Morad

Hello. I am Morad and I am a Relationship Manager at the Societe Generale, the French multinational investment bank, and financial services. I come from a very humble family that migrated to Europe over 30 years ago. For various reasons I did not get a chance to complete my studies the way I wanted. So right after my high school diploma, I attended a University college where I studied for two years to get my associate degree. I attended a business school where I was in a sponsorship program. This meant that I had to work on Mondays to Thursdays and study on Fridays and Saturdays. As such, I did not get much chance to study what I would have liked to. The classes at Institut Francais de Gestion were conducted in English which gave me a taste for international studies. Therefore I decided that to complete an extra six months to study in Australia as I knew that I wanted to further my studies in an international environment

My career trajectory after my studies has remained rooted in finance since then. Recently, I have been accepted by HEC Paris for an International Executive MBA, Class of 2020.

My studies, right from the beginning, have been very vocational. I never truly had time to study in ways that I wanted to. I have always aspired to be a truly international citizen and therefore decided to go for an MBA at HEC, Paris. The quality of the coursework, highly qualified professors and truly international environment in HEC have been inspirational and I feel that I can have my chance to have the education that I believe I deserve.

The most difficult part of the entire process for me turned out to be the GMAT. My level of mathematical knowledge and skills is pretty low, and even though I spent six months in Australia which is predominantly English speaking, I was mostly working in a French environment. So I had a bit of a difficulty, taking almost nine months to get to a good score in my GMAT. I would advise all GMAT test takers to be patient while preparing for the GMAT. Slow and steady hard work will see your scores climb up. And even though the GMAT was tough, I found it very helpful as it allowed me to improve my mathematical and logical skills. Ultimately GMAT turned out to be a useful tool before starting my MBA.

I will be joining classes at HEC in a few months as I have just been accepted into the program. Therefore I cannot exactly say what life at HEC is like. However, i believe that the college experience at HEC will be challenging one offering the student a multitude of ways to learn and move forward. For someone with my background, HEC’s method of conducting its classes: highly interactive and intense study, is one of the reasons for it being my college of choice.

Before starting your application process, I believe that an aspirant should take the time to find the right school that would cater to their specific goals. Even though there are a lot of rankings and MBA fairs advertising numerous schools, it is important to spend enough time, giving long and hard thought to which school would work best for you. Serious and thorough research is an absolute must.

Another point I would like to add to youngsters is that they should secure financing for an MBA early on. I got accepted into Chicago and HEC Executive MBA programs. However, I had to decline Chicago, even though it was my first choice, chiefly because I could not secure the funding for the program. So I believe, this is also a very important step that many aspirants tend to ignore but shouldn’t.