Student review [#4805]
at Nuertingen-Geislingen University - HfWU

I was enrolled in the business administration bachelor programme, so my review is mainly focussed on that programme.
First of all, the structure of the programme is pretty clear. There are several modules continuing throughout the whole semester. In some courses, there are additional assignments like group presentations or papers, but the grade mainly consists of the exam that is written at the end of the semester. This exam procedure is rather stressing as all exams are written in 2 weeks and there is very limited time given to write those exams.
The lectures for these modules continue throughout the semester and usually, there is are lecture notes handed out at the beginning of the semester. Additionally, books are recommended for most lectures as additional literature.
As the university is rather small, there is a limited amount of students in every lecture room which makes it easier to follow and possible to ask questions. Most of the lecturers and professors are experienced and build up their lectures according to the lecture notes or books.
When studying the German bachelor programme, there are only a few modules hold in English.
After 4 semesters of basic studying in nearly all fields of business administration, an internship semester follows where students are meant to explore the working life in the area they find most interesting. This is followed by 2 semesters of studies where students can choose major study fields within the area of business administration and a bachelor thesis needs to be written in the major field, either at the university or within a company.
Generally, the structure was pretty clear for me and easy to follow. Nevertheless, it puts a huge amount of work and stress on the students to write all exams within 2 weeks. I was personally really struggling with that concept. When failing an exam, the entire module needs to be redone in the next semester and the exam in this module needs to be written in the same period where all the other exams of the next semester are coming up. Of course, there is a possibility to postpone a module of the new semester to be able to do the retry. But this usually leads to extra semesters and extends the overall study time for the programme.
When in need to do a retry plenty of documents need to be filled out and the criteria are pretty strict. Some of my classmates got exmatriculated because of that.
In my opinion, the modules usually have a high quality and are rather challenging. This can be a good preparation for the future working life. Also the concept of first exploring all fields of business administration, then doing an internship in the area which seems the most interesting and then being able to choose major subjects in the last year, is pretty good, especially for students who do not know yet in which area they want to work when starting their studies. Also, there is the possibility to go abroad. Nevertheless, the support given by the International Office is pretty low. Sometimes, I got wrong information from them which nearly led to missing important deadlines, etc. Furthermore, the possibilities of doing an international degree or a double degree are limited, as there are only a few partner universities where you can go to fulfill the criteria given by the home university.
The study system at the university was not beneficial for me and made me struggle a lot, as it is pretty hard to be well-prepared for all exams at the same time, even when attending the lectures and studying during the entire semester.
A concept of having more extra assignments during the semester and therefore lowering the influence of the exam grade could be recommended for the university in my opinion and maybe having periods within one semester where a few modules are taught more extensively over a couple of weeks, followed by the exams for these modules and then continuing with other modules. This would make it possible to explore the topics more in-depth.
Apart from that, the facilities are quite good, the campus where I was studying was located close to the train station and bus stop, so it was easy to get there and very central.
Only when visiting the large library, you need to take a bus to the other end of the city.
As there is no campus in Nuertingen centrum where students are living, so all students are spread out over the entire city and the cities around, which leads to limited possibilities for mingling after studying.

I can recommend the university to those people who want to study at a university in a smaller city, where there is not a lot of distraction and those who are really ambitious and very good at preparing for multiple exams at the same time.
My personal view, especially after going abroad to a university that was much better, in my opinion, is that I would not choose to study there again. But that really depends on what kind of person you are.