Hello,

I partecipated to the open day EADA business school organised some days ago and I was positively impressed by the residential center they have in the mountains to develope all the soft skills, besides the headquarters in the center of barcelona, and the number of international students, 35 different countries. I talked with 3 of them and the level was very good.

I did not expect that much, so I would like to have some more feedback.

Regards

Mario

I havent heard of EADA before. Do you have any idea how they compare to the Spanish big ones ESADE and IESE?

I know EADA, is a small school positioned just below the big three of Spain, but it also has the major acreditations as the biig three.
The big advantage is the MBA is 10 months and the fees 22'000 Euros. The class is a 5-continent 90% international - 10% spenish and they also have a training center outside Barcelona for the Soft skills part, where they go once a month.

Regards

Sounds fantastic, and the lower fee issue is a point to worth taking into account. I am a little surprised that the Catalan/Spanish schools all appear to be using similar abbreviations (EADA, IESE, ESADE) its easy to get confused ;-).
Btw, do you have any opinion on BMI in Barcelona? This appears to be a new school?

Hi, yes, BMI is a new program in Barcelona. Their MBA seems really practical, and their network of teachers sounds amazing. I started my MBA at Barcelona Business School, but it is definitely substandard, so I am transferring to BMI in October. If nothing else, they have the best location, the Torre Mapfre, right across from the beach!

I found some negative comments on Barcelona Business School on the internet: http://www.barcelonareporter.com/index.php/news/pg_letters11
http://constructal.blogspot.com/2005/10/web-of-deception.html (there are many more comments about BBS, try google). However, I do not know how reliable these comments are.

I also read about the new BMI program. The founder and Chairman of BMI, Clay Douglass, was also listed on the BBS website as a faculty member until recently. So is there a connection between BBS and BMI?

There is no connection between BBS and BMI, that is why I am considering a transfer. I've heard from some people that Clay Douglass taught one or two courses there a couple of years ago, but he left to run his own company. A number of the people listed on the BBS faculty no longer teach there, and some of the ones listed also teach at other schools like ESADE or Lasalle.

Hi,
I got now lots of info about the Business schools, especially the Spanish ones.

The only accredited Business Schools in Spain are ESADE, IESE EADA in barcelona and IE in madrid, then there are like 40 more which are just recently born BMI (none knew about it) or trying to invest in advertisement but not in quality, like EAE.

Only in barcelona there are like 9 MBAs offered, and more than half of them, do not offer any reasonable reputation, valuable networking or career placement service.

Some are good engineering university, or law schools, but nothing to do with MBAs.

Good luck, it was not easy at all....

Very interesting input, thanks for your research! I am wondering, however, if these non-accredited schools are as unvaluable as some of the 'bad' US b schools are. I always thought there were fewer 'fraudulent' schools around in Europe.

BBS and BMI,

Two friends went to BBS by mistake and it was a kind of apartment, like a language course flat. The school is totally unknown internationally and is just using the brand of Barcelona to start the Business, because unfortunately many people do not know that everyone can say MBA, but having the accreditation is different.

Regards

Hi Dianne,

I was reading the article which Maja kindly sent and I am afraid we are losing our time talking about these self claimed business Schools BBS and BMI.

So I wish you will enjoy your view from Torre Mapfre, but here we are trying to share our experience to help students to orientate themeselves between the REAL Business Schools of Barcelona, IESE, ESADE and EADA.

Regards

Hi Mario,
I'm from Barcelona and because of my job I have a lot information about EADA.
I have been in the place you talk about 4 times and it's really nice but it's not the most important thing about EADA, don't be afraid, it's a very good school, maybe not so good as IESE or ESADE but be sure it's the third business school in Barcelona and it's also cheaper than the other two.

I hope this will help you!

Thanks a lot mugsy, it is an interesting comment.

I am now collecting some of them. May I ask you where did you work because it is better for me to have a reference, only if you do not mind.

Thanks a lot

Mario

Hi!
I?m a student from Germany and I?m looking for a suitable school in the Barcelona area to do my MBA. I?ve visited a few schools already, however, when I read the previous posts in this forum topic, I could not help but feel shocked.

I have visited Barcelona Business School a few days ago, and my impression is that it doesn?t seem anything like what is being written on this forum about this school.

First, we (my father and I) had a chat with one of the staff at the school, and of course, after having all my questions answered I confronted them with a print-out of these remarks you guys posted. They told us that they had never heard of ?Diane Everman? at all and that Diane Everman has never been a student at Barcelona Business School!!!

