Details

• India
• MAFW&RW-13
• Graduate
• WS 2025
• Time spent at the partner university: 3 months

1. Preparation

For India, I would definitely recommend sorting out your travel vaccines early with a doctor at home, because several shots are advised and it is much less stressful to do this before you leave. Gujarat is a dry state, so you should not expect alcohol to be openly available like in Europe, which changes how you plan social activities. At IIM Ahmedabad, most concrete information about courses and schedules came very late, and many details about housing and campus life only became clear on site, so you need to be flexible and comfortable with getting a feel for how things work once you are there rather than having everything fixed in advance.

2. Accommodation

Student housing is mandatory and you only find out your dorm and room when you arrive on campus. What nobody tells you beforehand is how huge the quality gap is: the older dorms on the heritage campus are insanely worn down, feel a bit like a concrete prison cell with ancient furniture and dodgy bathrooms, while the newer “rainbow” dorms on the new campus are much closer to a basic Western standard. If you get stuck in one of the really old dorms, do not just accept it, keep pushing at the SAO in person (emails are often ignored), be stubborn, and if needed loop in the exchange office until you are moved, because where you live will have a massive impact on how much you actually enjoy IIMA.

3. Academic life at host university

The campus has a decent gym and a proper swimming pool, which are the clear highlights, but apart from that the infrastructure feels more basic than you would expect from India’s “number one” business school, even though life inside the gates is still much more comfortable than in the surrounding parts of Ahmedabad. Academically, everything is built around group work and the case method, which can be interesting but also extremely frustrating, because many local students start their part the night before (or a few hours before) the deadline, freeride once they have a job offer, and sometimes simply do not show up, while everyone still gets the same grade. The case discussions often go very deep without any prior theory input, and in a few classes the accents were so strong that it was almost impossible to follow, but courses like International Banking and Applied Value Investing taught by visiting professors from abroad were clear, rigorous and closer to what students from WU might be used to.

5. Every day life in the host country

Everyday life in Ahmedabad is shaped a lot by cheap rides, noise and air. Uber is extremely affordable, so even longer trips across the city only cost a few euros, which makes moving around very easy. On and around campus, the safety situation felt completely fine, but outside you should be prepared for a lot of people approaching you, trying to sell you something or just wanting to talk, which becomes exhausting after a while even if it is not really dangerous. During festival season, especially Navratri and Diwali, you experience amazing celebrations and cultural events, but also have to live with fireworks going off for hours late into the night for days in a row, which can be fun at first and then just insanely loud and tiring.Food-wise, nearly everyone in the exchange batch had food poisoning at some point, and despite being careful and mainly eating at the dining hall, I still had one really bad episode plus several smaller ones, so it takes time to find a few Swiggy (delivery app) places. On campus there are basically no reliable alternatives beyond the dining hall, and most other stalls or canteens were so questionable that I simply avoided them. Sports options on campus are good, with frequent chances to play football and other games, but the air pollution in Ahmedabad is no joke and makes outdoor sports noticeably more exhausting than back home, something that really took me by surprise.

6. Testimonial

The best part of my exchange was the people: I met a lot of great students from the exchange batch and from IIMA, and used the semester as a base to travel across India and the rest of Asia. At the same time, India was honestly overwhelming for me, because everyday things that you take for granted in Europe often just do not work, which can get really frustrating after a few months. I am glad I experienced the culture up close and would not want to miss the perspective it gave me, but I also have to admit that I am not planning to return to India anytime soon.