Prepa (Ginette) then HEC/ESSEC/ESCP or Bocconi undergrad (BIEM)
Hi, I am a French high school students. I recently got accepted in the best prepa in France (which sends half the classe to HEC and almost all the rest to ESSEC or ESCP) after 2 years of intense studying.
However, I also got an offer from Bocconi University in management and economics (BIEM).
After my studies I would like to go into compétitives fields (maybe banking or consulting or other)
1. Do you know what are the master opportunity for Bocconi undergrads in management for top master in finance or management in Europe
2. For French users do you know if it is okay to do a bachelor at Bocconi and then join a Mim or Mfin at the top French business schools or those the frenche recruiters préfère the prépa students ?
3. Does HEC recruites French Bocconi undergrads ?
4. What is the reputation of Bocconi masters compared to HEC/ESSEC/ESCP masters (2 years not the 3 years French masters)
Go to Ginette. If you get HEC from Ginette you are set for life. Bocconi will never give you the same prestige on your CV (like never ever ever and certainly not in France if you are French) :)
Thanks for the advice !
Do you know if internationally speaking is not better to do Bocconi and then a top European master. This could provide more experiences as a whole and also a more clear path for recruiters (because I think the French prepa are not understood internationally)
I don’t especially plan to stay in France (although it wouldn’t bother me), for an international career is the prepa really better ?
True that, prepa is not well known abroad. If you want to stay in France then Ginette and HEC/ESSEC Grande Ecole will be placed far higher than Bocconi and after HEC/ESSEC grande ecole. However, if you want to go abroad, it might be easier for an HR or Manager non french to understand the bachelor-master-phd logic than the prepa-master integrated route. Hope it helps :)
What did you end up choosing ? I was facing exactly the same dilemma but i also got accepted to a double degree sciences po paris/panthéon sorbonne in maths and still hesitate a bit between all of these options, but i'd rather choose bocconi (BIEF) or the dd because of the safety it involves. Even if ginette mostly sends students to the top 3, i think that it isn't worth the risk of maybe ending up in em lyon or edhec, as the finals always random in some way.
Still hesitating 😅
But yea true you can’t be sure of your results in the final exam (there is also ≈ 10 students who go to em Lyon / Edhec etc…)
Tell me if you chose Bocconi in the end maybe I’ll see you there if I decide to take the BIEM !
Anyway the great thing is that we have time to choose.
No offence but prepa + top business school (even EM/EDHEC) is 10x better than Science po - even more now with all the riots that permanently damaged the school's reputation among recruiters
I spoke to recruiters and what i was able to learn is that sciences po alone with a master like fin/strat is at least equivalent, if not better than em lyon/edhec. Sciences po in double diploma with hec/bocconi/st gall is better than em/edhec/escp. Judging by your writing, I think that you are french, and i would like to state that sciences po's reputation may have gone down for the population as a whole, but masters like finstrat still have excellent placement in Ib from what I have been able to see or hear. Sciences po is more or less equivalent to the top 3.
Totally disagree. Only HEC and maybe ESSEC is better than Sciences Po. All the others fall no way short
Salut ca va? quel était tes gpas selon le calculateur de bocconi et t'avais eu cmb au test bocco pour etre accepté à bief? merci d'avance
Yes that is exactly the thing that made me (for now) choose either sciences po in dd or bocconi. I spoke to many many people in mergers and aquisitions, cfo, drh and so on and what most of them told me is that bocconi is superior to prepa (except one who did Ginette + ESSEC so there might be a bias) as you aquire an international profile, with an european network (people from bocconi go to lbs, lse, france, us and so on), and bocconi is better than escp, and maybe essec also so going to ginette would only be worth it if you obtain Hec, which is uncertain. Plus you also have the opportunity to do intership, which always add a lot of value. Anyway, I think that i will go for sciences po even tough none of the people in the buisness told me it was the best option out of the three, as i keep all the doors open with the bi crusus, some people (2/3 out of 20) go to polytechnique, and most of the ones who asks for the double degree sciences po/hec get it. I also spoke with quite a lot of people at bocconi who refused ginette, stanislas or left grandchamps in order to really take the best descision, idk if you spoke to them.
