As part of its mission to foster the transformation of Brazil by preparing innovative leaders, Insper also aims to change the way the world sees the country. “We’d like to show that we also produce quality teaching and research here, that we create knowledge capable of changing the reality of a country the size of Brazil”, says Andreia Lopes, head of International Experience at Insper.

 

One of the initiatives aligned with that goal is the Insper Exchange Program, which the school maintains in partnership with more than 100 educational institutions in all continents. The program makes it possible for Insper to welcome students from all over the world to take courses offered by the school for a semester or a year. In return, Insper students are picked out to study for a period at partner institutions overseas. Every year the school sends an average of 200 to 250 students abroad by way of the program.

 

Since 2008, Insper has received around 2,000 foreign students. There are currently just over 70 of them at the school from 14 nationalities. They are students in all the areas covered by the school, though most of them take courses offered in the final undergraduate years, when there is a greater concentration of classes given in English.

 

 

“Amazing experience”

 

Fee Furch, 23, from Germany is one of the exchange students who chose Insper as a place to study in the second half of this year. In Germany, she is taking her Master’s in Marketing with a concentration in Analytics at a university in the city of Stuttgart. “That’s why I’ve mostly attended Marketing classes at Insper, but I also took extracurricular courses that are not usually part of my program at my university in Germany, such as Globalization & Sustainability or Global Value Chains”, Fee explains.

 

The German student says she chose Brazil because she had already gone on exchange programs to Chile and Mexico during her undergraduate years. “It’s fair to say I have a weakness for Latin American countries and I wanted to know and live in another country on the continent. This time, I chose Brazil.”

 

Fee arrived in São Paulo in August and, at first, she went through some trouble adjusting to weather variations. “A challenge for me in São Paulo was definitely getting used to the quick and severe changes in the weather pattern and temperature. One day we had a sunny day with 30°C and the next day the temperature dropped to 12°C again. This unfortunately cost me a few colds throughout the semester.”

 

None of that, though, made her regret her choice for Brazil. “Studying at Insper I must say that the best thing was the amazing internationals team that we knew from the beginning we could always turn to in any case of trouble. Additionally we had some amazing buddies, who are students at Insper themselves, that helped us from the very first week to feel welcomed and experience the real student life in Brazil”, Fee says. “The academic environment at Insper was very good as well. I feel that all professors whose classes I attended have profound knowledge and are experts in their field.”

 

Before heading back to Germany, Fee plans to travel to other parts of Brazil. “So far my time in Brazil has been amazing. Coming from a comparatively small city with much less than 1 million habitants, I genuinely enjoy living in vibrant and lively cities like São Paulo”, she points out. “But of course what makes Brazil so special is that it offers so many different types of landscapes and nature, which is why I am so grateful to have the possibility to travel and get to know a few more states and places around Brazil after finishing my courses at Insper.”

 

 

Extended stay

 

French student Tristan Tincq, 21, is another exchange student at Insper who is enjoying his experience in the country — so much so that he came in August this year to stay for just one semester, but has already asked to extend his stay for another 6 months. Tristan studies at a college in La Rochelle, a coastal city in southwestern France. In the last semester at Insper, he studied Advanced Corporate Finance, Advanced Topics in Valuation, Negotiation, Digital Marketing, Chinese Economy and Technology Ventures.

 

“I chose to study in Brazil to learn a new language and also for the culture. And I chose Insper because it is one of the most prestigious schools in São Paulo and because of its triple accreditation”, he says, while alluding to the seals of the Association of MBAs (Amba), the Association to Advance Collegiate School of Business (AACSB) and the EFMD Quality Improvement System (Equis) — Insper is part of the select group of less than 1% of business schools in the world that have the three quality seals.

 

Tristan has nothing but praise for what he’s found at Insper. “The school is great and the courses are very interesting. I find the level is higher than what I was used to, particularly in the finance courses”, he explains. “Besides, it is an opportunity for me to continue advancing in English and, as I would like my profile to have an international scope, I intend to add Portuguese to my language skills.”

 

The French student says he started to learn Portuguese in a program offered free of charge to exchange students, the Brazilian Culture & Language Workshop. “The course allowed me to grasp the basics of the language. Now my goal is to be able to elaborate on a discussion in Portuguese in a few months”, he plans

 

 

“Ambassadors of Brazil”

 

According to Andreia Lopes, students like Tristan and Fee have the potential to become something like informal “ambassadors” for Brazil, while helping to promote the country’s culture overseas. “In addition to the academic part, we try to provide those students with different types of cultural experiences and life with local students”, Andreia points out. With that in mind, Insper supports several activities for exchange students to get to know our culture better — from feijoada to samba circles and capoeira classes, in addition to attending career fairs and sessions with professionals that help them understand the local market.

 

Another initiative supported by Insper is “Buddy”, a volunteer program organized by the students themselves to help exchange students with whatever they need. Each buddy is in charge of helping a number of foreign students at Insper, so that they have the best possible experience in the country. The “Buddy” program currently has around 20 active volunteers.

 

One of them is Bruna Barone, 20, who will soon be a 5th semester Business Administration student at Insper. When she was still in high school, Bruna went to the city of Winnipeg, Canada, on an exchange program where she stayed for six months. She says she made a lot of friends among foreign exchange students, but she missed getting to know the locals better.

 

“I was hosted by a family, but I was there to basically eat and sleep. I didn’t get to know the city from the perspective of the locals. For instance, I didn’t get to go out with Canadians to eat or do something”, Bruna recalls. She says she decided to become a volunteer in the “Buddy” program precisely to help foreign exchange students in Brazil not to go through the kind of experience she had in Canada.

 

Bruna is the buddy of a group of four Colombian students at Insper. She says she is always available to help them out. “Sometimes they come to me to answer simple questions, such as where to find or buy something”, Bruna explains. Not long ago, Bruna helped organize something like a sneak preview of the “World Cup” among foreign exchange students.

 

“It was an activity with a high level of engagement. Around 40 exchange students participated”, she says. The students were randomly divided into eight teams to play matches over five days. “Next semester, the idea is to push for more activities like those, which foreign students enjoy and want to participate in.”