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pleun.v.gestel@hotmail.com
Human Resource Studies
Fall
2015/2016
HEC Montréal
Canada
Montréal – HEC Montréal
Montréal is a very, very nice city. It’s way bigger than Tilburg, so I had to get used to that at first, but
after a while you get to know everything, you know the way and it doesn’t feel so massive anymore.
Soon it started to feel like your ‘own’ city. There are lots of bars and restaurants in the Plateau-area,
this is where most of the students lived, which made it very cozy. The best place to drink is definitely
Café Campus on Tuesday, a pitcher of beer is 5 Canadian dollars (CA) that night while normally 1
glass/bottle of beer is 6/7 CA. And after sharing some of those pitchers with friends it was also the
best place to dance, even the music was ‘awful’, I really enjoyed the music there. I think you could
find almost every (exchange) student there every Tuesday night! For eating L’entrepot aka ‘the 5
dollar place’ was amazing. They had so many dishes, all just for 4,95 CA and not only it was cheap,
everything was also really, really gooood.
The school, HEC Montréal, is located in Cote-des-Neiges and is quite far from the Plateau. For me, for
example it was approximately 40 minutes by metro (including changing lines). Depending on where
in the Plateau you lived, for some going by bus was better, this was like 30 minutes. HEC Montréal
has two buildings, best thing to do when going from one to the other was walking, this was like 10
minutes. If you came straight from home and only had to go to one of the buildings, you could use
one metro station to go to one building and one stop further to go to the other building. The campus
itself was quite small, there was not much around the main buildings. The buildings were quite
modern and big, every classroom was named after a famous brand, city etc.
To be honest, I don’t really know about the faculty divisions, I believe you had Finance, Marketing,
Management, Human Resource Management. Most courses you could choose of were in French,
since they speak that in the province, Quebec. But almost every exchange student had the courses
which also had English versions. They have 10.109 undergraduate and 3.051 graduate students.
About the way of teaching, it’s quite different from Tilburg University. Instead of one lecture and one
work group of both 1,5 hours, like in Tilburg, they only have 1 lecture of 3 hours for every course
every week, but those lectures are actually a normal lecture and a working group in one. It is nice to
have only 1 lecture of every course, but on the other hand, 3 hours of concentrating is very hard.
Practical Information
I received the pre-arrival information from HEC Montréal at the beginning of May and they sent
some more e-mails following the next month.
If you’re going to Canada for less than 6 months (180 days), you don’t need a visa if you are from the
Netherlands. We had to opportunity to get picked up from the airport the weekend before the
Welcome Week, this was included the package, but I arrived a week before the Welcome week, so I
didn’t use that option. There was also the option to choose a buddy, but I forgot about the deadline
so I didn’t have a buddy in the end.
HEC Montréal has a ‘HEChange team’ for international students: they organized the welcome week, a
lot of trips through the semester (including one week to Cuba with almost all the exchange
students!) and of course a lot of parties. This team exists of students from the school itself, most of
them are from Canada or France, since there were also a lot of French people just following their
whole study program there. In the Welcome Week we also had 1 day at university for administration
etc., this was all very well arranged. Besides this formal day, the whole week was a lot of fun: you got
to know a lot of new people, did a lot of cool stuff (like jetboating, zip lining etc.) and you partied
every night!
For accommodating, there were no options to live on-campus, so you had to find some
accommodating yourself. The university doesn’t really support you in the housing. A lot of people
found a place before going there through www.getyourplace.ca. This is a website that has a contract
with some landlords that offer their houses for exchange students. There is 1 moment to register for
a room, so you have to be quick. Sadly, I didn’t get a room through this site, everything was full the
first second the registration opened, but apparently, if you waited for maybe 2/3 hours, quite some
rooms were free again and you get one anyway. A lot of my friends there lived in a getyourplacehouse and I would really recommend it. They weren’t always satisfied about everything, but overall,
those houses are fine and it’s just really nice to know you have a place before arriving. I decided,
after the getyourplace failure, to book a hostel for the first 2 weeks and look for something there.
There was a facebook-group where a lot of people advertised their houses in, something like
‘woonruimte aangeboden/gezocht Tilburg’, so that seemed to be easy. But it was harder than I
thought, I had some bad luck, so in the end I finally found a room after 3 weeks. In the end I had a
fine house, with a really good location (around the corner of Café Campus) and my roommates were
really nice, so it turned out well, but still, I would really recommend to find a place before arriving,
because living in a hostel for 3 weeks, isn’t that fun..
Canada is quite an expensive country, so sometimes it was quite hard to not end up broke haha. I
financed it with the grant, stufi, a loan and just my own money. I think I spend most of my money on
housing, food/drinks and also trips of course. Canada is just expensive, so the food and drinks etc.
were just more expensive than in Tilburg. And normally you don’t have a trip almost every weekend,
but I would really recommend to just do everything you can and go everywhere you can! Those
experiences and memories of it make your exchange so much better!
The Welcome Week started at 2 weekends before the beginning of school, on the 23th of August and
lasted 8 days. You could choose to arrive before/at the beginning of this week, in the middle of this
week or just right before school started, which was at the 31st of August. In contrast to Tilburg, the
midterms/finals are not from Monday till Friday (maybe for several weeks), but they are from
Wednesday till Tuesday. So our midterms were from Wednesday the 21st of October until Tuesday
the 27th of October, and then we had a midterm break until the 3th of November (but most people
were in Cuba until the 6th ). Last day of school was Tuesday the 8th of December, and then we could
have finals from Wednesday the 4th until Tuesday the 22nd of December, but my last final was on the
21st.
