Helsinki School of Economics (AALTO UNIVERSITY)

The school offers 2 formats of courses: courses during all the semester (once or twice a week) and intensive courses (usually lasting 3 weeks). Although the intensive format may be attractive because you attend the class for three weeks and have the exam at the end, be careful not to have too many of these intensive courses at the same time. Indeed, they require the same amount of study (about 20-25 hours teaching + assignments) in a short time.

The school is very flexible and gives opportunity to students to organize their academic year in a very freely way. Very good facilities at school: computers (one of the computer room is open 24h a day, 7 days a week), internet access, many teachers put the slides of their course on a webpage, weekly school newspaper (social and cultural events + information about courses and exams)... Nothing really seems to need improvements!

Courses here run in three week modules, so you only take one course at a time. This means they move fast, however you will find that most professors will end up cutting down the amount of work because it is impossible to accomplish a full course in three weeks. Each course really depends on the professor, all professors are visiting from around the world. This can be very rewarding or very fustrating. Grading is typically much easier than in Canada, however it will again depend on the professor.

I really enjoyed the team atmosphere of the school. Most grading is comprised of projects, papers, and presentations which are mostly done in groups. My presentation skills have developed alot, and also I have benefitted from the different backgrounds of group members. So I would suggest they continue what they are doing!

I took a very interesting course given by a Russian teacher: Doing business in St Petersburg. I learnt a lot about doing business in Russia, as well as, building a business plan.

There could have been more courses in English. But most of the courses I followed were interesting

I was really surprised with the fact that the main exams often consisted in learning books by heart, which I thought a bit useless at this stage of our studies, particularly for business studies

The school offers a wide range of courses held in English in BA and Economics. I also participated in the Information Technology Program (Summer School), which is an excellent opportunity to enjoy IT courses held by international professors and doing a business project.

No, not really. HSE is an excellent choice to spend a rewarding exchange year.

HSEBA invites a lot of international instructors e.g. John Ladder for Financial Accounting or Randall Powell for HRM which makes the standard or teaching international and just excellent.

I highly recommend this school in respect to academic life.