Student Report
Name of the University: HEC Montrèal
Exchange semester: Spring 2013
Montreal is a beautiful city and we would recommend you to do your exchange at HEC
Montreal. It’s a private business school with friendly people.
I. PRACTICAL INFORMATION
Before leaving Norway
At www.hec.ca/en you will find a lot of information about the school. You can already in
November start to look at different courses.
We received information around the end of November. And after that we regularly received
information from the exchange office and HEC by e-mail. Before we left, we knew
everything about the courses they offered, housing, and the welcome week. We did not have
any difficulties in my preparing process.
You should check the schedule at your courses and the exam date before you chose classes so
you don’t have two exams one the same day.
Before you left you could sign up for welcome week. I would recommend you to join this
week because there you will meet all the other students and then it’s no problem to find
friends.
I ordered my flight tickets with British Airways. I paid around 7000 NOK for a return ticket.
I travelled from Oslo via London to Montreal with British Airways and Air Canada on
January 2th.
I will recommend you to book your flight as early as possible because then you can find
cheaper tickets.
Applying for a visa
We didn’t need to apply for a visa of study. I only filled out the forms you receive on the
plane .You only need to bring your letter from BI that you are going to study in Canada.
It is important to bring your NAV insurance card, and show this at the international office.
You need to have a proof that that you are registered in the Norwegian health insurance and
show this at the health office.
You need to bring the card to the health office of Quebec to get a Quebec health insurance
card. Before you go to the Health Office you need to make sure you have papers documenting
that you go to HEC Montreal and you need an address in Montreal to which they send the
card.
Housing
As for the apartment, it shouldn't be any problem if you decide to look for one only once you
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get here because Montreal is a big city so the offer is high. However, we had one apartment
downtown in Montreal. We found this apartment the first week. And we didn’t have any
problems. It’s easy to find an apartment.
If you don't want to deal with that type of stress and want to start looking beforehand, there
are a few sites I can suggest you:
- 1. http://www.getyourplace.ca : it's a company run by 3 HEC students who basically
buys the rent of students going on exchange in order to rent it to incoming exchange
students. However, I think all their apartments are already rented but you can still take
a look.
- 2. https://www.facebook.com/groups/414566408607782/ : it's a facebook group run by
HEC to advertise housing from students going on exchange.
- 3. http://montreal.kijiji.ca : at this point, this would be your best bet. It's basically a
website where most Montrealers post anything they have to sell/trade/sub-let. You can
just search for "4 1/2 apartment" and a lot of results will pop up, but most of them are
in French (some are in French and English).
In the welcome week the university also help you with finding a place to stay.
HEChange team members are very friendly and if you ask them they will help you.
Montreal is a big city and you have a lot of option. If you don’t know anybody its easy to find
someone to share with on HEC facebook group.
Costs
The prices in Canada are similar to Norwegian prices. Take out food is cheaper also alcohol
and taxi are cheaper. The price level in the grocery store is on the same level as home.
For books we paid around 2000 NOK in total. In some courses you don’t need books, it
depends on which courses you choose.
We paid 25 000 NOK for the semester in housing. You can find much cheaper. It depends on
where and how nice apartment you want.
Transport are cheaper than home. You can buy a ticket for 5 months, and for that we paid
1000 NOK.
In general Montreal is a little bit cheaper than Norway.
Culture and language
We didn’t have any language problems at all. It’s over 250 exchange students from over 30
different countries. Everybody is very open and respectful. And after a couple of weeks there,
your English improves significantly. Even though Montreal is a French-speaking city, almost
everybody can speak English.
Cultural and social effects from the exchange experience
The experience is life changing in terms of your personality development and how you reflect
on the world itself and how small Norway actually is. You get to “open your eyes” and this is
worth a whole lot when you return and notice how the world is totally different in another part
of the world.
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This experience changes our possibilities in the future. Not only because our English has
improved significantly, but we think future employers will appreciate our international
experience as well as the reflected thoughts regarding another culture.
Exchange to Montreal is definitely one of the best experiences of my life, and I would
recommend anyone to take the opportunity to go on an exchange
II. ABOUT THE SCHOOL
HEC Montréal is one of Canada’s leading business schools. The school is located 20 minutes
from downtown with metro. The school is divided in two buildings 10 minutes walk from
each other. You have small classroom with about 30 classmates. Through the semester every
course has several assignments, group works and presentations. You don’t have 100% exams
like home.
Course registration
You can already in November start to register your courses. You will get an email with all the
information you need. And on HEC homepage you can read about the courses they offer.
You can add and drop courses until one week after the semester start.
Academic calendar
Arrival date:
First day of the semester:
Last day of classes:
Examination period:
Any special events/holidays:
January 2th
January 3th
April 26th
April 15th-26th
Spring break
February/March
Arrival
HEC have a welcome group with local students that offer plenty of activities the first week.
They will also welcome you at the airport.
This was our welcome week schedule:
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The International Office
There is an International office at school that will be more than willing to help you out if you
face some kind of problem. They arrange some meetings and have a presentation in the
begging of your stay where they tell you all you need to know and where you can go see them
if you’re wondering about something. They are all fluent in English and very helpful if you
have any questions.
Promoting BI and Norway
We did not do too much to promote BI, except from going to this BBQ where we got to meet
students that were going to BI and Norway the next semester.
