Take a look at How to use LinkedIn to find the best school www.find-mba.com/board/33571
I think an important thing is how many MBA alumni these schools have in India. My guess is Buffalo will have more because of its price performance and location in the US, which is generally higher status. I guess it will, of the three, have the most Indians in the classroom.

Personally, I would take an intensive German course and then take HHL's Advanced Track, taking a semester in the US or Canada. HHL will have a much higher-quality cohort.

Thank you Duncan. Can you clarify a couple of points:

1. I am just worried about the language barrier in Germany. If I dont end up speaking fluent German by the end of HHL MBA, then I will have to come back? Do Indians learn fluent German in 2 years?
2. Doesnt having more Indians in the class a disadvantage? I mean yes I will be able to communicate easily in Suny Buffalo MBA class but wont it put me at a disadvantage since recruiters will have a large variety of indians to choose from?

I imagine that you maybe already fluent in two languages, and the third comes more easily. As you said in your orginal post, you'll need to speak German. I expand on this at Do you need to speak the local language? www.find-mba.com/board/34713 On the European common languages framework, you'll need to get to C1 level in my opinion. That would take around 1,000 hours of study -- or ten months of full-time study (See http://www.interdaf.uni-leipzig.de/sprachintensivkurse.html for a popular school with some HHL students). HHL has a part-time German course which would get beginners up to B1 by the end of the course, so I think it you got to A2 or B1 before you started at HHL, then you could get to C1 by the end. So, that would suggest to me that you could arrive in Leipzig four or six months early. Otherwise, with the advanced track, maybe you could get the school to allow you to take German courses at the University as part of your electives. after the three introductory courses. Broadly speaking I think, yes, as long as you commit to speaking German as much as possible then you will get there.

I think you need to balance up whether your priority is a network in India or a network in the host country. For the former, Buffalo is the better choice: around half of the full-time students seem to be Indians, if the ambassadors and photos are a clue: http://mgt.buffalo.edu/programs/new-york-mba/admissions/ambassadors For networking, I think UIC has a great advantage with its traditional two-year options: the full-time and part-time students are both taught in the evenings: http://business.uic.edu/home-uic-business/liautaud-programs/mba/liautaud-full-time-mba that hampers your social life, but it means that you are networking with people in companies from the very first day. Salaries are much higher after UIC, even if the ranking is lower, and I think the exposure to experienced business people and the Chicago setting are valuable.

Wow. That was informative. Thanks Duncan though I have some more questions. :)

1. Can a student work part time to offset his expenses in Leipzig while doing HHL MBA?
2. HHL does not provide Graduate/Teaching/Research Assistanceship?
3. Is HHL recognized worldwide like Mannheim? What I am trying to ask is if I come back to India after HHL MBA, can I expect a much better salary like twice what I am earning now? That will be possible only if HHL is reputed and famous.
4. What are the other ways through which I can earn money while doing MBA in HHL?
5. I read somewhere about racism in Leipzig. Can that be a worrying factor for me?

As of now, I am highly inclined towards HHL due to low cost and high reputation in Germany.

I think you should ask HHL to put you in touch with an Indian student. It's hard to work part-time while taking a full-time course and learning the language. I don't think the Mannheim MBA is world-famous. Both of them are comparably-strong European business schools, with a three-year average ranking of #26 for Mannheim and #33 for HHL. http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/european-business-school-rankings-2014 Mannheim does better in the full-time MBA ranking because it's more oriented towards finance and consultancy, while HHL is famous for entrepreneurship. As a result, HHL is lower in the MBA rankings because of the lower salaries that entrepreneurs have initially. Mannheim is also better known because it's part of a large university with a big undergraduate programme. I think HHL has advantages because of the US-style two-year experience, which is much fuller, and especially that it gives you more time to learn the culture. That said, Mannheim is a richer city and a more cosmopolitan one.

There have been some comments on the board in the past about racism in Germany. I am sure you can search and find them. Considering that students spend time in the centre of the city, I am not surprised that I've seen no reports of specific difficulties. If you were to go out into the suburbs, or into smaller towns, then an Asian is certainly an oddity as a European or African person might be in a small town in India. But if you don't go alone to the sort of places where most German outsiders would not go alone, then you will be fine.

PS It occurs to that me the big different is that HHL, HSG, Mannheim and WHU are the leading schools in the German-speaking region, which has 120 million people and is one of the richest in the world. In the case of UIC and SUNY Buffalo, these are not even the leading schools in the state, or arguably even within the state university systems in those states. The quality of the students and faculty you would get is much higher at one of the top two or three schools in any large Western country, and these are schools which were born global, rather than born to serve one province.

Thanks Duncan. Below is what i got to know from other forums on my post. What would you suggest me further?

Hi Vaibhav,

A few points that might help you:

- Job opportunities will be perhaps more abundant in US than EU
- HHL isn't that of a well-known school
- Leipzig would be a scenic, quaint but small town and perhaps not as cosmopolitan as US cities
- Your US b-school and work experience would be much better recognized and appreciated globally
- You could be able get away w/o learning German :)
- Cost of living and standard of living are both really good in Germany.


Good luck!

- Germany MBAs get paid more, on average, than US MBAs. That reflects supply and demand. If you want to be most sure to find work, then aim at countries with more open, English-speaking labour markets like Canada, Australia or Singapore.
- Because it's ranked, HHL could be better known than UIC and Buffalo by employers that traditionally hire from MBA programmes. But, indeed, for people who are unfamiliar with business schools with SUNY and UIC sound like universities.
- Leipzig is rather more cosmopolitan than Buffalo. It's a city, not a town, with a million people in the conurbation. Ten percent are first or second generation migrants. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leipzig#Demographics But, for Indians in particular, Chicago is a popular destination.