Copenhagen Business School - CBS (reviews)

The environment here is really great. Despite the well organized buildings and libraries, there are also places for students to just stay and relax also even study in the corners of each campus. The professors are mostly really nice and try to interact with students a lot. So, to sum up, the environment is really nice for studying here.

Quality education where it emphazises the importance of academic. No finger to put on this aspect of the school.
However, sometimes the administration and IT can be lacking a bit, but in general a really good choice for education!

Classes are challenging and conducted in a professional manner. CBS offers a wide range of possibilities to develop outside of the classes! Libraries and other facilities on the campus are very well adjusted to the student needs.

I am currently a Master student at CBS, but I have also completed a Bachelor’s Degree in this university. I am quite satisfied with my studies and the teaching level. However, when compared to other business schools, it becomes apparent that most courses at CBS strive to find a good balance between theoretical insight and real-life examples. Compared to my exchange university, the projects that I have found myself writing at CBS have a far less practical application and also leave little room for creativity. If the teaching is heavily theoretical, on the bright side, the university arranges a number of events throughout the year to encourage students to apply their knowledge, in the form of career fairs, case competitions, and other events organized by student associations. In my experience, teachers are very easily approachable and happy to answer your questions. A foreign student like me will find a more international environment at Master level, since the number of international (or at least non-Scandinavian) students enrolled in the Bachelor programs is quite low. However, all communication (both oral and written) from teachers and the university offices is always in English. Administrative offices, student guidance services, the career center, and the international office are definitely worth a mention. All of the requests that I have had throughout the years have always been met with kindness, promptness and efficiency.

I took an MSC in Innovation and Business Development. The program was quite underwhelming,
with more than a few structural weaknesses in the main study curricula. Bottom line the
content was very fluffy and doesn’t really teach you much. Severe lack of practical experiences.
Bureaucracy is tragic, and grading criteria can be quite weird for non Danes, as CBS loves to
assign grades based on “Learning objectives” which are little more than a generic list of
obvious things and other less clear elements.

The good aspects of CBS mostly rely in the surrounding community. Student organizations,
ongoing events on many many topics and globally the possibility to get a lot of exposure
to a lot of different topics quickly, really boost your experience.

Another good point is the many opportunities to go on exchange. A special mention should also
go to the career center that actually provides stellar support, unlike many other “help desks”

My studies were alright. A lot of reading, which for me as an international with a job on the side was impossible to keep up with. Though, you can catch up before exam time if you attend classes and take into account what the teachers are interested in knowing. I graduated with a high grade (10) so you can do it too!

It does lack the international mindset in my opinion. Its social media is mostly in Danish but they do publish in English every now and then. The international student proportion compared to Danish is very low, especially because the majority of internationals were still from the Scandinavian countries.

Study-wise there are a lot of mix ups and late announcements, confused professors about guidelines (Bachelor guidelines were not up to date until 2 days before hand in, therefore lot of us lost about 1000dkk on printing and time)

The graduation ceremony was just of poor performance. No graduation hats, no names of graduates read, only 3 students were featured, speakers (lecturers) were only teaching 1/3 of the class so the majoroty of us didn’t even know the person speaking. Afterall, we had a small reception but without cakes. Though the food was ok, I feel like there is a lot of improvement here. Bachelor graduates deserve as nice of a ceremony as the masters… Not all of us want to study further on at CBS so we should receive equal treatment.

I graduted in June but still didn’t receive my degree.

Overall, the school’s good reputation is a plus so I guess that justifies my 3*.

My Danish programme was quite case and school book oriented which is good for a business school, but I think the academic level was slacking compared to my exchange university. At the same time we weren’t taught any specific practical skills within my field. Those classes that did include difficult research articles were often the least popular among students. I often felt that students weren’t really eager to learn, be challenged and development. In general students were quite lazy – not attending classes, not doing readings so that they couldn’t participate and not doing assignments. Classes and assignments were not compulsory, assignments and exams were often done in groups (to save teacher’s time), and assignments weren’t graded, so it was very hard to develop and learn from class assignments at an independent level. Teachers would teach us and grade our work according to their own personal perspective. Very little connection with the teachers. Students hardly met for classes, some classmates I wouldn’t see for two years, and it was hard for the teacher to engage students and in general the environment didn’t make you feel comfortable about raising your hand a lot. It actually demotivated me so much that I went to my exchange university for my master where the experience had been very different. Our dissertation was also not so academic and students could choose to do this in groups. We were in fixed groups throughout the semesters in different courses. All this group work often had a lot of drama, sometimes with some members dominating. Would have been much better to mix groups around to make it more fair for everyone. One group hired our teacher assistant, not as tutor preparing them for the exam but to read their exam paper and correct mistakes. How can this happen? Our introduction week was only focused on partying hard and the mentors definitely pushed that on us. In the first week you’d be judged according to how fun you are at parties. Hm.. it’s a good school but space for many improvements at least for this programme.

Some students found CBS very intense compared to their exchange universities, other students, like me, found it the opposite. I can only compare to one other top university. Might be very different if I’d had a different exchange university.