In the summer of 2016, between the second and third year of my computer science bachelor’s at Manipal, I attended the HEC Paris Summer School in Luxury Management. I had no clear plan for the summer. I was not interested in being a software engineer, so a summer internship in tech did not appeal. A quick search for summer school programs abroad turned up HEC Paris, a school I had not heard of before, and a course on Luxury Management that genuinely interested me. I applied without overthinking it. I got in. That two-week program turned out to be one of the more consequential decisions of my early twenties.
If you are weighing whether to attend, here is what mine looked like and what I think you should know.
Why I picked the summer school
I was thinking about productive ways to spend my summer break. A quick search for summer programs abroad turned up HEC Paris. Within a few clicks I learned it was one of the top business schools in Europe. The Luxury Management course caught my attention because I had always been curious about expensive brands and wanted to learn how that industry worked.
The numbers added up. Two weeks long. Significantly cheaper than American summer schools, which can run ten thousand dollars or more. Held in Paris, or so I thought. I applied, got accepted, and stayed back ten extra days after the program ended to take my first solo trip around Europe.
Expectations going in were modest. Spend my summer productively. Learn something new in a country I had never lived in. Travel a bit. The program delivered all three.
The academic coursework
Classes ran either three or six hours a day with a ten-minute break. We covered the fundamentals of luxury management, working through core topics and case studies.
My main professor was Patrick Albaladejo, who has extensive industry experience and teaches a clear, structured course. We had guest lectures from Michel Chevalier, Gachoucha Kretz, who later became one of my favourite professors during the MiM and leads the Marketing program, and a guest lecture on Digital Marketing from Chanel’s CTO at the time.
There were two assignments. A four-page individual paper at the midpoint, and a group project at the end. My group chose Dior. We visited the flagship store on Avenue Montaigne to understand their sales process, then built a presentation proposing a new loyalty program. Working with people from very different nationalities on a single project taught me more about teamwork than any class I had taken in India.
Coming from a memorisation-heavy academic system, the case-based and project-based teaching at HEC felt like a different category of learning.
Meeting people from everywhere
The cohort was a mix of bachelor’s students, master’s students collecting ECTS credits, and people on a career break studying something they were curious about. I learned chopsticks at this summer school. I was nineteen.
We had picnics, explored Paris together, stayed out past 2am, and partied hard. The campus has a lake and open space we used extensively when classes ended. I am still in touch with a couple of people I met there.
The cultural exchange was more valuable to me than the course content. If you have never spent time outside your home country, two weeks with people from twenty nationalities will rearrange how you think about almost everything.
The campus, the residences, and Jouy-en-Josas
The campus is in Jouy-en-Josas, a quiet village near Versailles, about twenty-five kilometres south of central Paris. Calling it “HEC Paris” stretches the geography. The campus itself is beautiful. The S building, where the summer school classes are held, is modern and well-equipped. The residences at the time were old, but they have since been renovated and are genuinely nice now.
If you want the full visual, I wrote a longer HEC Paris campus tour that walks through the buildings, the lake, the sports facilities, and the village.
What I actually got from the summer school
Three things.
First, an introduction to business and marketing studies, which solidified my decision to switch from computer science. The course was specifically about luxury, but the underlying frameworks were broadly applicable. By the end I knew I wanted to do a business master’s.
Second, exposure to people, food, and ways of thinking I had not encountered before. The cultural broadening at nineteen had a compounding effect on the decisions that followed. I have written more about that in why I wanted to move abroad.
Third, the program introduced me to HEC Paris itself. I attended a seminar about the Grande Ecole MiM during summer school, and that is how I learned about the program I would later apply to. Without the summer school, I might never have heard of the HEC MiM.
Is it worth the cost?
The summer school is not a career-changer by itself. It will not magically improve your CV in a way that opens doors with employers. It is two weeks. The credential alone does not do much heavy lifting.
If you are interested in the field, the program is a strong way to build knowledge, meet international peers, and gain a life experience. From that perspective it is worth the money if you can afford it.
If you are looking at it primarily as a profile boost for MiM admissions, it can help only if it fits the rest of your story. For me, summer school in luxury fit because the rest of my profile pointed toward marketing. If you do finance summer school but your application is built around marketing, it adds less. I cover this in how to build a MiM profile.
The other tactical use is testing fit. Before committing three years and forty-nine thousand euros to the MiM, two weeks at HEC tells you whether you actually enjoy this environment. I learned during summer school that I liked the place, the learning format, and the people the school attracts. That made the MiM decision easier later.
If you are starting your MiM application now and looking for ways to strengthen your story, I unpacked more in HEC Paris admission requirements and HEC Paris essays tips.