Back to School...

... in my case, after about 8 summer breaks. Anyway, Thursday started my MBA with the so called ISP International Student Preparation. Very nice classmates from different nations all over the world. The class is very small as not all students decided to join the ISP. This makes it easy to get acquainted with the classmates.  
Much more important: now is my first weekend in Vancouver - and directly a long one as Monday is a public holiday in BC (British Columbia). Today, I visited downtown for the first time. You can still see the impacts of the Olympic Games. Everything looks new or recently refurbished. I was in particular impressed by many little observations: The huge container vessels and cruising ships which enter the harbor,  the aeroboats which depart and arrive directly in front of the skyline, the panorama of the skyline when sitting at the beach, the musicians at the street. I would like to support my observations with some pictures but I forgot my camera. Anyway, I promise to publish some pictures of my city impressions next time.
Success of the day: I bought a used bike together with a helmet and a lock (which is both mandatory here). Without these accessories you will get first in trouble with the police and next you have to call the police.
Despite of these small successes I still looking for an shared room somewhere in the city and getting slightly nervous about that. But lets wait and see and watch the craigslist.

Welcome to Canada

I am in Canada. Before I left I had some good last days in Germany. I enjoyed the time with Andrea and also my farewell party at Saturday. It was a great pleasure for me to celebrate my move to Canada together with so many friends.
But finally I had to go. Andrea gave me a lift to the airport and then we had to say goodbye for some months. Very emotional moments.
Eight hours later I did my first steps on the ground of maple country: Welcome to Canada. After immigration in Canada (Good that they send the guy at the other counter home and not me :-)), I took an other six hours domestic flight to Vancouver. Especially the view at the Rocky Mountains was absolutely stunning. Large lakes and big mountains with huge glaciers and high summits. Hopefully I will get the chance to ascent some of them during my studies.

Vancouver itself welcomed me with three days of perfect weather and the forecast is still good. As a natural result, my first highlight was a nice visit at the beach including my first bath in the Pacific together with some seals which swam only a few meters away (the animal not the soldier). Even if I haven't seen so much in the few days since I am here the city looks impressive (as everybody told me). In particular, the Pacific in direct neighborhood to the mountains is really unique. Today, there were also many boats sailing in the English Bay which made me a bit jealous. I hope to get also on the water soon.
However, my focus for the moment is to find a permanent place to live. Thats not easy, but I guess its never easy to find something appropriate. However, I still have my room in the hostel for two more weeks. Lets wait and see. Unfortunately, I also lost my debit card but don't worry I still have my credit card :-).   


Tomorrow will start the ISP (International Student Preparation) where I will meet the other student for the first time. The story will goes on.

My Way to Vancouver II - which B-school fits to me and how to get into the program

Even if completing an MBA was always of interested for me, I didn't had so much in-depths knowledge about schools, programs and admission. Consequently, I started to do some research about schools and programs: in addition to Google (my best friend in the meantime together with Kaplan's GMAT prep books), I have discussed with many friends and colleagues about the best schools for a MBA. But if you ask 10 people about the best schools you will certainly get 10 different answers. Interestingly each recommendation made sense out of the individual personal perspective. On this basis, I compared the schools based on three main cornerstones which reflected my personal needs:

1) Must be in the top hundred FT-list

2) Program not longer then 15 months

3) Whether in a native english or spanish spoken country

Based on that I decided to apply at ESADE in Barcelona and Sauder in Vancouver.

When I first read the admission requirements, I was very, very impressed. The top ten schools seemed to be unreachable and the others were still pretty tough. The admission officers will tell you that it is all depending on the right preparation - and they are right. Finally, I scored 107 Points in the Toefl and 690 Points in the GMAT - both values which I never expected when I started with studying for the tests. So, don't fear the top names - with some work you can do it.

If you have the tests, only the essays are missing. Haha. I do not know if anybody read my essay, but I spend at least a considerable time for preparing.  Afterwards, submit the application, relax and hope for an interview. 

I was interviewed by both schools and also got accepted into both programs. As I invested a considerable amount of time into the application for each program, the decision was not easy. However, Vancouver won finally. It was really a instinctive decision, so better do not ask me for any reasons.

My Way to Vancouver I - Leaving the company

Now, it is July 2010 and my Vancouver experience is starting in about a week. Time to look back over the last months and how the adventure begun. About a year ago in July 2009, first rumors arise that my company has to lay off employees due to the tough economic situation. At this time, I was as the Global Operations Manager of the companys training business - a great experience for me and I liked this job very much. However, I did not see a perspective for me within the company in the long term perspective. Consequently, there was only one way: leaving the company and looking for something new. After seven years within Siemens I decided to complete MBA because that would give me the time for self reflection, to network in an intercultural environment and to improve my business knowledge. With this I have hoped to get a perfect basis to succeed in my future commitments.

My MBA project in mind, I started negotiating the termination conditions with my boss. Finally, we agreed on a date 9 month later in May 2010 combined with a severance package. Perfect for me as I were able to work some more month while in parallel could apply for the MBA.