Frog to Dragon: HEC MBA & Tsinghua MBA Blog
The quest for wisdom, from France to China, of an HEC MBA & Tsinghua MBA dual degree student (class of 2011)
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So here I am. I came back home to Paris a couple of hours ago after a 7 weeks holiday trip which brought me to China, Japan and Tahiti. And last week, while in Tahiti, I learned I have been accepted to the TEC On-Campus Program that I had applied to early this month. Everything’s good :)
Tags: Assignments, Travels On Monday I received my room contract from HEC. So I’ve been officially attributed a room at the Expansiel residence on the HEC campus! Yay! One of my future classmates posted a link on the Facebook group to a few photos that a previous student took of the on-campus rooms a couple of years ago. Check this out: Photo 1, Photo 2, Photo 3. That reminds me of the dorms I used to live in when I first left Tahiti to study for Prépa…
Tags: Life on campus, Logistics I’ve finally finished (and sent) the essays for the TEC On-Campus Program.
Tags: Assignments, TEC When visiting China for the first time in 2004, one of the things that struck me was that, when in China, one should switch one’s mindset to another scale for everything altogether. And it’s not based just on demographic or geographic statistics. Here, everything is bigger.  Entrance to the Forbidden City Well, it may not apply to everything (such as the size of a roast duck), but I don’t think I’ve ever seen city parks as big as Beijing’s own Beihai, Zonghai and Houhai gardens. Not even mentioning the Summer Palace park which doesn’t really count as a city park and lays by the 4th ring. If the notion of city ring doesn’t mean anything to you, think of the nice peripheral highways that border your city. Paris has two: the Périphérique and the Francilienne. Beijing has seven of them… Oh, and did I mention it? They’re bigger. This year, one of the reasons why I went to Beijing in the first place was to visit the Tsinghua University with which HEC has a double MBA degree agreement. A nice lady from the Tsinghua SEM IMBA admission office greeted me and we discussed about the application procedure. Finally, she gave me their IMBA brochure and invited me to visit the campus. Now I must mention that students typically travel between different academic buildings riding a bike. I’ve seen some people do it with a taxi. We walked… and going from toward the South exit (where SEM is located) to the North exit (by the dorms) took us 40 minutes. Today, I’m in Xi’an, home to tens of thousands terracotta warriors. Flying tomorrow to Shanghai and its two world tallest towers, then flying back to Beijing and its world biggest airport… 
Tags: Travels If you’ve read my article about admission essays, you probably noticed how much effort and time I had put in. Once admitted, you still need to go through more admission steps in order to participate to the TEC On-Campus Program. And they require not one essay, but five! All this before the July 6th deadline… I kid you not… And subjects are not that trivial…
Raaahhh !
Tags: Assignments, TEC Every year, from the last week of May to the first week of June, Paris goes into Tennis mode with the French Open going full speed. As a tennis fan, I was thrilled when I received an e-mail inviting me to join a HEC MBA networking event organised in the premices of Roland Garros.  Place des Mousquetaires at Roland Garros So yesterday, after arriving (late), I was dispatched into a group that included not only MBA admits, but also MBA candidates, alumni and others currently studying. We walked around the tennis areas before joining a series of presentation and a very nice cocktail. Beside roasting under a glorious sun and watching some tennis, it was great to exchange with others as I gave pieces of advice to candidates, learned about the campus facilities from current students, and discussed job perspective with alumnis. Very excited now, can’t wait to start in September! :)
Tags: HEC events As the HEC MBA September 2009 intake is almost made up by now, there are a few ways for us admits to network. The HEC connect website, of course, but also less official means on Facebook or LinkedIn. Via that, some of the French parisian crowd organised an ice breaking event by the Eiffel Tower yesterday. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t so happy about it and the evening was fresh with a few drizzles. The mood however was great and enjoyable for the 7 of us who attended. We exchanged on our admission process, prior experience, expectations, financing, and on many other topics. Now I feel like my MBA is finally getting into motion :)
Tags: Social |