In October of last year I had the good opportunity to visit some old friend’s church, in the south of Portugal, and do a concert over there on a Saturday evening. It was a great experience! While I was there I managed to have a longer conversation with an old friend, who has a degree in economics and has been working more in the management area. While I was sharing with him my idea of going for a MBA in Porto, he advised me to look in Lisbon (Portugal’s capital city) and even abroad. If I was considering really stopping for 1 year to focus on the MBA, it would be a better investment than staying close to home.

So I started studying that possibility, doing some “googling” and finding information about MBAs abroad. I was considering a MBA anywhere in the world. I’ve considered the most famous MBAs in the United States, in Europe and even in Asia, specially in Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong. I was checking the typical rankings and also the tuition costs. In most cases I was deeply discouraged with the really high tuition and the average living costs.

Still last year, I managed to talk with a friend from my church about what was going on on my mind, and what I was considering doing. He works as a manager in a mobile phone operator here in Portugal. He advised me to look for scholarships, specially for the United States. He shared with me that he went for a part-time MBA in Porto, and he thought that in the end it was good what he learned, but could have been better in many points. He also told me that if I was considering stopping work and go for a full-time MBA, it would be a much better and rewarding experience to go for a MBA abroad. It would be better recognized by the companies later on, and the whole learning experience would be better than just staying here.

So I kept looking, even requested a couple of brochures from different universities… I remember receiving one from Stanford. But it was a 2 years MBA, the tuition costs too high, and the living costs also above what I could afford. In Europe, in places like UK or Spain is also too expensive. The tuition was between 50 and 60 thousand euros. I was almost giving up the idea of going abroad.

While I kept checking rankings and business schools anywhere in the world, I came across one MBA in Dublin, Ireland, which was around 25 thousand euros for tuition, and later found another in Belgium, just 15 thousand euros for tuition.

The more I explored about this one in Belgium, the more I was liking the idea of choosing that one. It was just 1 year full-time MBA, the living costs in Belgium are not too high, in a central place in Europe, and they had something really cool… you could go there for one day, the so called “admission days” and do all exams and interviews for your admission, and they would tell you the result by end of the afternoon. I loved the idea! I could go there, and get to know the school, the city, the people, while doing the admission exams. The more I searched and explored about the school, the more it seemed the right place for me.

This business school is called Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, and the full time international MBA takes place in Leuven, quite near Brussels.

More about the my admission day and the rest of the story in a next post.