Good

Experience during the program

LOW COST, HEALTHY JOB MARKET AND HIGH ROI MAKE HHL LEIPZIG AN ATTRACTIVE MBA DESTINATION

I am from hardcore mechanical engineering background and major part of my career has been outside India. However, because of the highly technical nature of my job,my career came to a stagnation and I decided to pursue MBA. I scored 780 ( Q50, V47) in GMAT in my first attempt.

When I started considering various options of MBA studies, I decided to think "myself" and not think with "the crowd". (With a score of V47, I reasoned that my logic-train won't go haywire ). My requirements were simple ( and mostly in line with other MBA aspirants from middle-class families) :

1. Cost should be minimal: I would not have preferred taking out a major amount from my savings or take stellar loans, which would burden me financially for a long time.

2. Risk should be minimal: I should go to a market that have a large deficiency of managerial workforce and I should have a fairly high chance to get a decent job. (Of course I had plan to settle down in Europe or as a matter of fact, in a first-world country.)

3. The school: The faculty and of course the job opportunities are the main things to look at.

After doing my survey, I realized that Germany fits in and in fact leaves behind other countries in fulfilling both the above requirements:

1. Cost: With scholarship for exceptional students, the cost of studies are extremely low, way below other US / UK counterparts. I got 3 scholarships ( again thanks to my GMAT score), that supported me considerably in not just my tuition fees, but also my living expenses. However, the competition for scholarship is high.

2. Risk: Germany is the center of European economy and needs a large number of managerial level personnel to fill in it's deficiency. For this reason the German government has relaxed the visa norms for highly educated persons who qualify from recognized German Universities, and allows them stay in Germany for further 18 months after completing their studies to search for a job. Therefore I decided that getting a job in Germany, post-MBA, will be much easier than getting in US/UK. (UK visa norms have been a total catastrophe of late, and US visa norms are not very conducive as well ). From the perspective of averting undue risk, I found Germany the most favorable location.

3. The school: There is absolutely no question about the quality of teaching faculty here. Since we are from India, I was specifically impressed to see an IIM Calcutta professor teaching us Corporate Strategy here !! A great advantage HHL has over other schools in Germany - the one that played a major role in my final selection of school - is that the MBA class size is just about 35. When you have less students in the class , you have less competition for job - a simple fact that many aspirants fail to take into consideration while selecting a school. Moreover, you get personal attention from the professors (almost all of them call you by name), and more importantly from the career management team ! Although I got scholarship offer from other German school, this one fact swung me towards HHL.

Please also note that it is desirable that you speak some German by the time you graduate in order to have broader scope in your job search. Here HHL plays a major role:it has in-built German language courses in the curriculum and since the course period is 21 months, one may comfortably get through the 5 stages of the language during the tenure of studies.

Overall BSchool experience (4.0)
Schools contribution (4.0)
Classmates rating (3.0)

Strengths of the program:

Career opportunities provided by school
Location

Best fit at this program:

Finance
Management

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