HEC visit impressions

I went to the open day at the HEC campus in Jouy-en-Josas, about 30 km south-west from Paris.

The village is beautiful, with nice old-fashion houses and vast open areas filled with trees and fields. I walked by feet from the RER (train station) to the campus, a distance of 800 meters. I could of course have taken the shuttle bus but I'm an adventurous dude.

On site I quickly found the MBA building (HEC is a big business undergrad college as well) and entered the hallway. People were sitting around in sofas and discussing important looking stuff (although I quickly saw on an open laptop an image of what seemed to be a recent holiday in the mountains). On the tables were the latest issues of the Financial Times and the Les Echos (french economics paper) free of charge.

I took the elevator to the first floor and entered room 106, where I met the person who arrived before me, an American working for an NGO in Africa. In addition people who came later were: a French engineer, a French manager from Shell, a French IT consultant, a French young politician and a French army captain. Lots of French although only 20% of the MBA class is supposed to be French.

The room was new, clean and very well equipped with Bose loudspeakers, a big white board, a video projector, very comfortable chairs, clean new desks. I had the feeling to be in an high-tech firm meeting room rather than a French university (you should see one from the inside to understand how ugly it can be).


The first guy who spoke was in charge of Development for HEC in Spanish speaking countries, he explained what he saw as HEC's strongest points :

• Academics only count for about 30% of the HEC MBA value, the other 70% come from personal development and individual and group experiences.
• FT ranked HEC first in Europe for two years in a row (although true, the ranking he refers to is "Top European business schools" thus including Masters, EMBA, Part time MBA and online MBA)
• HEC is a 16 months program which he believes to be the perfect compromise between academic quality and not being away from the job market for too long.
• MBAT, the MBA sports Tournament seems to take an important place in the school life, and he actually stressed it out as being one of the strongest points of HEC (who is the organizer of this tournament).
• A possibility for a dual degree (two MBAs) with NYU Stern, ITESM and 5 other European schools that I didn't recognize (not top 10 in EU)
• Very strong exchange program with a lot of strong schools all over the world (22 schools only in the US including UPenn, Duke, Darden and more top-tier schools)
• 40% of the faculty were recruited in the last four years, in an attempt to score higher in MBA rankings.

Next lecturer was a French guy from Career Development, who presented the service's efforts to support students and alumni in their career search:

• Self assessment using specific software, seminars with professionals, meeting 1-on-1 with HR specialists.
• They help you build a full and a brief CV.
• Two days seminar with a pro about job search, salary negotiation, etc.
• They have two full times employees who travel around the world and present student profiles to employers.
• They have companies coming to the campus almost every Tuesday to do presentations and talk with MBAs in informal cocktails.
• Most of the class wants to work either in France or UK, last year 57% actually worked in these countries.
• They work real hard on the brand recognition of MBA in France (not known enough yet).

We ended this part of the day and followed a current MBA student from Japan to a classroom to attend a real MBA class. The course was Strategic Management and a case about Domino's Pizza was presented. The experience was AMAZING to me. First it was very informal, with students wearing Jeans and t-shirts. Second, the general feeling was extremely nice; The professor told jokes, made funny comments and was a great performer overall. The lecture was interesting as well, and included a case discussion, a powerpoint presentation and a video who was funny as well as interesting.

My feeling after the class was: "Please let me stay here for two years!!!"


The rest of the visit was not very interesting, we ate at the cafeteria (nice decent food), and saw around the campus and the student residence. The MBA residence is apart from the other residences, and includes new and not so expensive rooms (500 EUR for a single room of about 20sqm), they also have a room for parties called the Piano bar, a washing machines room, vending machines and a very useful foosball table (table soccer).

Visit summary :

• The campus is very nice and the MBA facilities are great.
• Prospective students seem intelligent and interesting, a perfect future network.

Entrepreneurs' street in Jouy-en-Josas