Social activities
A couple of month before we went over the school put us in touch with a student or a former
student that was our “Buddy” during the stay. The Buddy would help you with any school or
not school related question. There were social activities organized were all the students went
to dinner with their buddy and pretty much everyone got to know their buddy during the stay.
You also got to know native students from different social activities, class, etc.
The relationship between the exchange students was extremely good. You got to know lots of
new people from all over the world starting the first day of welcoming week. We were around
150 exchange students that did lots of stuff together. There were social activities at least a
couple of times a week. We went out in Montreal together, went skiing and lots of different
stuff together. The relationship between the exchange students and all the new friends we
made was probably the best thing about the whole stay.
There are lots of different student organizations you can join, but as we only stayed for one
semester we didn’t find the time to join any. The International Committee organized so many
activities. This committee organized the welcoming week and after that they organized small
and bigger events. All from a weekend-tour till Boston till “Student night out” every Tuesday.
This committee did an amazing job so that we got to know them and lots of the other
exchange students. Comparing to the other schools we have friends that went on exchange to,
no one had a committee that did their job better than the International Committee at HEC.
This group was a key factor for making the stay as good as it was.
III. ACADEMICS
In the classroom
The teaching style is more personal than at BI. You are only from 30 to 50 people in every
class, and it’s not unusual that the professor knows your name. The classes is pretty much
built up as in BI where the professor have a PowerPoint-presentation and the class just listens
and ask questions, but class-discussions are more likely to happen here than at BI. We had all
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our courses in English and had few problems with that, except from one teacher that had a
quite strong French-accent that sometimes made him hard to understand.
The level of the courses is pretty much the same as in BI, except that it’s harder to fail. The
workload in total is pretty much the same, but compared to BI you do not have an exam in the
end that counts 100% of your grade. Exactly what counts for your grade varies from course
too course, but it’s likely that you would have presentations, group projects, hand-ins and a
midterm that also will count on your grade. This might sound more stressful than just having
one exam, but it’s actually not too bad and you won’t have to put in the same effort before
your exam as you already have been reading and working with your curriculum.
In some courses the teaching is also much more practical, like case-solving, than at BI. We
found this interesting and it was nice to not just sit in the classroom and listen to the professor.
Course materials
The course material was different in every course. In some courses you got a book and a
certain amount of pages you had to study while you in some other classes just had the
PowerPoint-presentation and some articles to read. All the course material was in English.
The level of the course material was pretty much the same as in BI, except you might have to
do some work to learn the English terms.
Exams
The exams could be based on both the course material as on the lectures. Compared to BI it’s
more important to show up in class as you can get questions on your exams that the course
material does not provide an answer too. Your course could be evaluated in lots of different
ways, like:
o Final exam (include form: written, oral, home assignment, presentation, etc.)
o Mid-term exam
o In-class quizzes throughout semester
o Small assignments and/or papers
o Presentations
o Group work
o Class attendance
o Class participation/debates
All the courses have different ways to evaluate your performance.
Description of courses
You will be able to choose courses sometime in November. It’s a first come, first served
system, so it can be smart to register as soon as possible, but in general we had few problems
switching classes after we arrived. Just make sure to contact your school back home so you’re
sure they will approve of your chosen courses. You need to have 5 courses during the
semester as they give 6 each study points instead of 7,5 as we were used to at BI. We would
recommend that you go to as many classes as you can the first week to get an impression of
the courses. This is the courses we chose:
Course code & name
250009a Operation
Master/
Bachelor
Bachelor
Exam form
Comments
3-hour written
This course got approved as the course we call
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Management
exam
208607a International
Economic
Environment
Bachelor
3-hour written
exam
305107a International
Financial
Management
Bachelor
3-hour written
exam
3610499a
Bachelor
Business
Communication
level 4
34007a
Bachelor
Strategic
management in
organizations
Logistic in BI. The course had an average workload
and we found this to be an interesting course. Your
grade was based on 3 hand-ins done in groups, a
written midterm and a written final exam. The exam
was based on the PowerPoint presentations and on
some articles.
A quite easy course. Each lecture was about a
different part of the world and how the economics
worked in that part of the world. Your grade was
based on one group presentation/hand in and a final
exam that was divided in 3 parts (true or false/
multiple-choice and an essay). The exam was based
on just out of 12 PP presentations.
This course was a quite hard one. The professor had
a lot of knowledge, but he had a quite strong accent
which sometimes made him hard to understand.
The exam was based on his presentations and a
handful of articles that he handed out during class.
The course was easy but the workload was quite
heavy. We registered for level 4 which was the
second hardest level. We could probably have
registered for the hardest. The grade was based on
small tests that we had every week, hand-ins,
presentations and a written exam.
The workload in this course was average. The
course was theoretical the first half of the semester
but after spring break we only did a simulation in
groups which were really fun. The grade was based
on a hand-in, midterm and on how well you did in
the simulation.
This experience will always be a part of your life. We will strongly recommend students to go
to HEC, you will get an experience of a life time! You will get so many memories that will
last forever. You get friends from all over the world. It was basically 5 months of craziness.
We will never forget this experience.
If it’s anything else you’re wondering about, don’t hesitate to contact us through the
International office at BI.
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