HEC Paris vs Cambridge Judge

Question

Hi guys,

My SO and I have both been accepted to both Cambridge Judge and HEC Paris. I am looking to get into entrepreneurship and they are interested in marketing.

We are open to work in either the UK, France, or elsewhere.

All things considered, which program would you recommend and why? If you have direct personal experience with either, I would enormously appreciate to hear your feedback.

EDIT:

Pros of Judge:
- Cohort is very active and excited
- Career service is fairly active
- College system and culture are exciting
- Cambridge is a cute town
- Cambridge is a very respected institution, and its name carries weight, even if HEC might be more respected among business-school ranks. 
- Strong entrepreneurship focus (my interest)

Cons of Judge:
- Brexit uncertainty
- Lower salary than HEC (by roughly $25k)
- Not known for a strong marketing concentration (for my SO)
- Judge inhibits access to its alumni network due to GDPR

Pros of HEC Paris:
- Higher salary
- Higher ranked business school
- Despite one poor marketing core course, is recognized for a strong marketing concentration
- Appears to open more doors to working in the EU than Judge (this is not clear if it is true)
- 16 months allows for more time to work on starting business (for me)

Cons of HEC Paris:
- It is in the middle of nowhere, quite far from Paris
- There is potential resentment from HEC Paris Grande Ecole students
- Speaking to recent alumni, heard of significant issues on the job market (need to have fluent French to work in France, some struggling to find jobs several months out) - however this appears to be contradicted by their employment report which has a higher % employed 3-months out than Judge
- Potentially limited access to alumni network due to GDPR (not verified)

Leadership · Answer

Hi  roflpotamus  ..
Many congratulations to both of you. Both schools are great. I am in favor of HEC because it's placements are in every function/industry. 16 months are perfect to try something new and think of another industry. MBA projects and clubs can also help. Judge is good for tech and entrepreneurship but do not underestimate HEC. HEC also promote entrepreneurship. You will see HEC in top of the rankings. Check out  HERE . It's normal that you will get more jobs/networking in UK from Judge. The probability of ending up in same country will be more from Judge than HEC.

roflpotamus · Answer

I appreciate your insight  Leadership .

I'm bumping this seeking more input from people.

Also, does anyone know when Cambridge releases information in regards to scholarship determinations?

roflpotamus · Answer

Hi all.

Cambridge Judge salary appears to be roughly $126k and HEC Paris around $126-144k. However, per Forbes, the salary for Judge students four years out is $188k as opposed to HEC's $144k. I am tempted to believe this is an anomaly or misreported data - but is it?

With a broad projection, will a student going to Judge experience that much more salary growth than a student that goes to HEC Paris?

roflpotamus · Answer

In regards to the figures:
Cambridge Judge:
https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/programmes/mb ... /salaries/ (mean ~$92k salary and $126k package)

https://www.forbes.com/colleges/univers ... 6172f68d42 (median $89k salary and $106k package; $183k salary in 2018 for the class of 2014 - four years out)

https://www.emolument.com/salary-report ... hool/13653 (average salary $133k)

https://gmatclub.com/forum/all-school-s ... 66143.html (average salary $114k)

HEC Paris:
https://contents.hec.edu/s3fs-public/20 ... inal_0.pdf (mean $121k salary package; median $112k salary package. What is a salary package - does it include both sign-on and performance bonuses? Are the figures on the right solely salary figures or are those salary with bonuses included?)

https://www.forbes.com/colleges/hec-paris/#1f8141bc70c0 (median salary $127k and $156 package; $145k salary in 2018 for the class of 2014 - four years out).

https://www.emolument.com/salary-report ... aris/13860 (average salary $116k)

https://gmatclub.com/forum/all-school-s ... 66143.html (average salary $121k)

Embedded in these figures is a confusing story - both Cambridge Judge and HEC Paris appear to have wildly different salaries and packages based on the source. In addition, I have struggled to find any consistent information on average salaries three or more years out.

rtbs15 · Answer

Do you have a EU passport? If not, you should take that into consideration.

France allows you to stay for 1 year after graduation but you are not allowed to work, whereas the UK gives you a 1 year visa to work there. As both schools don't have the same reach that INSEAD & LBS have, it might be an important factor, as going to Judge will let you stay working for a year and let you try for example a startup, while delaying the sponsorship for a year.

If you're gunning for IB/MBB the above point becomes irrelevant, then I'd consider the network. It's my bias perhaps, but for me HEC is a tier above Judge (not Cambridge) in terms of reputation and student caliber, so I'd go for it if the Visa is not an issue.

Hope it helps!

