Details

• India
• MAMgmt-14
• Graduate
• WS 2025
• Time spent at the partner university: 3 months

1. Preparation

For me personally the application process was quite self explanatory, just be aware of the deadlines for the application, the scholarship grant and then of course think about preparations like insurance, visa, prices of flights, etc. Regarding India it was important for me to get further vaccinations/refresh them and also get my Visa, which was actually quite easy at the Embassy in Vienna. Just keep in mind that the process might take some time. For the insurance I chose the one from Hanse Merkur, where you can get a student/young people discount.

2. Accommodation

Accommodation was actually very easy since the university provides a student dormitory directly on campus. You get your own room and share the bathrooms with the people on your floor. Very safe and close to the classrooms, a bit noisy at times. There are even room cleaners, who clean your room once a day if you want to. My dormitory was a bit older, but definitely good enough (there a three different categories: Old, semi-old and new blocks).

3. Academic life at host university

Campus really provides you with everything needed: Supermarket, cafes, gym, swimming pool, tennis court, basketball court and many more as well as three different cafeterias. Academic culture is in my opinion more competitive then at WU since the grading is relative. Teaching style really depends on the lecturer of course, but I was quite lucky and most of my lectures were very interesting and fun to attend. Biggest problem for me was the academic culture: As our grades got converted at WU, it sometimes got quite stressful, since for most of the other exchange students they were not converted (only pass/fail) + a lot of the indian students already had a job after university, which made group work challenging at times. Furthermore you really need to get used to do everything last minute when it comes to group work, as I found this to be the standard across the indian students.

5. Every day life in the host country

Public transport is unfortunately underdeveloped close to campus, they are building a subway station, but its far from being finished. You can use a bus, which is super cheap, but for us we most of the time just used a Uber since the price was always between 1-3 € for a 30-45 min ride. Traffic situation in Bangalore is unfortunately horrible and you get stuck in traffic jams a lot of times. Safety situation for me as a man was totally fine, I never felt unsafe, altough you get quite a lot of stares in some places, but as I found more out of curiosity. Social activities: Plenty of opportunities on campus as well as in and around bangalore for cheap prices, however you really need to plan the time to get there because of the traffic. University hosts a lot of different cultural events, which was nice and plenty of sports are available.

6. Testimonial

India is a fascinating country, which is really something different. Although it might be challenging at times, you can learn so much about the country since the people were one of the most hospitable I have ever met.