How to go to Fontainebleau from Paris

If you rely on the public transportation from Paris, you can take at Gare de Lyon the “Transilien R” , the train departs at 13:05. There is one every 30 minutes, so take this one for a session at 14:00 .  One way ticket costs 8.50 €. Once arrived at station “Fontainebleau Avon”,  take the bus ligne A or D at the outdoors. Do not go downstairs ,

Participant profile

• Female 33 %
• Average age : 29 years
• Years of experience : 5,5

INSEAD has got 4 main admission criteria:

• Academic (GMAT score, past year average GMAT score was 702)
• Leadership potential (managed a team of people, sport captain, fast career track)
• Contribute ( what you can bring on the table)
• International motivation (languages spoken , have worked abroad, travelled, willingness to have an international career … )

One key element is about languages , before you enter you must speak at least 2 languages. ( fluent English and practical another language). By practical I mean you can conduct a business meeting in the language. In order to graduate , you need a basic knowledge of a 3rd language.
That’s a great constraint for the typical North American who can only speak English as one’s native language.

Take a closer look at http://mba.insead.edu/admissions/languages.cfm

About the business school

There is 2 campus : one in Fontainebleau near Paris and the 2nd in Singapore. Possible to switch during the year depending the 5 periods (each period last 2 months) and do an exchange at Whaton or Kellog for a period. The MBA program lasts only 10 months.

If your intake is January instead of September, you can do an internship during July-August. It may be easier for a career switch.

Faculty members are rock stars

I first heard about “Blue Ocean Strategy” written by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne at INSEAD. In short ,a quote from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy

The metaphor of red and blue oceans describes the market universe.

Red Oceans are all the industries in existence today—the known market space. In the red oceans, industry boundaries are defined and accepted, and the competitive rules of the game are known. Here companies try to outperform their rivals to grab a greater share of product or service demand. As the market space gets crowded, prospects for profits and growth are reduced. Products become commodities or niche, and cutthroat competition turns the ocean bloody. Hence, the term red oceans.^[2]

Blue oceans, in contrast, denote all the industries not in existence today—the unknown market space, untainted by competition. In blue oceans, demand is created rather than fought over. There is ample opportunity for growth that is both profitable and rapid. In blue oceans, competition is irrelevant because the rules of the game are waiting to be set. Blue ocean is an analogy to describe the wider, deeper potential of market space that is not yet explored. ^[2]

I’m seeing that the building of mobile software is a Blue Ocean where most developers haven’t figured out how to monetize .  There is no defined rules now. Some say the market is saturated with joke apps, other say fart apps sell well. After reading this article

http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2010/07/mobile-developer-economics-the-building-blocks-of-mobile-applications/

My view

From my perspective INSEAD seems to be the best European MBA. Less French than HEC and IMD . On campus, I don’t feel to be in France. Out of the 8 visitors today, I was the only French person. Two couples (an American & a Chinese ) were in honeymoon in Europe, one Korean on business trip, one Spaniard on holiday, one Dutch working in Paris.

The campus is around the forest and a castle.

Tuition / Funds

If you’re admitted , you may wonder how about the fees.

One year costs 52 000 € ( accommodation and books not included ). 2,2 millions € are offered in scholarship funds . Here are some statistics  about the 994 participants in 2010:
- 19 % INSEAD scholarship
- 17 % company sponsored
- 64 % other ( self support)

The earlier  you apply , the better for the funds.  If you apply at round 1, there is still some scholarship left. By round 2, some lucky ones already got their scholarship. By round 3, you may have no scholarship left at all.

On the way to the school, I talked to one current student. She made a loan to support her education. What she was making in Africa was enough to cover the expense of one year living.

Campus

For those who can’t visit France and the campus in Fontainebleau, here are some photos I’d like to share with you.

If you look at the 5 answer choices , you can see 2 idiom ways  ( 3 answers, 2 answers ). Usually it’s a parallel construction. If you don’t see the faulty idiom, you can compare the answer like this.

A representative of the Internal Revenue Service usually finds most people are willing to cooperate during an audit, yet they become agitated, defensive, and suspect computer error.

