European School of Management and Technology

Starting January 8th 2007, this building will be my new home. Located in the heart of Berlin, just across the former seat of the East German parliament, the ESMT campus will represent next year for me, what the sixth floor of the Javeriana's Engineering Faculty building did five years ago: a place to spend days, nights and weekends.

Founded by some of Germany's most influential companies, such as Siemens, Lufthansa, Daimler Chrysler, Deutsche Bank, Schering, SAP, Deutsche Telekom, among others, ESMT is an attempt to put an end to Germany's lack of interest in creating a world-class business school.

At the beginning I was a little bit sceptic about applying to ESMT's MBA program, since it just started this year, but after visiting the building, meeting some of the staff and talking to some students, it became clear that I wanted to be part of it.

Some facts about my new school:

Number of MBA students: 30
Nationalities: Students practically come from everywhere, including India, Japan, Germany, Eastern Europe, South Africa, USA, Canada, and starting next year, Colombia..!!
Teachers: Nearly 50% are visiting staff, meaning we can "borrow" good teachers from virtually every university in the world.
Classrooms: They have everything you can think of, plus one computer per person.
Women: Important topic (the more, the less testosterone per study group). Next year we'll have apparently at least 8 or 9 female students.
GMAT: I thought my 700 would rock, but it turned out we even have 760s..!
Scholarships: Most students get a basic 20.000 Euro scholarship, paid by one of the sponsor companies. Some people get even more.
Professional Experience: You need at least three years to get in.
Career advancement: No one really knows (yet), since the first students will graduate in a couple of weeks. But for what I have heard, many of them have already good offers.
Field trips: This year the students visited for a couple of weeks countries like India, China and Mexico.
Meals: Lunch is for free!

My conclusion: Germans know how to do things. Although we do have many high quality programs in Colombia (yes, I am proud of our system, in which creativity beats resources), I cannot think of Bavaria and Postobon creating such an interesting program in such a short time. Whether we'll be able to play in the same league of London School of Economics, INSEAD or IMD, well, I guess we'll have to wait a couple of years to answer that question, 'cause at the moment we are still not 'rankeable'...!