----EDIT----

Another factor is Brexit, with HEC's program duration you might end up in a sticky situation when finishing your program if indeed the UK is successful in leaving, so I guess that is a potential point for Judge. I don't think that changes my view, but would keep it in mind.

roflpotamus · Answer

Hi  rtbs15 , I have an EU passport. I do not have a UK passport.

I also have hunted down details on the HEC Paris and Cambridge Judge employment reports and have found the HEC Paris salaries to be significantly higher. This surprises me considering how much people have talked about how depressed French salaries are, even to UK.

Pros of Judge:
- Cohort is very active and excited
- Career service is fairly active
- College system and culture are exciting
- Cambridge is a cute town
- Cambridge is a very respected institution, and its name carries weight, even if HEC might be more respected among business-school ranks. 
- Strong entrepreneurship focus (my interest)

Cons of Judge:
- Brexit uncertainty
- Lower salary than HEC (by roughly $25k)
- Not known for a strong marketing concentration (for my SO)
- Judge inhibits access to its alumni network due to GDPR

Pros of HEC Paris:
- Higher salary
- Higher ranked business school
- Despite one poor marketing core course, is recognized for a strong marketing concentration
- Appears to open more doors to working in the EU than Judge (this is not clear if it is true)
- 16 months allows for more time to work on starting business (for me)

Cons of HEC Paris:
- It is in the middle of nowhere, quite far from Paris
- There is potential resentment from HEC Paris Grande Ecole students
- Speaking to recent alumni, heard of significant issues on the job market (need to have fluent French to work in France, some struggling to find jobs several months out) - however this appears to be contradicted by their employment report which has a higher % employed 3-months out than Judge
- Potentially limited access to alumni network due to GDPR (not verified)

rtbs15 · Answer

Salaries for HEC illustrates the point of broader reach for me, more international, grads leave to more markets than Judge, and americans go back to their countries pumping salaries up.

Sorry for not being specific, thought the language was a given. You'll need to speak french to work in France, and german in Germany except Berlin, same for Spain and Italy. If you're not interested in learning another language, I'd say that your realistic options will be UK, Amsterdam and the Nordics. Going back to the original questions, it does SEEM that Judge is "greener" than HEC, and the class is a level lower. I haven't reviewed any of the schools when I was applying therefore take this from an uninformed person, but I never came across a Judge person after school, a bit more from HEC.

I'd personally go for HEC, but I'd wait to see what happens with Brexit in the next few weeks, and make an informed guess on how long will the limbo be. The worst case scenario is that you graduate in Dec 2021, UK is out of EU, visas are scarce and you can't access one of the 3 realistic markets you have if you don't learn a new language.

FlyingFish · Answer

Honestly mate, I think you are overthinking this a bit. It's understandable, but at this point the question is do you wanna live in France or in the UK? Do you wanna learn French, do you wanna live in Paris? The other factor here is 12 mo. vs. 16 mo., no internship vs internship.

I think you are fooling yourself if you are trying to find major differences between the schools in terms of outcomes and reputations. Both HEC and Judge could be the right choices here, it depends on where you really want to go, and you won't find that out by going through every single statistic / conjecture of schools that have a similar status.

Also, I think there's some inaccurate info going around this thread. Salary changes depending on your source, and I think it is very questionable to claim that HEC has significantly higher salaries. If you look at the Forbes rankings for 2019 they also report salaries for the class of 2014 (so 5 years after graduation). HEC is @ $145k while Judge is @183k. I'm sure you could easily find other reputable sources with different outcomes.

Another poster mentioned a one year post-MBA visa in the UK - pretty sure that doesn't exist, they have announced that the 2 year visa will be coming back. I wouldn't really worry about Brexit, it matters at the macroeconomic level for the country as a whole but there's still going to be hundreds of thousands of job openings every year regardless, and you yourself only need one job. It's more up to you than to the economic situation of the country in my opinion.

Defixon · Answer

Hey Mate,

Which one did you choose and how is it going? I'm in the same dilemma now.

Posted from my mobile device

bb · Answer

The way employment reports for all schools work, it only includes a subset of people. Usually that means they only include figures that the war reported to them. Also this only includes those who actually found a job and excludes everyone who either did not find a job or did not report their information. Thus you can easily have half a class employed with great jobs and the other half starving but the employment report will look very promising. I’m not sure if that’s what the students were referring to...

Posted from my mobile device

Posted from my mobile device

Wolf3132 · Answer

roflpotamus  which school did you choose?

HEC Paris vs Cambridge Judge

HEC Paris or Cambridge Judge?

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