Is he French? In the past I used to follow a french forum about MBAs and from their prespective ESSEC was just a bit under HEC.
By the way Essec appears in FT Business school ranking and in the FT EMBA ranking; more I confirm that the are very informative and ready to reply to emails, giving further information, ecc (their attitude is much different from their partner Mannheim)

And this

Very interesting. Can I ask what the candidate's nationality is? I think this choice would be very tough for somebody coming from outside the euro zone, due to post-study visa and residency issues.

Can you also elaborate a bit on this re Judge:

Colleagues may not be seemed fascinating enough.

I'd think that Cambridge would be the defacto choice - but a poor impression of your potential classmates could be a dealbreaker.

And this

I'm interested to hear more about the candidate's perceived cons about Cambridge.

One faculty, one of the areas that we are trying to work on is to better profile our faculty and the work they do with industry. One particular area of strength is the considerable work that they do with Chinese companies --- for the last 9 months, there has not been a day where there hasn't been a Chinese bank on campus attending a course. Another area is technology, especially in Germany.

Do you know if the candidate attended our on-campus interview day? Which gives candidates an excellent opportunity to meet other prospective candidates as well as current students. If anything, what I hear from candidates is that our students are so diverse and interesting that they do not fit the general perception of an MBA, i.e. dull.

Conrad Chua
Head MBA Admissions
Cambridge Judge Business School

Great that you actually interested in technology firms from Germany. I still remember my mates complained about the fact that there are far more consultancy and financial firms on campus for recruitment compared engineering ones and they were on technical courses.

That also reflects the state of the UK economy.

The Global MBA program at ESSEC is really good. The course is intense and gets completed in 12 months which is a short duration. The study at both Paris and the Singapore campus adds to the experience besides the field trip to russia to understand the market. The small batch size and flexibility really helps to get individual attention. The program will probably get ranked well in 3-4 years, as it happens with well designed new programs from established business school . The International immersion project ( Consulting, strategy project) in another country adds to the overall package and the learning experience. It was financially more affordable both from the school fees and the scholarship perspective but also because of the french govt subsidy for housing ( reducing my overall cost). Thus it made a lot of sense to be part of it.