To me, it sounds outrageously ridiculous that a so-called former student of BBS is spreading negative comments on the school, while the school is growing each year, and again, they seem to be really improving their academic quality by complying with the European guidelines and by attracting international faculty with both the necessary academic background AND professional experience.

People can?t just go and write whatever they feel like to get others down.

So what is this ?Diane Everman? (her so-called ?testimonial? is on the front page of BMI?s website?) trying to accomplish here? Does she even exist?

It appears that Barcelona Management Institute (BMI) is a new ?school? here in Barcelona; they say they rent an office in the Mapfre tower, near the beach. I don?t think that this is a good location for a school: think of all the students gazing out the window and dreaming that they could be on the beach? kind of hard to get their attention I suppose.

I?m not saying that BBS?s location is better, because their building, let?s face it, is too small and doesn?t look as professional as it could be. The school has 3 classrooms, a small study room, a front office and an administration office. However, the director (Mr. Kirschstein) told me ?we are actively looking for a new office space that would be twice the current size; however it is really difficult to find something in August while everyone in Barcelona is on a holiday?.

The economy seems to be running on a minimal level here ? August seems to be one big siesta :) Anyway, I received a BBS brochure with all the latest updates on their programmes. They seem to be VERY flexible in terms of intakes and certain electives that students can opt for.

BBS may also be young (established in 2002), but they are at least in full compliance with the new European system (ECTS I think it?s called). And on top of that, they have several partnerships and academic co operations with renowned and ACCREDITED universities in North AND South America, as well as within Europe, who take over the credits accumulated at Barcelona Business School. I could even go for a few months to one of these universities and transfer my credits back to BBS.

I mean, how could you say that the quality at BBS is substandard without even having been there, without having taken any classes, without having met the teachers? What do you have against the teachers at BBS anyway? They all seem to have a Bachelor, Master or Doctoral degree and have plenty of experience to share!

As far as I can tell, there are two types of business schools, the elite, and the more ?budget? ones. If you have 40 to 50.000 EUR to spend on education, I suggest you go to ESADE but if you want to get the most value for money in Barcelona, then the MBA at BBS of 10.500 EUR sounds like the best deal! (You might even consider European University for around 16 to 17000 per year).

I sincerely suggest all future students looking for a business school in Barcelona to check out all business schools but to be very sceptical and inquisitive.

Thomas,

A business School with three classes is not a business school, becauise they are missing the basic like a library, a career department...and i am even wasting my time in explaining it.

Each self claimed MBA school use different unknown code to try to convince people that that code is official. The only accreditation at an MBA Level are EQUIS and AMBA.

So if you like that course which you like to call MBA, Thomas, go for it and enjoy. But we have the duty of informing potential candidate of what is quality and what is not after we spent months in understanding the complex world of the MBAs.

Wow James!

May be with other words, but i am afraid what you are saying is kind of true. But since there are people which are just looking for the title and not for the learning experience, let them going to the lowest level schools, they can say also they have an MBA!

Hi James:
I am sorry to have wasted your time with my post. I was addressing someone who asked specifically about BMI, and I thought deserved an answer. After my disappointing experience at BBS, for which I paid good money, I do not have the funds to attend one of the top schools you recommend, and I think this program offers what I am looking for, which may not be what other people are looking for. So yes, I will enjoy the view from the classroom and hopefully learn to make better choices.
Regards,
Dianne

Dear Thomas:
Boy! You seem to have such detailed information about BBS, you make me think you are in their payroll. Why would you otherwise take on their defense and write such a long marketing piece? Actually, perhaps they need you to do so to counteract such bad press as
http://thalassamikra.blogspot.com/2005/10/information-pertaining-to-iipm.html.
or
http://www.erasmusmagazine.nl/default.aspx?artID=2463
or even perhaps
http://constructal.blogspot.com/2005/10/web-of-deception.html
In any case, I hope your experience at BBS turns out to be more positive than mine, which was a total waste of time, except for the wonderful friends I made. In the end, you get what you pay for.
All the best!
Dianne

My post was to ask feedback on a particular school, not to poen a too wordy discussion about something else especially avoiding to paste all the previous messages each time.

If we are talking about EADA in barcelona for sure the same people are interested in talking also about the other schools of the same city, and not only.
It is important to have a look around and being sure of the choice made before you invest such a relevant amount of money.