Hello All!

I'm looking for some advice here.

I'm 25 years old and have 6 years of professional work experience in automotive manufacturing and currently work as a SAP Logistics Analyst at a German owned company here in Michigan, USA.

I will be graduating with my BA in German Language and Literature next month and have started to consider my options to continue my education.

I really am interested in the "Transatlantic Management MBA" program at HWR Berlin.

My German is fine to live and work in Berlin and I have previously studied at University of Oldenburg (Germany) for a semester.

Can anyone offer any advice or insight on pursuing something like this?

Thanks in advance!

Matt

If your budget is limited, I suggest you look at Esslingen and Pforzheim specifically and at southern Germany more generally. It's really hard to find work in Berlin, especially if you don't have a degree from one of the better business schools, and the HWR doesn't have a strong network.

PS What are your career goals?

Hi JK Duncan,

I have not yet decided if I'd like to work for an extended amount of time in Berlin after I'd complete such a program. My main goal is to complete some type of MBA program in Germany. It does not have to be Berlin I am just familiar with the city along with Hamburg and Bremen. Do you have any recommendations for the north? I have not spend much time in the south at all.

Also isn't a student visa limited for work during that time to less than 19.5 hours per week? I'm not overly concerned at this point for "work" during the 15 month MBA study and I have not yet decided about staying in Germany afterwards.

Thanks!

What are your goals? Why do you want to study in Germany? What do you want to do afterwards?

The only schools I'd recommend in the north of Germany are GISMA, the Purdue campus in Hannover, and ESMT in Berlin. I've spent some time at GISMA, and it's a great school which delivers both US and German MBA degrees. ESMT is a world class school.

If you want to make the most of your auto experience, then the Baden-Württemberg schools and HHL Leipzig are the obvious options.

Either way, don't count on having time to work part-time if you take one of the internationally-accredited MBAs.They are demanding. At the HWR, which is not so selective, then perhaps they won't care so much about attendance or participation.

To maximise the value of your studies, please get into the best programme you can.

You've been a great help and have offered me somewhere to start looking. Would you recommend in your opinion Kühne Logistics University in Hamburg for a masters in Logistics or their executive MBA in logistics?

Since my undergraduate degree is not in business, but rather in German language and literature I am going to need to pursue a program that requires no former business degree.

None of the programmes I have mentioned require a business degree.

I would not recommend Kuehne. It's not a terrible school, but neither is it a good one. Employers are very sensitive to the quality of the MBA and, if you look at rankings, you'll see the outcomes differ greatly between them. Since you are not committed to work in Germany, I think you should aim for a school with AACSB accreditation (which is respected and known in North America). They list schools on their website. Also EQUIS is a very strong accreditation. AMBA is slightly less good.

I think you know there is a 'pecking order' between universities and Fachhochschulen in Germany. New, private schools like Kuehne take along time to win wide acceptance.

Hi Duncan,
I see that Berlin school -HWR is quite an old MBA now in Germany which is working hard, now also accredited by AMBA. But still you advice other schools outside Berlin. Is it really that difficult to find a job in the capital?.

Also I would like to get opinion about offenburg and furtwangen. Among the three how do you rate/prioritise the schools..

I think ur expertise/research would definitely help MBA aspirants like us but with financial constraints it really becomes difficult to consider other options.(esslingen n Pz exception)

There's lots of discussion on this site already about Offenburg and Furtwangen, and I don't have much to add to that. I had not noticed that the HWR's MBA is now accredited (http://www.mbaworld.com/MBAWorld/doShowBusinessSchool.action?editbusinessSchoolId=2069) by AMBA.

I think it's very hard to find an MBA-level job in the capital. Berlin is now the administrative capital of Berlin, but it's a very poor city by German standards. For example Berlin has a smaller GDP than Munich, despite having twice the population. There's a lot of unemployment there and there are few vacancies for MBAs. To give some global comparisons, it's poorer than Nova Scotia, Cantabria, Plymouth or Mississippi.