• most people are willing to cooperate during an audit, yet they become agitated, defensive, and suspect
• most people to be willingly cooperative during an audit , and they are also agitated, defensive , and they suspect
• that most people are willing to cooperate during an audit, yet they become agitated, defensive , and suspicious of
• that people are mostly willing to cooperate during an audit, and they become agitated, defensive, and suspicious of
• that most people are willingly cooperative during an audit, yet they are becoming agitated, defensive, and suspect

The idiom is to recognize is find that. Because the two first don’t contain “that” you can eliminate them. You cansee  other 2/3 split patterns “to cooperate/cooperative” , “willing/willingly” . “to cooperate” and “willing” patterns are correct so eliminate E , only C and D remain.

A representative of the Internal Revenue Service usually finds most people are willing to cooperate during an audit, yet they become agitated, defensive, and suspect computer error.

• most people are willing to cooperate during an audit, yet they become agitated, defensive, and suspect
• most people to be willingly cooperative during an audit , and they are also agitated, defensive , and they suspect
• that most people are willing to cooperate during an audit, yet they become agitated, defensive , and suspicious of
• that people are mostly willing to cooperate during an audit, and they become agitated, defensive, and suspicious of
• that most people are willingly cooperative during an audit, yet they are becoming agitated, defensive, and suspect

The idiom is to recognize is find that. Because the 2 first don’t contain you can eliminate them. The easiest is done. Now how are C & D different ?
D is wrong because it used mostly to describe willing instead of “most people”. The two descriptions willing to cooperate and become agitated are contrary, therefore you should use yet, not and . So the final answer is C

• that most people are willing to cooperate during an audit, yet they become agitated, defensive , and suspicious of

Well if you have any questions related to the 2/3 split and better if you have a sentence correction , please feel free to post here

A representative of the Internal Revenue Service usually finds most people are willing to cooperate during an audit, yet they become agitated, defensive, and suspect computer error.

• most people are willing to cooperate during an audit, yet they become agitated, defensive, and suspect
• most people to be willingly cooperative during an audit , and they are also agitated, defensive , and they suspect
• that most people are willing to cooperate during an audit, and they become agitated, defensive , and suspicious of
• that people are mostly willing to cooperate during an audit, and they become agitated, defensive, and suspicious of
• that most people are willingly cooperative during an audit, yet they are becoming agitated, defensive, and suspect

The 1rst answer is always the same in the sentence.

Rather than cramming than lots of exercises., I’m giving you a good direction set, a “bullet proof” method. This GMAT type of question tests your grammar skills.
ETS defends a correct answer because all the others are worse. The other answers have minor grammtical flaws . This leads to “Process of Elimination”

1. DO NOT rephrase the sentence in your head and look for a match among the choices
2. Train yourself to find grammatical mistakes
3. Get rid of the choices that have the same grammatical flaw as the original sentence
4. Use Process of Elimination to play the answer choices off each other.
5. If you’re down to tqwo choices, find the flaw in the wrong one.

My advice for quality webhost is to select a small firm good on technical side. The big ones make money from the numbers, they don’t mind losing some since they know they’re the cheapest. Take godaddy.com, look at their ads and google for “support godaddy review”.

My initial choice before hostgator.com was infomaniak.ch ( good support team and technical expertise) but I found out the multidomain was not possible. So some names came at the final : hostgator, bluehost, dreamhost. Since fast and reliable support is important for me. I chose hostgator.

Here is my experience with hostgator, in less than 24 h, I exchanged 4 tickets. All their answers have been less than 30 minutes on a Sunday.  The longest task was to transfer my domain name so they become my registar, it took maybe 2 hours. I find myself very productive. I don’t have to focus on system administration , I can focus on blogging only.

Things aside, I read blog posts from Bluehost president Matt Headon and Hostgator president Brent Oxley. Just funny to read 2 founders trash each other openly.
http://www.10-cheapwebhosting.com/BlueHost-vs-HostGator.php

Don’t waste time on solving

Answer the question correctly, you need to whether sufficient information is given. Remember you only have about one minute for each question (13-14 Data Sufficency included in the 37 quantitative questions for 75 minutes) . No calculations is required, so if you find yourself scratching calculus on paper , you’re in the wrong way. Everything is stated , don’t look for extra information.

