ESADE Business School (reviews)

I am a first year BBA student at ESADE in Sant Cugat. Academically speaking the course is exactly what I expected and I am very satisfied with my professors. Furthermore, one of the best aspects of being at ESADE is all the associations you can be part of which allow you to expand on your area of interests and even to gain insight into the business world. As well, Barcelona is a great city to live in with good weather, great food and a vibrant atmosphere..

If you are looking for a law specialization master’s degree (LLM) in the non so traditional areas of law, and you are seeking for an international fully enriching experience, ESADE is your best choice.
ESADE started as a business school so the MBA and other business degrees are their core. Nonetheless, law education and in particular the specialisation master’s (international business law and intellectual property and ICT law) are also on the top Europe’s LLM of their fields. They combine an excellent program, with the best teachers available in Barcelona and with a more than enough amount of resources to study and help the student to get initiated in their career field. Also, this is the best international experience out there; personally, I got to share a classroom with other 25 students, where only 6 of them were Spanish, the other 19 including myself were a mixture of different nationalities, especially from Latin American countries.

ESADE has an excellent reputation, not only in Spain but internationally. Its been very well ranked in multiple publications. Instalations are very good (Sant Cugat campus is amazing, Barcelona campus is just fine). Good network, contacts, events and job platform. However, the administration and the organization are not well. My generation had severall pitfalls due to bad adminstration services. At the end of the master, they dindt even mailed us to congratulate us nor to explain the procedure for the certificate. Ive finished my master in july, in september i still havent heard ANYTHING from ESADE. Pretty unproffesional service.

All Professors are very good. The content of the classes are also very interest and well decided. It is a Great University to improve knowledge. However, the administrative staff is not well organized.

The program was super complete and touched on all the key points I considered important in a Master of Law, Intellectual Property and Technology. In addition, I was able to take advantage of business, communication, leadership and other disciplines, so important in the training of a complete and multifaceted professional. It is also great that all teachers are lawyers, so they can practice the knowledge they teach us on a daily basis. In this way, they are able to transmit theoretical knowledge to us with a much more practical approach, super useful for our future. In this way, we are able to penetrate the network of contacts in our areas, which can be extremely beneficial for our career.
I also believe that the University is really concerned with the students, in helping them in everything they need, which can be demonstrated, for example, in the current pandemic situation, since it has always tried to act in such a way as to harm the students as little as possible, providing the support and compensation that they considered fair.
In conclusion, I would like to thank ESADE for providing me with one of the best experiences of my life, in which I have made friends for life, and from which I leave with excellent academic preparation, ready to face the challenges of a professional career.

The online platform is very agile to work and gives you great flexibility to follow the program. Secondly, I was surprised by the involvement of students and teachers. This has made the program very interesting with links to extensions of the agenda. Quite a good surprise. I would clearly recommend it.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the university has managed to make online testing, something which every other university somehow manages to do, a huge logistical challenge. The nicest way to put it is that their servers are clearly lacking the size needed for a mere 300 students to take an exam at the same time. Unbelievable and most shocking for the high tuition fee ~16000€/year you would expect them to have a working IT department.

Alongside the ancient education system, this makes ESADE unfit to create the leaders of tomorrow. Perhaps they should look at their own slogan for once “do good do better” because they clearly do not apply it to themselves. Would not recommend.

I loved the class cohesion with plenty of international students from all over the world. Great to have that mix during a practical business project to do with the local economy of the Costa Brava.
Studying in Barcelona is simply amazing, and even though the university is not directly in the center, it is in a really nice part of the city with great views over the old town and the sea. I always enjoyed my walk from the metro station to the school.
The professors were nice and motivated, and as classes were small, it allowed a very good learning atmosphere.

The professors are qualified, passionate, and dive deeply into the topics while always making class engaging. Hands-on experience with companies to solve real issues – offering a great opportunity to apply the learnings and gain more relevant experience. The study tours and minor class trips are also adding value to the course, along with many career and social events, which help create a good environment. Would highly recommend!

The unfortunate truth is that there are a lot of negative points that, as prospective students, you simply do not hear about from ESADE. The short review is as follows: ESADE is a good school on paper if you want to fast track into spanish consultancy or investment banking. However if you want to do anything else please consider going somewhere else and save your time and money.

the negatives:

– No emphasis what so ever put on critical thinking or intellectual development. In all fairness business is a dry subject to study but often it can be made more interesting by looking at what the cultural/societal impacts are and how we can use the tools we are learning to actually do something for society. ESADE expects you to memorize everything, this is reflected in the way that students are assessed in the courses. The vast majority of time 50%+ of the end grade comes from a final exam in which often students are asked to either calculate something or fill in multiple choice questions. You will never be asked to write a long answer question (longer than one page) or develop an idea passed the surface level.

– Unempathetical rules. It is unfortunately common for students who experience some sort of medical emergency or other life crisis to simply receive no support from the university. I don’t mean any form of emotional/psychological help but help towards the end grade. In a lot of classes the end grade is partially determined by the attendance, therefore, making it mandatory. If you do have a medical emergency/crisis you should hope that it doesn’t happen during exams because ESADE will simply let you fail the exams even if you are in the hospital. This behavior extends into other, non-emergency situations as well. Regularly students fail to graduate, not because they don’t pass all the mandatory classes, but because ESADE’s elective system (which is mandatory as well by the way) is so unusable and difficult to get right, that students simply don’t have the necessary credits. In this case you have to pay tuition FOR A WHOLE YEAR just to retake elective courses.

– No student life. Essentially there is no reason to remain on campus after class because, although there are associations, these are all serious ones like junior investment bankers, or consultancy associations. If you are coming from the UK be ready to be disappointed.

– Location is NOT in Barcelona. This is another point where ESADE likes to trick students. You are not going to be studying in Barcelona but in a small town ~45mins from Barcelona called Sant Cugat. It is a very boring town and you should absolutely not live there.

– Languages. I remember one of the reasons why ESADE was interesting for me was the prospect of learning foreign languages. They advertised Russian, Mandarin, Arabic, and a plethora of European languages. This was not the case in the BBA. We have the option between french and german. This was a major disappointment for me. The master’s program, however, offers a larger selection of languages.

– Conservative school system. Most other business universities have to some degree modernized, usually offering a PDF textbook to accompany the course, some even filming the lectures for students to watch if they could not attend. None of this is the case for ESADE. Although it looks very modern, this is nothing but a facade. The reality is that most teachers will not allow you to use your laptops to take notes, there is also no textbooks PDF or physical so your entire knowledge of the class comes from the notes you make and, if the professors are tech savvy enough, the slides they may upload.

– 19,000 euros a year tuition

The pros:

– Great name recognition within Spain, mediocre recognition internationally. People in Spain have heard nonstop about how great ESADE is so there is a heavy bias towards ESADE students in spain.

– Strong focus on consultancy or investment banking: If this is the field you want to get into, perfect ESADE may be for you. They offer a lot of interview preparation, career fairs, and classes often revolve around these careers (typical exam question might be: you are a consultant for XYZ and your client wants to know if they are operating under the optimal capital structure.). There is pretty much no focus on other career paths.

– Small class sizes means its possible to develop closer relationships with your peers and with your professors.