Master in Management — Programme Grande École

emlyon business school is a French grande école with entrepreneurship at the centre of its identity. Founded in 1872 by the Lyon Chamber of Commerce, it is the second-oldest business school in France after ESCP.¹ Its Programme Grande École — the formal Master in Management — is a 24-month degree (extendable to 36 months with a gap year) taught from Lyon, France’s second city. The programme sits at #12 in the Financial Times Masters in Management 2025 ranking and #16 in the QS Business Masters Rankings 2026.⁴ ⁵ emlyon is not a CEMS member, which differentiates it from its main French peers — instead, the programme leans on its signature Makers’ Lab and the EarlyMakers Program as differentiators and on a wide bilateral double-degree network with WHU, Aston, HEC Montréal, Tongji, KAIST, and USP.¹ ²

Overview

The emlyon Programme Grande École (PGE) is delivered over two academic years, with an optional intercalated gap year that extends the calendar duration to 36 months.¹ Most students take the gap year — it is the standard pathway for accumulating extended internship experience and is the route through which many graduates secure their first full-time offer pre-graduation.

The PGE admits via several routes. The international degree track is the route most non-French applicants use, alongside the BCE concours (used by French prépa students) and the AST route (used by French candidates with an existing first degree).¹ The international degree track admits roughly 750 students per intake across all routes — a cohort size that sits between LBS and ESCP.

The programme positions itself unmistakably around entrepreneurship. The Makers’ Lab — a physical maker space combining design, prototyping, software, and small-scale manufacturing equipment — is embedded in the first-year curriculum and anchors the EarlyMakers Program, a structured pathway for students building businesses during the degree.¹ ³ This positioning is not cosmetic; the curriculum, the careers operation, and the alumni network all skew measurably towards entrepreneurial and innovation-led trajectories alongside the standard consulting and finance pipeline.

emlyon formally restyled itself as lowercase “emlyon business school” in its 2023 rebrand. The styling is intentional and now consistent across the school’s materials. Older external sources still write “EMLYON” or “EM Lyon” — these refer to the same institution.

Curriculum & Tracks

The first year covers the standard management canon — corporate finance, accounting, microeconomics, statistics, strategy, marketing, organisational behaviour, operations, and business law — delivered through lectures, case studies, and project work.¹ The first-year curriculum is taught in both English and French depending on track; the English-only path is increasingly the default for international students. The Makers’ Lab and EarlyMakers Program run alongside the academic core, with structured time blocked into the calendar for entrepreneurial work.

The second year is the specialisation year. emlyon offers tracks across Entrepreneurship, Finance, Strategy & Consulting, Marketing, Digital Supply Chain, and BioPharma management.¹ ² The Entrepreneurship track is the most distinctive — it includes an extended Makers’ Lab residency, the EarlyMakers Program funding round, and an accelerator-style mentorship structure that is rare among European MiMs. The Finance and Strategy & Consulting tracks are the largest by enrolment and the most aligned with the major recruiter pipelines.

A meaningful subset of students pursue double degrees in the second year, swapping the standard M2 for a year at an emlyon partner school. Established partnerships include WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management (Germany), Aston Business School (UK), HEC Montréal (Canada), Tongji SEM (China), KAIST (South Korea), and USP — University of São Paulo (Brazil).¹ ³ The double-degree route adds a year to the calendar and is the closest equivalent to the CEMS structure at emlyon’s peers.

emlyon is not a CEMS member — candidates whose primary motivation is the CEMS credential should look at HEC, ESSEC, ESCP, or Bocconi instead.

Class Profile

The PGE cohort totals approximately 750 students per intake across all entry routes.¹ The international share is around 28% — meaningfully lower than HEC (40%), LBS (92%), ESCP (98%), or Bocconi (41%). This reflects emlyon’s origins as a regional grande école rooted in the Rhône-Alpes economy and its substantial domestic recruiting pipeline through the prépa system. Female representation sits at 48%. The average age at entry is 22, and 50 nationalities are typically represented.

Test scores cluster in the 600–700 range on the GMAT — average around 640 — and GMAT Focus, GRE, TAGE-MAGE, and Cambridge English equivalents are all accepted depending on the route.¹ Pre-program work experience is typically limited to internships, in line with the European MiM standard of 0–2 years.

Academic backgrounds are weighted toward business, economics, engineering, and political science at undergraduate level, with the French prépa pipeline contributing roughly half of the domestic cohort. International admits skew toward European, Latin American, and South Asian undergraduate institutions, with smaller representation from East Asia and North America than at the more globally-positioned peers. Our piece on building a MiM profile covers the standard preparation pathway.

Application & Deadlines

emlyon publishes no dated rounds, and the four dates we show are ours. Its own MiM page gives no calendar: it says the school “may close applications earlier, if all the seats in the class are filled, as it happens every year for many of our Master’s programs”, and advises applying as early as possible — the 2025/26 application window it did carry ran to 26 August 2026 and has now closed (re-checked 1 September 2026).¹ emlyon does run application sessions — the Early Bird scholarship is a 10% tuition reduction for applying in the first and 5% in the second — but it does not publish their dates.

So treat the four rounds on this page (15 October 2026, 15 January 2027, 15 March 2027 and 1 June 2027) as our indication of emlyon’s usual staged pattern, not as emlyon’s calendar: they are the dates you would plan around if the school runs its normal shape, and every one of them is marked indicative on our deadline tracker. Decisions are returned within roughly four to six weeks of each session, and earlier applications carry better seat availability and earlier visibility on scholarships — which matters more here than at a school with fixed rounds, because a programme that “may close applications earlier” rewards being early rather than being on time. Confirm the live session dates with emlyon’s Recruitment & Admissions team before you plan around any of them.