Remember the question patterns

• (A) Statement (1) ALONE is sufficient, but statement (2) alone is NOT sufficient
• (B) Statement (2) ALONE is sufficient, but statement (1) alone is NOT sufficient
• (C) BOTH statements TOGETHER are sufficient, but NEITHER statement ALONE is sufficient
• (D) EACH statement ALONE is sufficient
• (E) Statement (1) and (2) TOGETHER are NOT sufficient to answer the question asked, and additional data are needed

Remember well this pattern, it’s the same for all along the test. At first consider each statement independently. Do statement (1) alone is sufficient to answer ? Same for (2) ? Then judge the statements in tandem.
If the two statements don’t provide enough, it’s only (C) and (E). In (C) you have information from both statement, don’t look for anything else. In (E) statements are unrelated to the question.
Now it’s possible, you answer Yes to (A) and (B) so pick up (D).
Some people mistake (C) and (D), if you answered NO to (A) & (B) then it’s definitely (C).

Example

Question

what is the value of xy – yz ?
(1) y=2
(2) x-z=5

Answer

(A) NO
(B) NO
xy – yz = y*(x-z) = statement (1)*(2)
=2*5=10 ( but remember we don’t calculation) . Calculation is a luxury here.
Both statement provide enough information in tandem. So it’s (C)

Questions

Well if you have unresolved questions or your strategies at taking this test. Please feel free to post them.

Lately I tried to run pages (“activity” in android terminology). What I want to achieve is the “page naviguation” through the re-use of the same class. In the android framework , a layout is associated with one activity which is inherited by a class. I don’t want to manage as many layouts/class as many questions. I want to break this triple layout/class/activity .
After some search I found this link
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2298816/how-to-create-multiple-instances-of-an-activity

Here is the ‘magic code’. In the class “demo”, the method newActivity calls itself ( sort of recursive ).

public void newActivity (){
    	Intent i = new Intent(this, demo.class);
      	i.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
      	startActivity(i);
    }

After selecting the right answer, the user has to confirm by click on Next button to get the next question. In the flow, when the user clicks on the button, another activity is called.

setContentView(R.layout.main);
Button btn = (Button) findViewById(R.id.Next);
btn.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {

            public void onClick(View view) {
            	newActivity(); // this method contains the intent to go to the next question

            }

        });

To verify we access to the next activity, I implemented a static “count” incrementing for new activity. The complete code source should look like

package com.gmat;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.widget.TextView;
import android.widget.Button;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.view.View;

// http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2298816/how-to-create-multiple-instances-of-an-activity

public class demo extends Activity {
	private static int count;
	public String[] questions = { "Is x an integer ?\n(1) x/2 is an integer \n(2) 2x is an integer",
			"What is the value of x ? \n(1)2x + 1=0 \n(2) (x+1)²=x²",
			"What is the value of 1/k + 1/r ? \n(1) k+r = 20 \n(2) kr = 64" };

    /** Called when the activity is first created. */
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.main);

        TextView quest = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.question);
        Button btn = (Button) findViewById(R.id.Next);

        if (count<3){
        	quest.setText(count + "  " + questions[count]);
        }
        else{
        	quest.setText(count + " questions " );
        }

        btn.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {

            public void onClick(View view) {
            	newActivity();

            }

        });

    }

    public void newActivity (){
    	Intent i = new Intent();
 		i.setClass(this, demo.class);
      	i.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
      	startActivity(i);
      	count++;
    }
}

Here below is the layout of “Data Sufficiency” type and its tricks.
The answer are  radiobuttons which are themselves groupped in a radiogroup .
Notice the inner RelativeLayout inside the main LinearLayout make the tricks of alignment.
Learn about this
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2386866/how-to-align-views-at-the-bottom-of-the-screen

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:orientation="vertical"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    >
	<TextView
		android:id="@+id/question"
	    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
	    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
	    android:text="@string/question"
	    android:textSize="17dip"
	    android:textStyle="bold"
	    />

	<RelativeLayout
    android:id="@+id/InnerRelativeLayoutQuestions"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_centerInParent="true" >

		<RadioGroup android:layout_width="fill_parent"
		android:layout_height="wrap_content"
		android:orientation="vertical"
		android:id="@+id/radiogroup1">

