paris awarded me a significant scholarship. Last but not least, I chose the HEC Paris MBA following some long talks with one of my best friends who already graduated from the same program and who convinced me why this is the best choice I could make for my future career.

What would you ultimately like to achieve before you graduate? Before I graduate I would like to get a clear idea on which direction I want my career to take after graduation. Overall, I want to be fully engaged in this experience and I hope I will be able to make the best of this experience by making many friends with diverse cultural and professional backgrounds and by learning from them as much as possible.