Gianpaolo (25) started the Master in International Management at IE Business School (Madrid) in April 2010. In his first Master blog he shares his experience on selecting the business school, the admissions process, and his program experience during the first weeks.

Hi everybody,

My name is Gianpaolo Tepedino (25 years old), I come from Venezuela where I graduated from the “Simón Bolívar University” as a computer engineer in 2008. As soon as I got my degree I went to Rome (Italy) to work for a consultancy company providing IT solutions for companies such as Wind Italia (European project called “GeoPKDD”) and Telecom Italia (development of new value added services for its clients).

In 2009 I decided to start looking for a business program that could provide me with the necessary tools to use technology as part of a longer term strategy and help me gain insights on how to manage people, as well as how to be a more effective/productive member of a team.

When trying to identify the perfect school for me, the elements that I took into consideration were:

• Well known international university (in my opinion, companies do pay attention to the rankings when recruiting and also when setting wages);
• The school and the program needed to have a lot of focus on how to become an entrepreneur (I guess like me, many of you are thinking on starting your own company in the medium or long-term), and training in soft skills (like negotiation and teamwork, buzzwords that you hear everywhere but not many people are really able to use them as effective tools in their professional life);
• Located in one of the capital of the world (this give access to big companies, interaction with more cultures, more languages, and so on) and with a “relatively” good weather, a friendly-open local culture, and good local food (Madrid really covers all of these!);
• A strong alumni network;
• Professors with a lot of experience in both, academy and working for companies.

My admission process for the Master in International Management at IE Business School consisted of the following steps:

1. A written exam with one of the international representatives of IE (specifically the one in Venezuela). The exam was mainly trying to assess how the student tackle and makes decisions about business and non-business issues with incomplete information;
2. The second phase was to write several essays in which I explained what/how could I contribute to the program, to the school, and later on as an Alum to the IE-network;
3. Then I had an interview with an IE national representative in English, in which he mainly tried to understand if “IE was the right school for me”, as well as if “I was the right person to carry out a program at IE”;
4. Because I am not an English native speaker and I wanted to take the MIM-English track, I took the TOEFL... and that’s it!.... Nowadays I am a Candidate for the Master in International Management at IE, and I am very proud about that!.

Hope to see you around soon,

Gianpaolo Tepedino
Master in International Management Candidate 2010-2011