The acceptance rate nobody publishes

The short answer

What is officially published

All of it sits on HEC's own pages, and all of it was read there on the date at the bottom of this page.

Admission rounds

Three are open. Round 1 exists in the numbering and is marked as not available for this program.

Eligibility

A Bachelor's of at least four years worth 240 ECTS, or a Master's. A minimum B2 in both English and French, because the program runs in both languages.

The application file

Degree certificates, official transcripts with GPA, a CV, an English test score, motivation essays, one recommendation form and a non-refundable 150 EUR application fee. Professional experience is not required and may count as an asset.

Outcomes

75% of students launch their own start-up, 97% employed within seven months, 67,000 EUR average starting salary, 98% graduation rate, 500 or more companies founded.

The admission rounds

Four rounds are numbered and three of them run. The dates below are the ones published for the current cycle, and they shift every year, so read them off the official page before you plan a life around them.

What is not published

None of the following has ever appeared on an official page. Any figure you find for them was produced by somebody guessing:

• How many applications arrive, per round or per year.
• How many offers go out, and therefore any acceptance rate at all.
• How many candidates reach the interview, which is the stage that decides.
• How long the waiting list is and how far down it moves.
• The split between candidates from the two schools and external applicants.

What the cohort looks like

The two numbers applicants ask for most are not official. They come from inside the program. They are stable enough to be worth telling you and loose enough that you should not build a plan on them:

Both are ranges rather than counts, on purpose. A promo is assembled rather than filled to a target, and the balance moves from one year to the next.

The waiting list

There are two of them and they are not the same thing. One is specific to external applicants. The other sits at the end of admission, once the rounds have run. Neither has a published length, and neither has a published movement rate, so nobody outside the admissions office knows how deep a given year's list goes.

Being on it is not a rejection, and it is not a queue with a visible position. It means the jury said yes to you and has not yet been able to say yes to a seat.

What actually does the selecting

Since there is no rate to reverse-engineer, the useful question is what the process weighs. The file is a filter. The interview is the decision. This part is insider, from dozens of mock interviews run from the other side of the table:

1. 1The file makes you admissible and nothing more. Everyone who reaches the interview is impressive on paper, which is exactly why paper stops separating people at that point.
2. 2The interview is not a second reading of your CV. It asks whether you are a person worth investing a year of attention in.
3. 3Honesty about why you are there survives contact with a jury. A rehearsed reason does not, and they have heard yours before.
4. 4Fit with the cohort counts, because this program is built out of the people in it far more than out of its syllabus.

Read next

• FAQFees, dates, housing and the cohort, one question at a time
• Interview PreparationHow the interview runs, and what happens on the day
• Interview GuideThe interview guide, written after dozens of mock interviews
• ProgramWhat the program actually is, phase by phase