MBA bei der Deutschen Bank

Why did you decide to participate in an MBA-program?
I wanted to fill in some blanks in my education. Of course, I had a certain experience with my management certificate for non-profit organizations, by my working experience at Ashridge and as a consultant for the Center for Financial Studies. But I was lacking some business basics, such as Economics, Accounting and Finance and felt the neccessity to build up management know-how, in order to improve my ability to understand my clients needs and the issues they are facing in the organiziaton.

How was the MBA-program organized?
I had 8 terms with two subjects each term. One term consisted of one week pre-reading, one week face-to-face lessons, one week off, 6 weeks online learning with a mid-term exam at the beginning and a final exam at the end. Then we had one week off and the cycle would start over again. Altogether 20 months. Apart from the face-to-face-weeks on campus, we had virtual teams. It is a fairly international programm: in my team alone we were from three different time-zones.

How did you manage to combine the studies and the job?
I am in the lucky position to have just a 4 day work week. I studied in the evening and on weekends, and my husband cared for the children. A lot of my colleagues do not come home before 8 in the evening – it is probably tougher for them to keep up the energy.

Were your expectations fulfilled?
My expectations were definitely fulfilled. The programm is very practically oriented. You do not learn expert knowledge in all the different fields. You learn the frameworks of thinking, modells, ways of thinking, to analyse and improve issues. An MBA-program is a survey program. Due to that, it can be helpful and interesting for people who have graduated in economics. To me it is important to understand, what is important for colleagues in separate departments i.e. from the finance department, to have a broad overview of what they do, to be able to ask them the right questions and to address the right issues. Apart from that I received a lot of background knowledge in management, learnt about the challenges of management and could definitely fill my blanks.

Do you have an advice for someone, planning to do an MBA?
You should be very committed and motivated, since it is a tough time, taking a lot of your energy. You have to really want it. And, it should not be with just any school. Depending on your career objectives, whether you want to work in Germany, Europe, or other parts of the world, you need to make sure that the school will be known in the location where you want to use it.

How does the Deutsche Bank support MBA-candidates with the MBA?
They generally pay 50 percent of the tuitions plus 100 percent of costs for flights and accomodation. I used some of my own vacation time and was given some time as an official leave of absence.