Discover INSEAD's unique one-year MBA [Show summary]

Virginie Fougea, Global Director of Admissions and Financial Aid at INSEAD, shares what’s new for the school’s MBA program and what prospective applicants with global business ambitions should know.

Do you aspire to do business internationally? Consider INSEAD! [Show notes]

Are you a citizen of the world? Do you aspire to be one? Do you have global business ambitions? Then you should be interested in the business school for the world, INSEAD. Its Global Director of Admissions and Financial Aid, Virginie Fougea, is our guest today.

Can you give an overview of the INSEAD MBA program for those listeners who aren't that familiar with it, focusing on its more distinctive elements? [1:29]

INSEAD was started in 1960. We welcomed our first class around those years. Since the very beginning, we have had very international classes. We have a number of Europeans represented, but also people from outside Europe. Now we have, for example, 92 different nationalities in the current classes, so that is definitely in the DNA of the school. We have a campus in Fontainebleau in France, which is 60 kilometers south of Paris, as well as the campus in Singapore. We have a hub in San Francisco, that is the newest one, and we also have a campus in Abu Dhabi. The idea was to allow people to be on the ground, and not just talk about how to do business in Asia without having put a foot in the continent.

We have an MBA, MiM (Master in Management), Executive MBA, and Executive Master in Finance. For the MBA, we welcome two classes. One in September that starts in the end of August/beginning of September, and one starts in January every year. We welcome roughly 500 students, total per class, with 300 in Fontainebleau and 200 in Singapore.

It used to be really easy for students to move among the campuses, and most students did not attend the entire program in one campus. How have COVID travel restrictions affected that? [3:14]

It did affect some people during their studies. Those who were in the 2020 classes last year, obviously all the borders were closed and you couldn't reorganize your plans. Those people obviously had to stay on the location where they were. However, quite a number of people decided, when the countries were closing down their borders, to go back home. We had a few people doing that. Others decided to stay in Fontainebleau or in Singapore and keep sharing their apartments with their roommates. To be very honest, now with the quarantine and the fact that the countries have reorganized the travel and the possibility to enter the different countries, we are able to have all our students in person on both our campuses in Fontainebleau and Singapore. For example, we just had the Master in Management students who just all went to Singapore all together. They spent the first part of the program in France, in Fontainebleau, and they all moved -- the 90 of them moved -- to Singapore for the rest of their program as planned.