Tuesday, March 16, 2010

My Visit to Vlerick for the on campus assessment from Amsterdam

Its was around 18:00 CET when I boarded the over crowded train to Brussels central from Schipol aiming to reach Vlerick as early as possible so that I can report on time the next day. The weather was not quite favourable as heavy snow fall were predicted in the coming days in Belgium, Leuven was quiet at 9:30 CET as most of the west European cities, I took a taxi to De Viking which is quite far away from the Centrum, I paid the taxi and I was in front of a very big door , some thing similar to what you see in Horror movies which made enormous noise and the dark background added more fear to it, I kept myself firm as I could not locate anybody in the near vicinity , but I managed to read a caption stating the who ever reached this point dial 102 for father Omer. The call was answered by a Flemish sounded person who was Father Omer, I was so tired that I was more than happy to see a big room allocated to me for the night. I followed the words of the professor @ vlerick ‘s site that one should have good and sound sleep overnight ( I am quite famous for this among my friends circle though I pointed to Mr professor in this regard).


The next day I got up very early in the morning to see the outside field fully covered by white patches of snow, I was determined to take a bath and be there at Leuven Campus of Vlerick, thanks to the lady, who works as an assistant to a research doctor at vlerick university, who guided me to ‘ Vlamingenstraat 83 , 3000 Leuven ‘. The proceedings started a bit late than 8:15 AM , thanks to the heavy snow fall .

All the aspirants who gathered at Aud 1.01 were welcomed by Dr Dirk Buyens , Academic dean and partner at Vlerick, who announced the proceedings of the day- namely 2 rounds of interviews and 2 rounds of written tests – one an English language assessment and one in quant. Mine started off with the English language test which was quite OK, followed by a knowledge assessment round where in I found myself in front of an elite panel consisting of a CEO , 2 Directors and Boiardi Priscilla – I was literally grilled for around 30 mins. This was followed by another round called Motivation round which went quite well, this was assessed by Mary Roll , from the career guidance and another alumini of vlerick itself. I got a break after this series of tests to taste the sandwich lunch provided by vlerick. At around 2:30 I had the next round which was Quant and exam went like this some 45 questions in a span of 30 mins, so I set by strategy strt away to maximise the score by high level calculations. Dr Drik told all of us that after the series of test the faculty will deliberate for some time and bring out the result by 19:00 CET.

We had enough time at our hands so all aspirants grouped together and set ahead to explore Leuven , our gang was not in a mood to explore Leuven in the snowy day so we found our self in a Bar which was filled with University students, I had the first hand experience of so called City of Students, Leuven. The gang was truly International, true nature of any International MBA, 2 from India, One from Belgium, One from States and One from Slovakia. The discussion started of with what the faculty were deliberating, then to climate and then various cultures and so on.
Time passed by so was the no of drinks and finally it was around 18:50 CET when we headed back to the School to hear the Results, the time was not passing so fast and we came to know that the results would be announced later, our patience were really tested. All were asked to enter the same Aud 1.01 were we started of the hectic day and Dr Dirk started reading out the name of the applicants who cleared the process and I was so happy to hear , though my name was pronounced differently , that I was thru.
I really cherish the day I spend at Vlerick and the addition of 4 other friends to my network; I am really excited about the class that will start towards the end of this year and looking forward to it.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Nice blog and nice experience man!!
But why did it take so long?

Anoob said...

I had this in my mind for some time..manged some time for this now

Unknown said...

mone puli... :)

Good ...you should write as much as you can now. After september...ohh oh..i am sure you are a brave man..:p..And imagine ...Next jan-feb ..you might be struggling, trying to understand stuffs that make no sense to you..you might be thinking about suicide.wow..i might be having a better time than now..either I might have found a job or might be searching for one. But it is going to be a better life than yours then :p...brace your self...:-)

Joselyn Quintero said...

Hi Anoob:

I will take the test next Feb 22nd, and I like to have and idea about the questios they ask, what should I focus on, or just the tips you could give me to have an outstanding performance on it.

Thanks in advance!

Josy

Anoob said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anoob said...

Sorry for the late reply...GMAT guide would be good enough for maths, for english its kind of writing essays based on a pre-audio recoreded. For the knoweldge it depends on the panel..questions can be very broad..keep reading FT, leatest news in business and so on.