Wall St. Journal rankings put ESADE at the forefront of the International MBA.

Based on recruiter assessment, ESADE replaced IMD as the top International School in the WSJ International MBA rankings 2006. With LBS coming in 4th, and Columbia 6th, MIT 7th and the other MBA Program here in Barcelona, IESE coming in 15th.

Obviously this is great news for all of us attending the school, as well as all future applicants. To be put in the forefront in recruiter rankings is a wonderful thing, and further justifies that my choosing ESADE was a great idea. Some of the things that were stressed by recruiters in their assessment of the program’s graduates were teamwork, co-operation, and lack of arrogance, which they found to be prominent at various other institutions of stature.

In addition, the Spanish newspaper el Pais, is coming to ESADE to take photos, and do an article on the school, its staff and students. So all in all, as you can assume, things are really going splendidly, everyone yesterday was on cloud 9, and tonight we have a career development forum until 20:00 and then off to my place for an accounting study session. Being first apparently does not come without a workload. :)

It’s a bit strange to be back in school

So week 1 is over, and we’re starting week 2. So what are my impressions? Well, first and foremost, I have to say that it is definitely strange to be in a classroom setting after a pretty long hiatus, and at first it took a bit of adjustment, especially since the first class of the day starts at 8am – and after two months of party, party, party, it’s quite the readjustment. Regardless, the classes are long, and the material is preparatory for the real term to start.

Yes, we are currently in pre-term, which is meant to get everyone up to the same level. A necessity when you have people coming from all sorts of different work backgrounds. For example – the Biotech Scientist (yes we have one), will hardly know anything about economics, or accounting, or the Lawyer, will hardly know anything about IT. And even for someone such as me who has two faculties in finance and management from undergrad, the refresher courses are quite helpful, since I hadn’t seen the stuff in years, esp. accounting.

So for all you who would like to know what it is specifically that we are taking, the list is as follows

• Business Law
• Accounting
• Economics
• Information Technology
• Statistics

Oh… and yes, most of us leave here at around 9:30pm, group work, homework, etc… is already in full swing, and the good part is – these teams are such a mix of different people / styles / backgrounds / etc… that butting heads is more or less inevitable. After all, aren’t international MBA’s also about learning how to work with people who have competencies utterly different from yours?

In the beginning – and we’re numero dos after Harvard!

In the beginning – and we’re numero dos after Harvard!

ESADE officially took off last Monday, and I have to say that I am very pleseantly impressed. From day one we were overwhelmed with massive amounts of work. For example last Monday I got home at 10pm – strictly from doing work on the 1st day of the program. This work, for all you who would like to inquire – was mostly in the nature of career services – we have to have our resumes in by the 5th in both English and Spanish. Consulting and I-Banking week after all starts October 16th. And we have to get ourselves prepared.

Tuesday and Wednesday saw us off to Cardona for a “getting to know your classmates / team-building sessions” – which as it turns out also involved some drinking afterwards at the local bar by the entire class, which in turn led to a very hard Wednesday in the sun (more team-building this time in the form of adult LEGO – trust me it was a blast).

Thursday we came back to more career services information sessions, and started with our CV reviews and pictures. Friday involved a lawyer info session for all the foreigners (aka non EU citizens) and a cultural awareness session along with more CV review.

But these are just the mundane semantics. I will say that the program is impressive, really impressive, you see that everyone at the school, admin, education, etc… resources and such, are really there to make the MBA as worthwhile as possible, the CSC (career services center) boasts a wealth of resources, so many in fact that now looking back at Tulane, it was laughable. ESADE rips it apart hands down, but I digress, and I’m rambling, and Introduction to Business Law is about to start, so I have to go.

Oh, and we’re No. 2 in HR right behind Harvard, and again top 5 in Europe. Check it here.