Ideas that keep rolling and coming, brainstorming sessions with the community and team sessions full of insights for your development for you and your future business. No day is like the other when you are a student-entrepreneur!
If you are wondering what a year of your experience as a student at EA – The Entrepreneurship Academy will look like and what activities await you, we have this article here to help you! The faculty team tells you about the study experience you will have, so we hand over the mic to Luiza Amzolin – Admission Manager and Ioana Ceaușu – Program Manager.
What happens after BootDay (partea practică a procesului de admitere al facultății) and after you get accepted?
After participating in Bootday, the following step is the interview (which takes place a week later) and which includes a cognitive and personality test. About a week after the interview, the candidate finds out if the answer is yes, no, or ‘maybe’ (which means he has to repeat the last two steps).
If the answer is “yes”, the candidate has 2 weeks to think about whether to accept our educational offer and pay a deposit of 10% of the annual fee.
As soon as he confirms the place, the accepted candidate becomes our future student and is added to the online community, where he or she will meet the colleagues, be invited to regular events, learn about courses and maintain close communication with our team until the start of college.
How is the school opening year like?
The opening of the school year is called Startup Week at EA – The Entrepreneurship Academy. During this week, the 1st year Team Entrepreneurs (= entrepreneur students) receive a first flavor about what it means to be a student at our faculty. On the first day, we have the official opening, attended by all students, experts, business mentors and those from The Entrepreneurship Academy Community, in which we present the plans for the year that is starting, lessons learned from last year and many more.
On days 2, 3 and 4 of Startup Week, older students ( years 2, 3, 4) organize a day for the new students, during which they show them through various activities the values of the faculty, educational principles and help them to integrate them into the community. Their “performance” this week is noted by Team Coaches.
The week ends with the traditional BBQ, attended by the whole community and which is the first networking event attended by Team Entrepreneurs from year 1.
How are the teams formed at the beginning of the school year?
On the weekend immediately following Startup Week, Team Entrepreneurs have a Learning Journey with their Team Coach. During this period, they participate in workshops, talk to entrepreneurs and companies and have a Money Goal to achieve. One of the purposes of this Learning Journey is to form the teams of entrepreneurs, in which they will spend their next 4 years at The Entrepreneurship Academy.
The first 6 weeks are a wonderful opportunity to get to know each other, gain trust in the group and make friends and projects that they will develop in the years to come.
After this period, the courses start.
When do students start their businesses? Is there a first deadline for this?
We have students who already enter The Entrepreneurship Academy with actual ideas or businesses. But of course, they can also find them during college. There is no deadline, but they have to achieve a Yearly Money Goal by the end of the academic year, and both Team Coaches and Business Mentors support them to identify and validate a business idea and then put it into practice.
How does the exam period look like at EA – The Entrepreneurship Academy?
At the end of each semester, we have the ‘Evaluation Week’. In the first part of this week, the teams work with their Team Coach to see what worked well in the team in the past semester and what they intend for the next period. There is also 360 feedback within each team.
In the second part of the week, the 24h Challenge takes place: a company (until now, we had companies like Google, Orange or Fan Courier) comes up with a brief of a real business problem and presents it to the students. Then, each team has 24 hours to come up with the best solution to the problem in the client’s brief. In the end, all the teams present their ideas and the team with the best solution (according to the criteria mentioned in the client brief) wins the 24h Challenge. Most of the time, the companies worked together with the Team Entrepreneurs team to implement the winning solution.
How important are grades for a student-entrepreneur?
Each course has a final evaluation. The assessment framework is recommended and specified in an internal document, called Module Description, which both Team Entrepreneurs and experts must read before starting the course. The subject of the final evaluation is at the discretion of the expert, but must respect and evaluate the learning objectives of the course.
Each final course evaluation gives 2 chances (First / Second Chance). If the students do not manage to take the passing grade even at Second Chance and at the end of the academic year they do not meet at least 52.5 ECTS, they must leave the program.
At the end of the academic year, the subject Money Goal is also evaluated. In order to be evaluated in this matter, Team Entrepreneurs must have profit in the bank following an entrepreneurial activity.
What other events are there during the year in the community?
Startup Week, Xmas Party, Investor Day, community evenings, EA Talks, EA Sports, EA Night out, EA Boardgames, EA Workshops / Masterclasses, personal development events.
