I was in Gisma, Hannover in 2005 for MBA. Things may have changed since then, nevertheless I want to tell my experience after many years.

That year, there were about 50 students, it was a diverse environment. Students were from various countries. Staff was German, they were kind and friendly. The people supporting you, eg. the real-estate agent, were helpful. I also liked the organized German amenities: smooth roads, bicycle ways, walking lanes, parks, on-time and comfortable transportation, etc. The lecturers were American coming from the Purdue University, USA. Lessons were told in English. School’s slogan was “Challenge Yourself”.

What I didn’t like about the school was the lecturers’ perspective of University Life. For me University Life should be a bundle of joining classes, studying regularly, doing moderate amount of homework plus doing sports, joining some activities, travelling a bit, making new friends and involving in the local life a bit.

For the lecturers it meant only one thing: Homework. It was already a dense 1-year program, the course schedule was dense. In addition, the lecturers were making you drown in really much homework after the lessons. They were giving more homework than given in a regular 2-year MBA program.
New friends in a foreign country? Sports? Travel? Regular studying? Of course not. You even did not have enough time to sleep because of exaggerated load of homework. Lecturers’ comprehension was drowning people into homework and creating geeks stuck on a chair – business students who don’t socialize, etc.

Besides, they seemed enjoying it. Once, after having done much homework past midnight, we got a mail from one of the lecturers telling us he was travelling with his Cabrio, having fun and giving us more homework with an LoL at the end.

Lecturers created small groups of their choice: 4 or 5 students in each group to make most of the homework and projects together. I am not against team-work, it is essential; however, teams should have been mixed and rebuilt from time to time. But lecturers insisted students would proceed within the same team most of the year. By this way, you could end up having spent time with only your few teammates doing homework in a room after a whole year in a foreign country.

Some students were smarter and faster. If you had relatively slow proceeding teammates, it meant that you had to spend more time in the white meeting rooms, surrounded with white walls, white floor and white tables. The building used to be part of a brain surgery hospital. It was converted to a university building later. Personally, I like open space and vivid colors. The feeling of being stuck in a white hospital room trying to do homework on the white board with a couple of friends at midnight was not suitable for me.

Before I joined Gisma; I got electronics and communication engineering BS degree from a very reputable university with high degree, then completed my compulsory military duty then worked at a factory for 1 year. I have completed many courses which were way harder and complicated than MBA courses. I was a successful student.

I was not only looking for an MBA degree but also a memorable student life when I was applying Gisma. It failed to meet my expectations, especially the latter one and I decided to turn back to my country without spending my parents hardly earnt money in Germany any more.

That experience was the first and the biggest failure in my life and it affected many things in my life (my career, relationship with my parents, monetary status, etc) negatively. If I had chosen a regular MBA college at that time, I am sure I could have completed it and my life would have been much better now.

But as I told at the beginning, it has been many years and things may have changed. I recommend you to search whether it is still a homeworksity or has evolved into a university before applying.

I chose this program because of its triple accreditation, as it is important to me that my degree be relevant in more than one country. I really enjoy the program and the quality of the professors and curriculum of GEM. I also specifically chose to study at the Berlin campus because of the future work opportunities here – and because I love the city.