MIT Sloan

Hello

Continuing my series of business school visits, let me tell you about the MIT Sloan information session that I visited 2 weeks ago.

The event took place at the Nomura building (there are strong ties between Sloan and the Japanese bank) @ Central London. I arrive at six on a Friday, and there are drinks to welcome us. The presentation begins with senior people from the Adcom giving a brief introduction to the school & telling us about their trek across Europe giving information sessions. The Head of Nomura HR briefly talks about the strong relationship between the two institutions, and that Nomura will be looking for Sloanies when they graduate!

After the introductions, the presentation begins. We start with information about the school and its culture. A few things to highlight here. MIT has a flexible & bespoke curriculum after the first semester core. There is also an emphasis placed on the G-Lab and other famous MIT tracks. The integrated campus is another plus point, with Sloanies able to interact with other parts of MIT.

This is followed by information on the admission's process. Nothing new to say here other than (i) The MIT Cover letter question is unique so don't copy and paste from your other essays and (ii) Don't go over the (requested) 2 professional recommendations (bummer! My peer reference is great!).

The talk is interspersed with videos from current students. Since these videos are run off a laptop, a reminder pops up for renewing the anti-virus software halfway through. This draws a couple of laughs from the audience.......

Next is the familiar Q&A session with alumni. With........at least 15 students! They stand in a row and talk about their background/experiences. A very mixed and diverse group of alumni, all doing various different things (with investment banking & consultancy prevalent again). One alumni tells a funny story about driving Krugman (the famous Economist) and his wife to a dinner. Apparently Krugman instructed the alumni to drive through a tight spot........and the car got scraped. Surreal! Drinks follow.

Overall, another useful information event which highlighted the strengths of Sloan and provided some handy tips for the app process. It also felt slightly more informal than the HBS/Stanford sessions. However I think there were too many alumni on the Q&A panel. I would have preferred a more in depth Q&A session with say 5 or 6 alumni, and then invite the others to drinks after. I guess they wanted to have everyone involved!

Finalising my Sloan application as we speak......