Dear all,
I am a bachelor's student at Grenoble Ecole de Management (GEM), a top-ranked French business school (Top 10 France, Top 30 Europe, Top 50 World (FT rankings, 2019)).
I already have a conditional admission offer for the Master in Management - Programme Grande Ecole of my school. However, I am quite hesitant on applying to HEC Lausanne's Master in Management.
I tried to search a lot of information to compare those 2 schools, without much success.
The program of GEM seems to fit better for me as their Finance specialization matches with my current Finance major. In addition, their program offers great and diversified tracks, concentrations and internship opportunities for students, unlike HEC Lausanne. Still, HEC Lausanne seems to have a higher reputation, as they are a national top 3 while GEM is not.
Nevertheless, the alumni network is not comparable. According to LinkedIn, GEM has +98,000 alumnis while HEC Lausanne has +17,000 and the University of Lausanne (HEC Lausanne is part of it) has +35,000. Concerning the location of these alumnis, I hardly found any relevant information for HEC Lausanne. I do know that for my school, they are mostly in Europe, North Africa and China/Singapore. As a French, I do know that choosing a French school is more secure, although I truly intend to work and get my next diploma in the US.
Regarding HEC Lausanne, I did hear of some students from 10 years ago that failure of exams was extremely high (example of 30% only passing the first semester in the Master in Finance). I do not know if it is still true today, and I do know that studying enough will surely make one pass, but it still a risk to consider. If any student knows of this, please let me know.
I would be very grateful to have your advice and your thoughts.
Thank you for your help!
[Edited by Lrasp on Jan 15, 2022]