Rotterdam School of Management - RSM (reviews)

Erasmus university especially RSM is known as one of the best business school in Europe. IBA is a great program for anyone would like to study business. The curriculum cover broad topics in business area with a possibility to choose your specialization. Also there are a lot of opportunities to participate in exchange, internship, or minor in other faculties. I would recommend this program for anyone interested in business study.

The Master in Management at RSM is always among the top ranking programs. If you want to learn in-depth knowledge across all the business areas, this is the perfect opportunity. One of the requirements to enter is to never had studied business before. Which means that you only study with people with non-business backgrounds. This makes it great as you learn from the very beginning and all students have different backgrounds; engineering, psychology, politics, etc. In only one year, I really managed to learn quite well the different areas of business including finance, accounting, analytics, and marketing, among others. However, because it is only one year, the program is very (very) challenging and fast paced. There are many deadlines, group and individual projects, exams, and thesis. You really need to be up to date to keep up with everything that is going on. Teachers have impressing backgrounds and are always willing to help however they can. Career prospects after this program are wide and top, it opens many doors. Although it was tough, it was a great experience in which I met many people and really prepared me well for my current job.

I am currently a first-year bachelor student (International Business Administration) and until now the experience has been disappointing for me. I have classes with over 600 people which means that I don’t have any contact with professors whatsoever. This is hard for me because students are literally just a number and no one cares about your struggles and difficulties. Because of the COVID 19 situation, all of my classes have been online, however, most classes are pre-recorded, so it is basically just looking at a video of a guy talking about theories which can get very boring. The university is not making efforts to understand the hard situation we are going through. Also, most classes are mainly theoretical, which is probably less effective that having classes that talk about real-life situations. The workload is very high which is normal for university but as you only have about 10 hours of class every week, 90 %of the studying you will be working preparing for classes, reading and studying alone, which is not the right fit for me. So far, I would not recommend this university.

The only positive points are that most professors have a lot of knowledge and are interesting. And that it is an extremely international program, so you can meet people from all over the world.

The first advantage of studying at RSM is that there is a very large number of internationals, in my program approximately 70% of the student body comes from abroad. Additionally, I feel like the university really allows you to choose the method of studying that you want to pursue. For example, if you like to go to lectures, then you have them almost everyday. However, if you’re more into studying directly from the book, then no need to go to lectures.

Rotterdam itself is such an underrated city. Everyone is biking, there’s a great nightlife and the average age of the city (at least near Kralingen) is super young. However, beware, it’s super hard to find accommodation.

However, I feel that the program i’m studying (International Business Administration) has too many theoretical courses that I cannot really apply in real life. But I have good news, they are tweaking the program to allow for more real-life application.

Overall I would really recommend this university.