2020 Admissions - Staying in contact even at a distance!

How can the contact with candidates from preparatory classes be maintained without organizing oral exams? 
The challenge met by TBS over the last few weeks :

By setting up an innovative way to present the school, by following up on candidates from a distance. Here are more details: 

“The obligation to give up on holding oral exams was a massive disappointment for us”. These are the words of Annabel-Mauve Bonnefous, Director of TBS Master program. For the Toulouse Business School, the oral exam period is indeed a vital part in meeting more 6000 candidates. When the oral exams were cancelled, there was no opportunity to have informal exchanges between students, introduction classes, city visits, to explore the Toulouse ecosystem, the economic and technological environment.  

A videoconference with more than 100 participants to decided which actions to take very quickly.  

Nevertheless, TBS was capable of putting the necessary actions in place to order to stay in contact with the candidates.

Annabel-Mauve Bonnefous remembers that “One afternoon, we held a video conference with over 100 students, each one from their lodgings, and we imagined together a new way of building relationships with our candidates”.  

Many initiatives were taken : the Admissions website 20202 was adapted to the new criteria, online exchanges were set up between students who had gone to study in the States or Taiwan for example, presentations were made about the associative life, videos were mounted online to discover the School, etc. “We also contacted the Tourist Office of Toulouse-Occitanie to give access to their city presentation videos”.

Contact was established with each candidate at least once.

Moreover, many Toulouse students decided to mentor candidates before the written exams end of June. Therefore they called their old preparatory classes to offer help, and as the message circulated,  a real support chain was set up. “It was decided that the students in the admissions teams would contact the candidates one by one to talk about their objectives and aspirations. The objective was to talk, advise and share our values of empathy and altruism through this support, even at a distance.”

Today this system works well and the feedback is positive. In light of its success, it is clear that some of the solutions tried out this Spring will be used again in future years. According to how the health situation evolves, “reel” visits may also be organized during the month of July.