The placement or your science po bachelor sounds amazing.
Yea the fact of being able to do more internship + speaking good English is something that really differentiates yourself from prépa
No I did not discuss with them, how did you contact them ?
According to many people sciences po really lost in aura, but that really is the cursus that i wanted to integrate since i knew about it, on top of bocconi or top prepa. Actually, I agree that sciences po in istelf is "bad", but there is so many other double degrees, with bocconi, st gall, hec in finance/management related fields, making it a great way to access very prestigious unis worldwide with relative ease.
tbh i started in march when i knew i was accepted to bocconi, i wad added into a group related to bocconi with lots of people including french and from there i was able to speak to quite a lot of people who hesitated between prepa/bocconi, as i didn't think i would get sciences po in dd. At the begining i was only seing bocconi as a way for half decent students to escape the french system as i got in without lots of efforts, but then i realised that most of the people there were well informed persons, mostly coming from paris, but also brilliants students as I said before. It really helped me to put things into perspective, and from then I knew i wouldn't go to a classe preparatoire because my main fear choosing bocconi was to take the less prestigious path.
Yea I also had my doubt since the entrance exam was not that hard. But from what I heard to the quality of the students is better every year (and I guess it’s the same for science po since more and more students are going away from prépa)
Do you still have access to the groupchat ? Maybe I can contact some people there.
yeah ofc but i cannot send it here as my comment is deleted if i do so (cannot send any link). It is a well known group with all the students starting in 2024 in the bief/biem modules i think, you should be able to find the link on reddit. Actually scpos reputation is a very cleaving subject. Some people think it really is that bad (all the ones i have talked to basically), but the employment opportunities seem great, maybe equivalent to the top 3-4 for finstrat.
can you explain briefly how it works in France?
Is it like henry iv/louis le grand/other -> prepa for 2 years -> UG+masters (6 years of tertiary edu) -> banking/workforce ?
yeah it is like 2 years in prepa + 4 i think in grande ecole, including 1 year of intership at least + 1 year of pre master
It's a no brainer. No recruiter in France will see you the same way if you do Prepa + HEC/ESSEC/ESCP vs a Bachelor degree in the UK/Bocconi + MiM. The first one is the most prestigious to date
Do you think it’s that obvious to recruiters ?
yes ofc
• I personally know plenty of people who did an undergraduate degree at Bocconi then joined MiM/MiF programme from HEC/ESSEC/ESCP but also from LSE/LBS. Nonetheless, you need a relatively high GPA and be at least in the top 10% of your promotion (at least for the MiM)
• Being a top 3 student after completing a prepa myself, I must admit that if you want to work in competitive fields in London (let’s assume IB), they don’t care if you did a prepa prior to your graduate degree (most of recruiters don’t even have a clue of what a prepa is). In Paris, they take it into consideration for sure, but things have been changing for a few years now, it’s not a pre-requisite anymore (you will get screened for the same opportunities).
• Yes, HEC does recruits Bocconi undergrads, but only the best (I invite you to perform a Linkedin search to see by yourself)
• In France, the parisiennes definitely have a better reputation. In London, it’s more difficult to say because banks tend to recruit a diverse pool of candidates from target unis in Europe.
All in all, in both case, you will get the opportunity to break into these competitive fields and the choice depends on your profile and the country in which you want to work. Prepa requires a lot of sacrifice but you will learn some skills that you won’t be able to learn anywhere else (for example working 100 hours per week in IB will be déjà vu for you). Bocconi could be seen as the easiest and pragmatic path. Hope that helps.
I would add that knowing quite a lot of people from bocconi, it is very easy to get into ESCP, as many students which aren't excellent, nor in the top 10% (far from that actually) are able to integrate the PGE. from what I have been told from someone currently studying at bocconi in BIEF, the vast majority of the poeple applying to ESCP are accepted despite not being that great.
Yup agreed Know a lot of people from bachelors in many European countries and ESCP MiM was by far the most lenient. They even advised some candidates that had low gmat's to take the escp in house exam to not lower their average scores 😂 Their GPA also were sometimes awful/some that took longer to finish their bachelor even... (not managed in three but four years)...
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