			<RadioButton android:text="@string/data_suf_a"
				android:id="@+id/Rep1"
				android:layout_width="wrap_content"
				android:layout_height="wrap_content"
				android:textSize="@dimen/txtdatasuf">
			</RadioButton>
			<RadioButton android:text="@string/data_suf_b"
				android:id="@+id/Rep2"
				android:layout_width="wrap_content"
				android:layout_height="wrap_content"
				android:textSize="@dimen/txtdatasuf">
			</RadioButton>
			<RadioButton android:text="@string/data_suf_c"
				android:id="@+id/Rep3"
				android:layout_width="wrap_content"
				android:layout_height="wrap_content"
				android:textSize="@dimen/txtdatasuf">
			</RadioButton>
			<RadioButton android:text="@string/data_suf_d"
				android:id="@+id/Rep4"
				android:layout_width="wrap_content"
				android:layout_height="wrap_content"
				android:textSize="@dimen/txtdatasuf">
			</RadioButton>
			<RadioButton android:text="@string/data_suf_e"
				android:id="@+id/Rep5"
				android:layout_width="wrap_content"
				android:layout_height="wrap_content"
				android:textSize="@dimen/txtdatasuf">
			</RadioButton>
		 </RadioGroup>
    </RelativeLayout>

    <RelativeLayout
        android:id="@+id/InnerRelativeLayout"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_alignParentBottom="true" >

		<Button android:text="Next"
			android:id="@+id/Next"
			android:layout_alignParentRight="true"
			android:layout_width="wrap_content"
			android:layout_height="wrap_content">
		</Button>

    </RelativeLayout>

</RelativeLayout>

For the following I’m just talking about the Full Time MBA program.

International exchange / double degree

Interested in international exposure ? Most non French (83% students body) chose this school for learning a new culture.

The exchange program allows students to spend a semester at the foreign school. There is “no” cost involved, but you pay the full program to HEC.

Whereas the double degree  provides 2 degrees, so access to 2 alumni networks. The tuition is payable pro rata temporis. Note the admissions processes are independant, so you can get admitedd to HEC and not to the other of your choice and vice-versa. I talked to several students one was going to an exchange with MIT Sloan , another a whole at Tsinghua SEM.

You have to read between the lines when they “double degree”, it doesn’t necessarily mean double MBA.
- LSE (Msc of economy)
- MIT Sloan MSMC (Msc Management Studies)

Participant profile

Average GMAT 682
Age (years) : 24 – 37
Average years of experience : 6
Really cosmopolitan students

Tuition fees 45 000 €

Life on Campus

Make your impression on these photos (dorms, campus, building, facilities)

The students from “Grande Ecole” (bachelor/master) program are completely separate from the MBA students. Different building , different accomodation building , some MBA teachers may teach at “grande ecole” …

GMAT

During the roundtables, one student was talking about his GMAT preparation. He spent over 1000 € on books only , one of his friend more than 2000 € over night courses. The guy gave me useful tips : he trained on all the books I had except the Manhattan Review which explains in detail each question type ( Sentence correction, problem solving … )

If some applicants are willing to spend this budget, GMATRayview can complement their studies in the bus , train …  with over 400 000 GMAT test taker a year, if subscripters are willing to spend 10 €/month, the figures look promising.

GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test) is one of the few requirements for a MBA admission. Maybe should be the first step. Basically the  steps to apply for  MBA are :
- GMAT
- essays ( you make up stories of your professional accomplishments )
- recommandation letters
- interviews

I purchased “How to get to the top MBA programs” by Richard Montauk, but I haven’t digged into much . However I know most Business schools require the 4 above steps. If someone has a summary

What’s GMATRayview for ?

I started this blog as a way to share my preparation and all the materials for an MBA . Past year one post-PHD friend was a rat-lab, she opened a blog to share her marathon training labs and for fund-raising her cause : Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. It kept her focus with a goal. The pre-MBA admission is like a marathon too, it takes a long preparation at least 18 months between the moment you start digging into it and the moment you ‘re admitted.

My interest in mobile developement (Android platform) had instilled me into an entrepreneurship. While there’s still of materials on amazon.com or great ressources on the web, I find there’s lack on Android devices (and iPhone) . Sharing knowledge belongs to the programmer & open source culture. While commuting I want to invest this time on the GMAT experience. This side project is perfect for me as it combines Android , GMAT, MBA, business schools (I’ll share the visit of some here)

So GMATRayview is a GMAT test running on any Android devices.

For non-geeky , Android is an OS by Google used in mobile phones . So if you don’t own any devices running Android, this blog can still provide insights.

Entrepreneurship

This project is an experiment with few € invested. I want to avoid the classic start up conundrum :
- great idea
- search for investors
- monetize ?? we don’t figure out to make money

In my head  the typical  picture of an entrepreneur is someone who drops out of school and builds one’s business. Incompatible with an MBA ? No,  education still helps but it doesn’t make a career.