Pandemic Or Not, INSEAD Students Trek To School’s New San Francisco Hub

Some of the master’s in management students at INSEAD’s San Francisco hub

UNIQUE TWISTS TO INSEAD’S MIM PROGRAM

Besides its prestigious brand value, INSEAD was able to bring a couple of unique twists to the program. MIM students would study on INSEAD campuses in both France and Singapore to learn from international classmates and faculty. Field trips to Abu Dhabi, China or the U.S. would inform a cross-cultural capstone experience. The program is divided into five eight-week periods, with each period composed of two weeks of experiential practical blocks. Those blocks are meant to allow students to apply what they’ve learned to real-life business scenarios.

The faculty also designed the program so that there would be 10 months of classes split between Fontainebleau and Singapore and then four-to-six months of work experience. But itā€™s flexible. ā€œIf you find a full-time offer, you can do that but if you have to be an intern for six months, the program allows you to do that,ā€ says Seguret.

That approach–and INSEAD’s reputation–brought a flood of applicants to the ā‚¬49,000 program. Francesca Fitzgerald, who was about to graduate from the University of Oxford with a bachelor’s degree in modern languages, was attracted to INSEAD for its global construct and diversity. “I knew I would meet people from all over the world, but it’s not just that,” says Fitzgerald, who came to San Francisco for the immersion. “It’s meeting people with wildly different backgrounds and views of the world.” Another draw was the opportunity to study in three countries: France, Singapore, and the U.S. “It was an opportunity I didn’t want to miss.”

‘I SAW THE PROGRAM AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO BE PART OF THE HISTORY OF INSEAD’

Dogaru saw the program as a way to build on his undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Warwick which led to six-month internship with Deloitte Consulting. “At that point,” he says, “I knew I wanted to go into the business world but my undergrad was too theoretical for my liking. So the program was a good complement between my theoretical training and the applied knowledge in the program.”

He had no qualms about being a guinea pig in a new program. “It’s always a bit of a risk when you try something new but I also saw it as an opportunity to be part of the history of INSEAD,” says Dogaru.

With an initial enrollment goal of 80 students, INSEAD instead enrolled a class of 98. ā€œThe first year surprised us,ā€ says Seguret. ā€œWe didnā€™t expect to be above the initial target of 80 students, and we had to say ā€˜noā€™ to some talent. While we are still in the last round (of applications) for our second cohort, we should land at a 40% increase to 120 to 140 students.ā€

‘THIS YOUNGER GENERATION CAN RUN FASTER THAN YOU COULD IMAGINE’

In the first group of students, COVID forced several to postpone their studies, and 93 recently completed the academic portion of the program. Fitzgerald, for example, landed a full-time job will with the Boston Consulting Group in Portugal, while Dogaru has lined up a six-month consulting internship with PwC in Bucharest. Gaens will be doing a three-month internship with a shipping company in Copenhagen before starting a full-time job with A.T. Kearney in Brussels.

In the end, any concern about teaching a younger age group was misplaced. ā€œThe maturity of this group is remarkable,ā€ says Seguret. ā€œMaybe we were prejudiced to think that at 20 to 22 you would come with a certain mindset but we saw young people elevate themselves to a level equal to the MBAs. They could have conversation with MBA students in a way where you wouldnā€™t think that person was just 22 years old. If anything, this younger generation can run faster than you would imagine.ā€

Gaens was in his final year of a master’s program in aerospace engineering at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands when he applied for the program with a GMAT score of 770 (the middle 80% scores for the first cohort are 620 and 730). “Over the years, I realized that I didn’t see myself working as an engineer,” he says. “I’ve always been broadly interested in a lot of things. That’s when I started thinking about a master’s in management.”

A few students in INSEAD’s first master’s in management cohort at the school’s San Francisco hub

HE THOUGHT IT WAS A COLD AND THEN LOST ALL SENSE OF TASTE AND SMELL

He applied and was admitted to both London Business School and INSEAD. He found the academics refreshing and challenging. “For me, everything was new and diverse. A lot was thrown at you, especially in the beginning.”

The program started in-person and then, a mere week into period two, classes were suspended in France due to the pandemic. “We had a few COVID cases in Fountainebleu,” says Gaens, who felt as if he were catching a cold. He took a COVID test on the morning of Nov. 6th and by the afternoon–before getting the results–he lost both his taste and smell. “Two friends from the same building tested and were positive. In the evening, I got the results back and was positive.”

After a mild bout, when he was confined to his room for roughly three weeks, Gaens was out. In period three, classes were back in-person.

‘THE BIG TAKEAWAY FOR STUDENTS IS HOW TO THINK ABOUT INNOVATION’

A highlight of the program for several students was a case-study based course on valuation taught by Adrian Buss and Laurence Capron. Students had to build financial models in spreadsheets and effectively do a mergers and acquisition transaction. “Everything aligned in that course,” recalls Gaens, “from the financials to the strategic analysis of acquisitions.”

While the pandemic made other in-person immersions to the Middle East and China impossible, the high vaccination rate in the U.S. along with the low coronavirus case counts allowed INSEAD to schedule the San Francisco field trip just after the academic commencement on June 19th. So from June 22 through June 25th, they were holed up at the new center for the first immersion of the program.

Gopi Rangan, an adjunct professor of entrepreneur at INSEAD and the founding partner of an early stage venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, runs the course. “We are trying to give them the flavor of Silicon Valley by meeting people here and by showing them how products are built. Every one is enamored with Silicon Valley and everyone wants to learn why there are so many successful entrepreneurs here. The big takeaway for students is how to think about innovation.”

‘AI IS A HAMMER LOOKING FOR A NAIL’

During his hour-and-one-half lecture, Lutz, who also teaches at Cornell Tech in New York City, is trying to take some of the mystery out of the Valley. “There is no magic in Silicon Valley,” he says. “People who say that AI is a computer acting intelligent. It’s BS. It’s not about computers thinking. It’s about computers being designed to be more efficient. AI is a hammer looking for a nail.”

When the morning class is over, students gather in teams for a hackathon, then break for lunch, before hearing a Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur and investor speak about the culture of innovation there.

In a more typical immersion, Rangan would lead students on visits to Facebook and Google and several startups. He hopes that will be the drill when INSEAD MBA students come back in April of next year. This time, however, everything was centered in INSEAD’s San Francisco hub. But Rangan says it was invigorating to finally have students in the center after months of teaching remotely from an empty classroom here.

Even with those limitations, the students are just happy to be here. Six of them have gotten vaccines while in the U.S. and they are simply grateful to have made the journey here. Dogaru, for one, says he would do the program again without hesitation. So would his classmates.

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