You will take part in a group exercise and you will need to solve an individual task to show your skills to the Admission Committee consisting of CEMS Professors, Corporate partners and the CEMS Academic Director.

If you apply via the Assessment Centre, your application score will contain the common elements + the Assessment Centre score: Academic Achievement (30 points) + Language skills (10 points) + Motivational video (10 points) + Assessment Centre (50 points) = 100 points

In the Assessment Centre we will look at the following evaluation criteria:

• Intellectual potential
• Critical thinking
• International openness
• Integrity
• Interpersonal competences

First part: Group Exercise

With 3-4 fellow-applicants of yours, you will get a business issue/economic problem to perform a solution together while you are being watched and evaluated by assessors. These assessors will make their observations, and give you a score based on your respective contributions to the overall exercise.

The responsibilities of the group will be: Effective team working requires team members to co-operate, listen to each other, communicate clearly, share knowledge and information, show commitment to the team and task and be supportive.You don’t need to do any preparation in advance, we believe your intellectual potential shall be a valuable part of the solution.

Your individual responsibilities in the group will be: Making an effective contribution.

Technical information: 90 minutes while the available tools are pen and paper

Tips for Group Work Exercises:

1. Speak up. It is important to put forward ideas and contribute to the team. The assessors can’t give you any marks if they haven’t heard you speak.
2. Keep your contributions short.
3. Avoid interrupting other team members and avoid being interrupted.
4. Encourage other team members: if a team member hasn’t said anything, try to get them involved in the discussion.
5. Keep an eye on the time.
6. Be prepared to change your argument. You need to be able to show that you can accept a new direction, if better ideas or information are presented to you.
7. Sometimes, it is also important to ensure your ideas are fully considered without holding up the group. It is also your responsibility to point out any issues or doubts.
8. Be professional: Don’t lose your temper and keep your volume and tone under control.

Second part: Individual Exercise

In essence, these questions involve a short case or analysis in which you must try to estimate a value you probably had never considered estimating before. The process of solving a guesstimate problem is not that complicated: look at the possible parameters that may affect the final quantity, and estimate its numbers.

During this exercise you will need to:

• Break down the problem into logical pieces
• Walk the interviewer through how you are approaching the problem
• Try to determine appropriate assumptions for the value of key figures in each of those pieces

Technical framework: 15-20 minutes while the available tools are flipchart/whiteboard

Tips for the individual exercise:

1. Clarify the question, make sure you and the interviewers are on the same page on every assumption.
2. Scope the problem. Ask questions to clarify the scope of the problem in question.
3. Break down the problem into small pieces.
4. Use estimation and judgement to solve each piece.
5. Consolidate all of the pieces into a conclusion.
6. Be very structured in your approach and write out your numbers and assumptions in a clear manner.