Hello Everyone,

I'm a 28 year old English Literature graduate with 2 years' work experience as a Communications Trainer with IBM following which I set up a little dessert catering business 4 years ago.
At this juncture, I would like to transition back to the corporate world, and work in either Marketing, Finance or International Business. Germany is my country of choice for study given that fees at top-level German B-schools are far more reasonable than their EU or American counterparts (fees at Mannheim being 36.000 vs LSB at 67,000GBP or IE at 58.000) and that I would like to work in Germany or an EU state for a minimum of 3 years to give myself the chance at having international experience as well as recover my investment.

I am to appear for the GMAT in May, aiming for a 650 (fingers crossed) and am currently studying German at the B1 level. I'd ideally like to be accepted for the Autumn/Winter intake but am happy to wait it out till Spring and give myself some time to work on my language skills.


The questions I have are as follows:
1) What chance do I stand of making to a top-ranking school given that I do not have a bachelors degree in Business? I know that a Mannheim and HHL don't have a business degree requirement but I'm unsure of whether my experience, as it stands now is sufficient to beat the incredibly stiff competition that exists for MBA places at these schools.

2) Alternatively, would it make more sense to do an MSc/ MIM, do the internships that come with it, work in Germany for about a year and a half and then apply for the MBA? If so, which schools would you recommend for the same?

3) Lastly, lets say I miraculously make it to one of the top-rated schools, would my atypical work experience prove to be a hurdle in finding job placements once I graduate?

Appreciate any input. Thank you for your time in advance!

[Edited by caelisaa on Mar 27, 2015]

I think you'll be fine. Aim for the MBAs. The generalist MSc degrees are for pre-experience people and, if you wanted an MFin then you'd be doing different work.

Thank you for your prompt reply as always Duncan! I'm encouraged by your positive response.

Could you please elaborate a little on the last bit of your reply, vis-a-vis the MFin bit?

I know that given my age and lack of experience in the Finance field don't exactly scream 'Best candidate to study Finance!' but to be honest, I only arrived at this decision 6 months ago after putting a lot of thought into it. At this juncture though, I'm just a little unsure of whether its too late to enter the Finance sector, in which case International Business Management or Marketing would be my next options.

Are there any other schools in Germany that you'd recommend for an MBA (or MiM i Finance, depending on your assessment of what I meantioned in the paragraph above)? I've read comments on why Mannheim, HHL and WHU are great for International Mobility, but if my region of focus is Germany, do my options of schools broaden at all?

Lastly, you mentioned in another post about Germans very clearly opting to employ Germans over candidates of other nationalities. I'm a non-EU citizen and hence am a little concerned about realistic possibilities of good placements, specially given that my CV unfortunately doesn't read like the regular 'studied business, got excellent grades, went on to work as an analyst/manager for Fortue 500 company and am now applying for an MBA'. Any thoughts?

I mean this: it's easier for you to move into a functional specialism than into general management. Given your intermediate language skills, finance is a more likely area for you than marketing unless you find a firm that wants an English-speaker with wea German (which would not be an MBA_level role, probably). So, that means your options are an MFin, or an MBA with an intensive German course. So, that means either first a half year in a language school (after which I would actually recommend a German-language programme rather than one in English, to really integrate) or a long MBA like the one at HHL where you can take time to perfect your German.

The international mobility score is really telling you about the ability of students to move into Germany, so that is useful.

Did I write about "Germans very clearly opting to employ Germans over candidates of other nationalities"? Do you have a link? I'm not sure that is the case. I think Germans prefer to hire people with excellent German, and Germans are not the only people who can do that.