But the position is actually a little worse than that comparison, because the question is really about students in English-language MBAs in Germany. There are very few openings for people without native-level German in Germany (and, as a rule of thumb, English-language MBAs are not take in Germany by people who speak fluent German). MBAs are tightly packed into Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt and Cologne. They are further concentrated in a small number of MNCs like Siemens, SAP, Deutsche Bank, BASF, Deutsche Telekom, Accenture, McKinsey, IBM, BCG, Hewlett-Packard and adidas.

Of these only McKinsey and Deutsche Bank have a notable cluster of MBAs in Berlin, and they are almost all graduates of world-class MBAs outside Germany (Harvard, Oxbridge, IESE, LBS, Insead etc).

If one must move to Berlin then study at one of these schools, or at least at ESMT (which is a small school sponsored by most of those leading MNCs), WHU, or the Berlin ESCP campus. Indeed, I am sure that if this American colleague wanted to study in Berlin, they would be better off taking an MSc at ESCP than the MBA at HWR.

Hi Duncan
I have been a silent visitor to this website for quite sometime now and have gone through almost all posts concerning Germany/Europe MBA.. Find MBA really been helpful!!

1. I do believe with the facts you have mentioned about the job scenario in Berlin but when you look at univ like furtwangen/Offenburg.. May be even other univ with lesser fees do not fall into the cities you mentioned above... Students look for jobs in cities which are outside univ place.
So you think that students who take up a HWR program do not stand a good chance outside Berlin??

2. Most of the MBA aspirants for Germany fall under the category 2-4 years work experience.. So when u talk about MBA related job.. What kinda of job you are talking about??
In my opinion people with such an experience would be looking for a career change from a technical field/ ordinary sales job/ junior advertisers/ junior accountants etc.. With such an experience it would really be difficult to get a highly paid MBA job in the german market.. No matter it is ESMT or ESCP or
HWR.. Will there not be any change in career path/ job profile from such programs??So is it really worth the extra bucks for a 3 year guy in comparison to a 5-6 year guy in this context??

3. As there are mixed reactions on HWR-BSEL; furtwangen; offenburg on the board, do u have any personal preferences about the program based on structure/ scope/ accreditation/ location/ placement/ cost/ faculty.. Etc??

I would also like to invite others on board to share there valuable insights for the same..

It's great that you are skeptical, but you have to find your own data to convince yourself. The good MBA schools publish placement reports. At ESMT, GISMA, HHL, WHU and so on you can see the outcomes. At the Fachhochschulen, you cannot. I think they get similar outcomes for their MBA graduates as for their MSc graduates, because the limited work experience compensates for the low fluency in German. But Germany is a very regional market, and I think students in wealthy states will have different outcomes from those in the poor East of Germany.

Obviously, the better the program, the better it is to go there. The fees and rankings are very useful here - especially the CHE rankings.

@Duncan
Thanks for quoting "Skeptical". Infact most of the People visiting this forum have a lot of questions at back of thier mind. Thats the best way to find answers!!
Dodging the questions which are put forward in the forum by saying find your own answers is no good to me or to people who visit this forum. I am finding my own data by posting the questions here and in different live forums to get personal opinion views from experts/seniors. Infact this is one of the many such ways to convience oneself. Parallelly people do their homework and not rely on one answer.
To be honest your previous post has been irrelevant to me from what i wanted to know.

This is a discussion board. People will respond to your posts in any way they want. It's pointless and bad nettiquete to complain about replies, especially since I am not *only* saying that you need your own data, but I am also commenting on your questions.

You ask...
*So you think that students who take up a HWR program do not stand a good chance outside Berlin?? *
I answered...
"At ESMT, GISMA, HHL, WHU and so on you can see the outcomes. At the Fachhochschulen, you cannot. I think they get similar outcomes for their MBA graduates as for their MSc graduates, because the limited work experience compensates for the low fluency in German. But Germany is a very regional market, and I think students in wealthy states will have different outcomes from those in the poor East of Germany. "

That's a clear and direct answer.

PS I am am the only person replying to you! Look at all the information I have shared on this thread, let alone other threads on Germany. If this sort of information is unhelpful, then let me know where you find more helpful people. I'll hire them.

Dodging the questions which are put forward in the forum by saying find your own answers is no good to me or to people who visit this forum.