To be honest, I don’t know much about the International office, I only went there in the Introduction
week and then we were guided there by the HEChange team. What I know, is that they helped us
good that day but furthermore I don’t really know.
The HEChange team organized trips to Quebec, Ottawa, Mont Tremblant, Cuba, Boston and besides
that they organized some parties through the semester with in the end the HEChange gala as a sort
of goodbye, with a dinner before and awards etc. Besides the trips from HEChange, we went to
Tadoussac and Toronto with friends. (After the semester, I travelled with 3 exchange friends through
the USA for 2,5 weeks). I had mostly contact with exchange students, and some local students for
some group assignments, but actually the only local student I really had contact with was one of my
roommates, but he wasn’t from HEC.
I believe Canada is in most things quite the same as Europe, so I didn’t experience a culture shock.
The only thing was that, I knew they spoke French in Quebec, but I didn’t know it was that ‘big’. For
example, a few people didn’t even really speak English, while I guess I expected they would just talk a
bit of both but the French was really dominant. I also only took English courses, since I actually don’t
speak a word of French. It is nice to learn it there, but it also doesn’t matter because in the end, with
some exceptions, most people speak French normally but they can also understand/speak English, at
least good enough to have a conversation with them.
Most people were way more friendly than they are in Europe/the Netherlands, which was very
pleasant of course, but there were also way more homeless people. They weren’t tedious or
anything, but it was just really ‘new’, since there are not a lot of homeless people in Tilburg and
definitely not in the small village I come from. But besides that I didn’t really experience any big
differences. Some little nice differences were that you get free water in every restaurant etc., that
they could split the bill everywhere and that people are standing in line for the bus instead of just
standing in front of it in a crowd.
Since the culture in Canada wasn’t that different, you were friends with so many people from other
nationalities that still, you got to know a lot of other cultures/traditions etc. I learned different things
from every single one of them. If I had to choose one bad experience, it would actually only be having
difficulties with finding a house at the beginning, furthermore I had such a great time. I also cannot
name my best experience, I did so many cool things, met so many new people. And that is also what I
will never forget, the opportunities I got this semester to go to all those place, do all those things but
mostly I will never forget all the people I met that became real friends and I really think and hope we
will keep in touch, because those months were really amazing and that was mainly because of them!
Academic Information
Most of the courses are offered in French, but there are also enough courses in English. Since I don’t
speak any French, I only followed English courses. The courses I took were for example Human
Resource Management, Organizational Behavior, Conflict Management, because they are relevant
for my study program (Human Resource Student). HRM was mainly about the laws in Quebec, so that
wasn’t that relevant for me in the end, but the other two were really interesting and fun (and
Conflict Management doesn’t have a midterm/final haha)! Besides those, I also had Consumer
behavior, I would also recommend this one, it wasn’t that hard but it was still quite interesting and
fun. My last course was Strategic Management in Organizations, I think this could have been an
interesting course, but I didn’t like it that much, but I think that is something personal. I think in
general, the level of education at HEC was lower than the level at Tilburg University, you could easily
pass assignments, finals etc., but they did have a lot more of (group) assignments overall. As already
written before, the teaching method is a mix of lectures and group works: in the 3 hours lectures
there is a theoretical part and a practical part. The relationship between teacher and student was
quite informal, since the classes were always quite small, so it was more personal. In the end, I
passed everything with quite good grades, so that was nice.
For two of my courses I had a midterm and for four out of five I had a final. This were all just written
exams. For one course, the final presentation/assignment (which you had at almost every course)
was also the final ‘examination’.
The library was really easily accessible, but it was quite small so there wasn’t a lot of space when it
was a bit crowded. There were some computers available in the library, but most of the working
places were just places where you could sit with your books/laptop. Around the whole building there
were also tables where you could work at.
I followed the following courses:
Human Resource Management – GRH 230097A
- Course level:
BA
- Prerequisites:
none
- Exam:
written (midterm + final)
- ECTS:
6
- Comments:
half of course mostly focused on Quebec, less in general
Conflict Management – GRH 233011A
- Course level:
BA
- Prerequisites:
none
- Exam:
none (but: final presentation/assignment)
- ECTS:
6
- Comments:
Consumer Behavior – MARK 210705A
- Course level:
BA
- Prerequisites:
none
- Exam:
written (final)
- ECTS:
6
- Comments:
quite some group assignments
Organizational Behavior – MNGT 240112A
- Course level:
BA
- Prerequisites:
none
- Exam:
written (midterm + final)
- ECTS:
6
- Comments:
very interesting and fun course, very good teacher!
Strategic Management in Organizations – MNGT 343014A
- Course level:
BA
- Prerequisites:
none
- Exam:
written (final)
- ECTS:
6
- Comments:
-
For everyone doubting to go on exchange or not, definitely go! An exchange semester is such a great
experience, you do so many cool things, things you may never do otherwise, you meet a lot of nice
people, you learn a lot about cultures, yourself etc., and all of this just in a few months. In the
beginning it is scary to start a ‘whole new life’ suddenly, but after one or two weeks it’s only fun and
you will never regret it!
Montréal was an amazing city, I really enjoyed myself there and it kind of feels like a second home
now! HEC Montréal was also a good school, I especially liked the way teachers and students interact,
it’s more personal than in Tilburg. If you are looking for a destination a bit further away, but you
aren’t looking for a complete culture change, I really would recommend Montréal, I loved it there!