The application requires undergraduate transcripts, GMAT/GRE/TAGE-MAGE, an English proficiency certificate (TOEFL/IELTS/Cambridge), two recommendation letters, two essays, and a CV. The selection step depends on the pathway: emlyon’s Direct International Admission route (apply to emlyon only) replaces the live interview with a digital assessment — a deferred, recorded video interview — while the multi-school “Join a School in France” route includes a 30-minute online interview on personality and motivation. The application fee is €100. Our emlyon admission requirements guide compares the two pathways and which documents each needs.

emlyon’s process gives notable weight to evidence of entrepreneurial inclination or willingness to engage with the Makers’ Lab pedagogy. Candidates with prior venture experience, founding stories, or hands-on project portfolios are well-represented among admits, alongside the standard mix of high-academic and consulting-and-finance-bound applicants.

Tuition, Scholarships & Funding

Tuition for the 2026–27 cycle is approximately €44,000 across the full two-year programme — about €22,000 per year (roughly €20,000 in tuition plus €1,500 in management overheads and €500 in service fees), paid in annual instalments.¹ Lyon is materially cheaper to live in than Paris or London — typical living costs run €10,000–€14,000 per year, against €15,000–€22,000 for the major capitals. Total cost of attendance is therefore meaningfully lower than at HEC, LBS, or the Paris and London ESCP campuses.

emlyon offers a portfolio of merit and need-based scholarships. The most prominent include dedicated awards for women in business, international student scholarships co-funded by partner foundations, awards for entrepreneurship-focused applicants accepted onto the EarlyMakers Program, and country-specific awards.¹ Many students also fund the programme through a mix of French student loans, Prodigy Finance, and personal or family resources.

The apprenticeship route goes further than any scholarship here, and emlyon puts a number on how many can take it. Its work-study page states the principle in the strongest terms of any school we profile — “Employment law stipulates that an apprenticeship student must not spend a single euro on tuition fees. The employer who signs the apprenticeship contract will cover these costs and pay you a salary” — and then bounds it: *“For the start of the 2025 academic year, there are 200 places available.”*⁷ The track sits in the final year, eligibility is confirmed in spring, and students then have several months to find an employer. emlyon publishes no age limit or French-language level on that page, which is a gap rather than a permission: the contrat d’apprentissage is national law and runs to 29 ans révolus whoever offers it, and the employer is a French company. Our alternance explainer sets out the rules France fixes and the conditions each school adds.

For a broader framing of the French cost-of-attendance picture, our piece on studying in France covers the regulatory and financial context across schools.

Career Outcomes

emlyon reports a three-month employment rate of 93% for the PGE cohort.¹ The FT 2025 weighted three-year salary is US $108,000 — the twelfth-highest in the FT MiM 2025 top fifteen.⁴ The typical first-job French base salary is approximately €59,000, with bonus and signing components varying by sector.

Sector breakdown places consulting and audit at 40% of placements, finance and banking at 15%, industry at 13%, and technology at 11%.¹ The remaining 21% spread across luxury and FMCG, energy, healthcare, and entrepreneurship — the last representing a higher share than at most European MiMs given the Makers’ Lab pipeline. Top recruiters by hiring volume are the Big Four (EY, Deloitte, KPMG, PwC) and the major French and global consulting houses (Wavestone, Capgemini, McKinsey, BCG), the bulge-bracket and French investment banks (BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan), and the major French luxury and FMCG firms (L’Oréal, LVMH).

Geographic placement is notably concentrated in France — approximately 72% of graduates begin their careers domestically, with the remainder distributing across Europe (mainly Germany, the UK, Switzerland), Asia (China and South Korea via the double-degree partnerships), and the Americas. This is a less internationally distributed placement profile than HEC, LBS, or ESCP, and is the most candid caveat for applicants weighing emlyon against its top-tier peers. Candidates whose primary objective is to leave France for full-time work should weigh this carefully.

Campus & Life

emlyon’s main campus is in Écully, in the western suburbs of Lyon, with additional sites in Paris (Gerland district) and Saint-Étienne, plus international campuses in Shanghai, Mumbai, and Bhubaneswar. The new Lyon Gerland campus — opened in 2024 — sits inside the city on the south bank of the Rhône and houses much of the PGE second-year teaching, the Makers’ Lab, and student association spaces.

Lyon as a city is well-suited to the MiM cohort. It is France’s second-largest urban area, with a sophisticated business community in chemicals, pharma, biotech, banking, and consulting; a deep food and cultural scene; and a cost of living substantially below Paris. The TGV connection to Paris takes two hours, which keeps Paris-based recruiting genuinely accessible during the academic year.

The PGE has more than 100 student associations across finance, consulting, tech, entrepreneurship, sport, country networks, and the famous BDE social calendar. The EarlyMakers community — students in the structured entrepreneurship pathway — is the most visible single sub-community on the programme and tends to form tight cohorts that persist into post-graduation venture activity.

Notable Alumni

emlyon’s alumni include Jean-Pascal Tricoire (Chairman of Schneider Electric and CEO 2006–2023), Clotilde Delbos (CFO and Deputy CEO of Renault Group), Christoph Franz (Chairman of Roche and former CEO of Lufthansa AG), and Santiago Lefebvre (co-founder of ChangeNOW, the climate-tech impact summit). The alumni base spans senior corporate leadership in French industry, European corporates, and a notable presence in entrepreneurship and impact-led ventures — a reflection of the programme’s positioning around entrepreneurship and its long history in the Rhône-Alpes industrial economy.