- There are two pre-program courses, 98% of your business classmates coming from a Business background will say they are a joke and not to bother with them. If you are like me and do not have a VERY solid accounting background, take the pre course material seriously (or go through Wall Street Prep - coupon code in my post titled "Studying") if all else fails push yourself through this course: http://www.accountingcoach.com.
- If you do not have a business background read all of the pages off of this website: http://www.quickmba.com/, then anywhere that you do not understand an item or topic covered look it up (investopedia.com may become your best friend here) and write it on your print outs until you are comfortable to speak about all of these in a matter of fact manner.
- ''I'm here to learn''. No you are not. I came with this extremely false impression and am running around like a chicken with my head cut off. The people who are getting the most out of this program are the ones who studied business in undergrad. The students you see running around and sleep deprived are those of us with an undergrad degree in Biochemistry or Engineering. Learn from my mistakes and as soon as you are accepted into the school look at the list of the courses you will be taking, then go to coursera.org (and all of the sites mentioned above) and take whatever free version of these courses is offered, that way you will get more out of the classes (by having a foundation) and more out of the networking opportunities (by actually being able to attend them without blood shot eyes and 9 shots of espresso).
Partying:
- When you first arrive your classmates will probably want to go out every night. Don't follow my mistake of thinking (I want to wait and budget out for parties later) The majority of the parties and group dinners go from 7 per week during the pre-program and first two weeks of the program, to 1 or 2 a week (if any) once the deliverables start coming in.
- The other reason you want to go to the parties is because, as unfair as this may sound, student leadership roles and peer evaluations are the result of a popularity contest. If you are looking to put any of these on resume, go to the parties.
Settling in:
- Get an apartment as close as humanly possible to Maria de Molina (MM) 31, not 4 or 11. You will be living in #31. From Google Maps it looks like you will be living on a disruptive highway, you won't be. Learn from my mistake and don't live more than 5 blocks away from MM31.
- Phone? Get a smart phone with a screen at least the size of your palm (below is my list of why). I had a nine key pad phone and was completely lost for the first two weeks.
- Your whole class is on whats app and every event is usually coordinated through there.
- Your schedule for classes changes daily, with time and sometimes location. You need to be able to access an easily visible calendar which syncs with IE's database.
- You will have a crap ton of reading to do, so it is best if you can get a phone where you can read on the go.
- Get a gym membership close to the school, not close to your house. You will literally only be home to sleep.
Tech Stuff
- Computer? Go with a PC or a Mac with Parallels installed on it. IE claims that it is setup so you can do everything on a Mac for classes (hopefully this will change and this bullet point will become invalid & outdated). There is a class you will take called MDM, for this class depending on your professor, you will have to download roughly 4 programs which only run on a PC. If you use bootcamp or parallels on a mac, note that some of these programs are so heavy that when using them you cannot run any other application in conjunction with this.
- Become well acquainted with Google Drive, I would recommend taking all of your notes here so you can access them from everywhere at any time, especially helpful since some of our classmates had their computers stolen.
- If you are in charge of coordinating any events use Google Forms so people have to answer all of the information you need in order to sign up for the event, and when it is complete you can access all of the info in a nice and organized excel sheet.
- Get acquainted with VideoScribe. You will be doing A LOT of power point presentations, this is the one of the ways to take them to the next level (thanks to Nadim Choucair for introducing me to this).
- Each study room has a screen in the corner which can be used for your workgroup (which you will meet with for a minimum of one hour a day, 5 days a week in Term 1).
- If you are coming from the USA and expecting to maintain access to your accounts on Pandora, Hulu & Netflix, you'll need a VPN scrambler.
Spanish
If you think you are going to attend this school and become fluent before you graduate, you're wrong. You will be in classes all day speaking English, studying in English all night and anytime you are at a networking event hanging out with classmates the common language will be English. This being said, if learning Spanish is one of your goals I recommend doing the following:
- Listen through all 3 levels of Pimsleur Spanish prior to your departure for Spain or try this http://fluenz.com/languages/learn-european-spanish/# (I've done Pimsleur- but some friends swear by Fluenz).
- Arrive in Spain a 2-3 months before to take a full language immersion course that has you living with a Spanish speaking host family
- Get Spanish roommates that do not know English