First Impressions
OK !! I am finally here in Madrid. What a place !
The city is just amazing. A lovely place to spend a very important year.
But to cut to the chase, what are my first impressions of IE ?
The buildings and the infrastructure
There are some 5-6 buildings that we IMBA (to rhyme with Simba, as in 'The Lion King') folks use on a regular basis. They're all adjacent to each other, or across the road from each other.
There are no sports facilities, but that's not a bother. Madrid has lots of opportunities for this. Anyway, I'd rather attend school in the heart of the business district, and have no sports facilities, rather than have a sprawling campus located in the middle of nowhere!
The infrastructure is top-of-the-line. Wi-Fi access, good classrooms, vending machines everywhere, printing/xeroxing facilities, the day's FT/WSJ copies available at entrances to all buildings, it's all there.
The support staff
The student office folks are great. They're more than willing to help with issues ranging from Spanish translations, pointers to restaurants/bars nearby, Immigration issues, bank accounts... the works!
The content
It's still early days to comment on this, but already, one thing is clear. All courses manage to weave in some angle of entrepreneurship! Everything is taught using cases, and most professors use YouTube a lot. That keeps people awake in class, for sure!
The people
This is the main thing, isn't it? Well, the calibre of my batch is way more than anything I'd imagined. Not just the calibre, but also the make-up of the batch, and the maturity. It's a tad older than I'd expected, with most of the people in their early thirties.
No, I'm not going to put out the usual BS about 'ohh, my workgroup of 6 people has 6 nationalities', 'I had lunch with a Lebanese, coffee with an Italian, and sit next to an Egyptian' and other such nonsense. The batch is amazingly diverse, period!
The city is just amazing. A lovely place to spend a very important year.
But to cut to the chase, what are my first impressions of IE ?
The buildings and the infrastructure
There are some 5-6 buildings that we IMBA (to rhyme with Simba, as in 'The Lion King') folks use on a regular basis. They're all adjacent to each other, or across the road from each other.
There are no sports facilities, but that's not a bother. Madrid has lots of opportunities for this. Anyway, I'd rather attend school in the heart of the business district, and have no sports facilities, rather than have a sprawling campus located in the middle of nowhere!
The infrastructure is top-of-the-line. Wi-Fi access, good classrooms, vending machines everywhere, printing/xeroxing facilities, the day's FT/WSJ copies available at entrances to all buildings, it's all there.
The support staff
The student office folks are great. They're more than willing to help with issues ranging from Spanish translations, pointers to restaurants/bars nearby, Immigration issues, bank accounts... the works!
The content
It's still early days to comment on this, but already, one thing is clear. All courses manage to weave in some angle of entrepreneurship! Everything is taught using cases, and most professors use YouTube a lot. That keeps people awake in class, for sure!
The people
This is the main thing, isn't it? Well, the calibre of my batch is way more than anything I'd imagined. Not just the calibre, but also the make-up of the batch, and the maturity. It's a tad older than I'd expected, with most of the people in their early thirties.
No, I'm not going to put out the usual BS about 'ohh, my workgroup of 6 people has 6 nationalities', 'I had lunch with a Lebanese, coffee with an Italian, and sit next to an Egyptian' and other such nonsense. The batch is amazingly diverse, period!
Nice blog!! Keep it up !
ReplyDeleteI am also an IE MBA Aspirant.This blog is on my bookmarks now.
What about the local crowd, cuisine, infrastructure etc etc?
~MNS