Meet London Business School's MBA Class Of 2022

London Business School. File photo

P&Q: London Business School is regarded as one of the most globally-diverse business schools in the world, with around 90% of your MBA students hailing from outside the United Kingdom. How do you harness that global mindset in your classroom? How do you make diversity work for the benefit of your students?

DS: “London Business School’s academic strength and global outlook drives original and provocative business thinking. We aim to challenge conventional wisdom, transform careers and empower our people to change the way the world does business.

We work hard to create diverse classes – it’s why people apply to LBS after all. We carefully construct the classes, with no more than 15% of students coming from any one country. Study groups are built to maximise cultural, geographic and professional diversity. We also aim to recruit students who have different ways of approaching issues, as we believe diversity of thought is as important as where students are from.”

P&Q: LBS offers the flexibility of 15, 18, and 21 month MBA programs. Why does LBS maintain a 2 year MBA program compared to rival schools in Europe? Why does a 2-year experience give your MBA graduates an advantage in the marketplace?

DS: “For the full time MBA, the programme being structured over two years allows depth and breadth of study and experiential learning. The 15, 18 and 21-month completion points allow fast track options for those who want or need to return to full time work sooner. Many students join us thinking they will make use of these early exit points, but the vast majority end up staying the full length and having a flexible second year of internships, projects, experiential learning and even extra time for travel.

The internship(s) stands out as a major factor for the two year basic structure; giving students the opportunity to build on their experience, try something new for a short period, or make a significant transition, often through structured programmes. Two years also allows exchange to other schools, the Global Business Experience and other projects.”

This program flexibility is just one part of LBS that appealed to the Class of 2022. How else does the program differentiate itself? Here is what MBAs – past and present had to say…

London Business School students working on a project.

5 BENEFITS OF AN LBS MBA

1) Global Business Experience: “London Business School truly expands your international horizon. I chose LBS to expand my mind, experience, and network. For ‘mind’, I get to hear the perspectives of my classmates, who typically have around 5+ years of experience and worked around the world. For ‘experience’, LBS has the Global Business Experience (GBE) as part of the curriculum, where we applied what we learned in the classroom to empower a developing community. I attended the Johannesburg, South Africa GBE and it was one of the most eye-opening experiences I have ever had. For my network, now, if I ever needed advice or contacts to a part of the world that I have never been, I can now just reach out to the LBS community. LBS really fulfilled what I was looking for.
Joy Yang (’20)

2) London: “London is a fantastic place to earn an MBA because it is not only a global center of commerce that reflects all sectors and industries, it is also an extremely international, diverse, and culturally rich city. At LBS, I know I will have the opportunity to hear from business leaders ranging from local entrepreneurs to global CEOs. Outside of my LBS classrooms, I can explore, appreciate, and be challenged by global art, music, theater, and culture.”
Shalini Chudasama (’22)

“LBS is embedded in one of the most important, dynamic, and cosmopolitan cities in the world. Also, it is one of the world’s tech and financial hubs, two sectors that I am especially interested in. The mix of LBS and London offers great opportunities. There are opportunities to explore different internships and projects, to interact with prestigious speakers and acclaimed professors, and to get to know a big part of the alumni community.”
Lucía Donnangelo (’22)

3) Diversity: “The diversity at London Business School is second to none. In my MBA Class of 2019, there were students from more than 60 countries and everyone added value by sharing their life experience during classroom discussions, social and career events, and trips to their home country. While learning from incredible professors together with talented classmates, I traveled the world unlike any other time in my life. As part of the football club, we traveled to Spain, France, and Bulgaria. During my summer internship, I went to Kenya and worked at a venture capital firm focused on health-tech. Looking back at the two years at LBS, I see the world with a more global lens and that was a factor in my decision to work at a global firm like McKinsey.”
Junji Okawa (’19)

LBS students gathered after a speech

4) Tattoo: “Tattoo has become a traditional event in the LBS calendar that brings clubs together to showcase our diversity with food, drinks, music, and dancing. It has become so famous that a couple of friends from NYU Stern that I met during my exchange programme will travel to London just for it.”
Francisco Milan (’19)

“Our annual summer festival is the true embodiment of LBS’s open, welcoming, and inclusive culture and amazing student body. The school’s vast array of cultural and regional clubs (my MBA class has over 60 nationalities) join hands to put together an exciting evening with dance and cultural performances, culinary stalls, and other activities. Personally, Tattoo has been meaningful because of its live music stage. I sing lead vocals and play guitars for the LBS rock band, The 20 Pounders. Last year’s Tattoo performance was our first major gig together and this year we’re going to be headlining the festival.”
Sid Singh (’20)

5) Entrepreneurship: “I was very impressed by the entrepreneurial program at LBS; its connections into the European startup ecosystem and its world-class faculty are clear factors which made me consider LBS the ideal platform from which to enter the UK startup scene. The school also maintains an exchange program with UC Berkeley, which I’m hoping to leverage to gain exposure to the US tech culture.”
Sean Cornell

HOW TO GET ACCEPTED INTO LBS

What does it take to get accepted into the London Business School? Sid Singh, for one, boils it down to authenticity.

“I found the LBS interview process to be significantly more rigorous than my peers (mine lasted over 2 hours!). It’s clear that the adcom deeply values alumni feedback. As a result, make sure you spend time learning about the school, its offerings, and most importantly: what you REALLY bring to the community.”

In contrast, Admissions Director David Simpson seeks openness – tempered with an analytical mindset. “Above all for me is the idea of an inquiring mind – someone who’s fascinated by other views gathered from around the world, somebody who is open for personal growth,” he told P&Q in a 2020 interview. “A good business school program will help you to develop yourself in order to make good decisions. Making good decisions means taking on data and analyzing it – and data being people’s views and lots of different perspectives. For me, it’s being interested in those views, and also recognizing that you have to and want to share your experiences – those are two really important factors.”

What led the Class of 2022 to pursue an MBA? What did they do during the application process to increase their chances of being accepted at LBS? What have they been doing to prepare for business school? Find answers to these questions and more by clicking on the in-depth profiles of current London Business School MBA students below.

MBA Student	Hometown	Undergrad Alma Mater	Last Employer
Shalini Chudasama	Raleigh, NC	University of North Carolina	Bain & Company
Sean Cornell	Byron Bay, Australia	University of Melbourne	Educare Pty Ltd
Lucía Donnangelo	Montevideo, Uruguay	Universidad de Montevideo	Ciudadanos (Presidential Campaign)
Sijia Hao	Canton, MI	University of Michigan	Clear Energy Capital
Alexandra Lipski	Wellington, New Zealand	University of Auckland	Russell McVeagh
Christine Livet	Toronto, Canada	University of Ottawa	Open Capital Advisors
Emma Moberly	London, United Kingdom	Oxford University	The Wellcome Trust
Alex Parker	Winchester, United Kingdom	University of Southampton	Crondall Energy Consultants
Akhil Pawar	Mumbai, India	BITS, Pilani	Yunus Social Business
Tsepo Serakalala	Makhado, South Africa	University of Cape Town	Total SA
Katie Stolp	Washington, DC	James Madison University	The World Wide Web Foundation