It is 20:20, 28 February 2025, I am here in my flat in Berlin, Germany. The entire week was a holiday week for most of us studying at the ESCP Business School. I got some time to think about my time in the MBA program I have enrolled in. I had a chat with my peers yesterday about how the interviews for this academic year has started at MDI. I was in this exact position an year ago. My interview at MDI was on 14 March 2024, and I choose to give an offline interview on purpose, so I would get a chance to see Delhi, Gurgaon and I had plans to go to Mussoorie that week. So it all went well, I got admission for all the programs at MDI - the flagship PGDM program (also called “core” which is going out of usage now-a-days), PGDM-IB (PGDM-International Business), PGDM-HR and the PGDM-BAN (Business-Analytics) programs. I decided to go for the IB program, mostly because I would get to spend an year in Europe because I had never been outside India before. Many don’t believe me when I say this, but this is the reason and there is no bigger reasoning than this. Okay, just to satisfy a few people who repeatedly ask me this question in expectation of a better answer, let me say I took IB program for “better exposure”, “international connections”, “great networking opportunities”, “exposure leads to career growth” and so on :P. I am sure I will get all these but I didn’t have these in my mind when I made the decision.

So I got some time to think about the last 9-10 months since I started my management program. I think I would like to share my thoughts on my program. It can seem like a boring guidance book, but that is the intention. As an outsider, one has very less details about a program, but as an insider I believe I can share some details. Intention is to help out the further batches, my juniors and ensure they make informed decisions and are well-prepared. I won’t be talking a lot about my B-School experience, that is something you can find on linked-in, and I don’t think I can write anything with full honesty at this point, that is a task for a later day.

0. June 2024: Init

The college officially started on 21 June 2024, with a week-long orientation. Regular classes started the very next monday.

1. Which specialization to choose?

Only study suggestion I have for folks is this - study hard, study well, learn a lot and at every opportunity, classes are an extremely easy to way to learn things, and some professors are actually good at what they do. Pay attention in the class irrespective of what your peers and the environment tells. I personally think everyone should do that, especially if you are like me - an out and out technical guy who had absolutely no idea about management, and almost every word you hear is new to you, let alone topics and subjects. Adding to that, grades at MDI do matter, especially for IB students, so don’t get carried away with whatever people might tell.

Now to the important stuff.

The PGDM-IB program is a dual-degree or twin program between MDI-Gurgaon and ESCP Business School. Students complete two trimesters at MDI (typically starting from 3rd/4th week of June till 2nd/3rd week of December). And a good gap of 3-4 weeks, post which students will come to Europe, theoretially starting on 01 Jan 2025 and ending on 31 Dec 2025. And post that, a trimester at MDI again, and that would be the last trimester. This is the overall structure of the program, there can be changes in specifics, but the skeleton should ideally remain the same.

ESCP Business School has 6 campuses in Europe: Paris-France (the main campus), Berlin-Germany, London-UK, Turin-Italy, Madrid-Spain and Warsaw-Poland. With IB, you’ll be enrolling yourself into an year of Master-in-Management (MiM) program1. So in the end, one will get a PGDM-IB degree from MDI-G and an MiM degree from ESCP. The actual 2-year MiM program is structured in the following manner: It has 4 semesters. The first semester is one where students take compulsory/core subjects - fundamental subjects like Corporate Finance, International Reporting, Marketing, Operations Management, Management Control, Strategy, Human Resource Management and such - basically courses that will give you a glimpse into management. For each of the rest 3 semesters, students can choose specializations - one can do a good deep-dive into the field that interests him/her. The same MiM page[1] has an exhaustive list of specializations as well - specializations grouped based on the field (like Marketing, Information Systems, Finance, Entrepreneurship etc.,) but there are details about each specialization and which campus it is being offered. It is very much possible that the same specialization may not be offered on all campuses, or they are offered under different names and so on. This list is something I want people to take a good look at.

An MDI exchange year student will be spending an year in Europe. Typically, the first 4 months (Jan 2025-Apr 2025) is one semester (the spring semester), and a gap of 4-5 months till Aug/Sep 2025 (you’ll have to intern during this time, but more details about it later), and then another semester (the fall semester).

I believe it was around 2nd week of July 2024 (that is just 4 weeks from the first day of college), we were asked to choose the specializations we want to take during our first and second semesters at ESCP. We got a good list of specializations - a bunch of them from Berlin, a good lot of them from Paris, a few from UK, Madrid and even Turin I believe. So your specialization will decide the country you’ll be going to. For example, I choose the AI and Big Data for Business Innovation specialization 2 at Berlin, so I will be spending my first semester here in Berlin. ESCP Paris being the main campus, there is a rule for MDI students that they’ll have to spend atleast one semester in Paris, either their spring or fall semester. Because I choose to come to Berlin for my spring semester, by default I will be going to the Paris campus for fall. So the list we had was probably a subset of all the specializations ESCP offered. ESCP atleast officially tells it offers a total of 60 specializations. I think about 25-30 were open for us (or maybe a few more), but rest weren’t open for us. And unfortunately, one may not get the spec he/she chooses, that is again dependent on the merit rank based on which you were given admission at MDI - this is obviously an internal rank that MDI maintains and students never get hold of it. Atleast this and last year, the question of “who gets what specialization” was decided based on the combination of their merit ranks and choices. Adding to that, each of these specs take 3.5 to 4 people on an average(this may not be accurate). There are specs which take just 3, some take 7-8 from MDI and so on. I think last year the AI-Big Data had only 3 seats for MDI folks, but this time 5 of us got in, so such changes happen from batch to batch. The IB Batch is of 120 people, so 25 * 3.5 = 88 people probably got a specialization this year (unfortunately I am not sure about this too). What does it mean? What does it mean for the rest 32 people? They will have to take “free-track” in the spring semester and a specialization in the fall (all the info about specs I gave above was for spring). Free-Track is just a normal semester (always) in the Paris campus where most of your courses are elective courses (you get to choose from a list) with a few mandatory/core courses. In the ESCP specs list, you can see that Berlin campus offers 6-7 specs, so you can deduce roughly how many go to Berlin, similarly how many go to Paris, Madrid etc., People who do free-track in spring get to take a spec in fall, which means that one might stay in Paris itself if the spec he/she gets is in Paris, or one might come down to Berlin/Madrid/Turin etc., All this flexibility is only for folks who come to campuses inside EU. If one chooses UK, one will have to do both semesters in UK (I am guessing because UK is not in EU and the logistics can get complicated).

Anyway, you will be asked to choose a spec 3 weeks into college, so be mindful of it. Take a good look at the ESCP Website, it has essentially all the details about potential specializations and free-track electives too. If certain spec interests you, search for people who took it up on linkedin(that may be an MDI student or a regular ESCP MiM student, you may ask either, there is no difference in treatment once you are part of a specialization) and talk with them - I would say this is a must because this is the only way to know what exactly is taught in these specializations. In essence, do your due diligence.

2. How good is my English?

I ended up getting the AI and Big Data for Business Innovation specialization in the Berlin campus. The processes of going to different campuses are different. The processes related to Paris campus are quite straightforward. From here onwards, things will get a lot more Berlin-Germany centric.

At some point in August, we all come to know which campus we will be going. A bunch of us got the Berlin campus and so the processes related to it started.

The first one I believe was the English language test - which happens in the first/second week of September and we were notified of it in the last week of August. One of the pre-requisites of the regular MiM program is advanced level english 3. I am guessing we are tested on our English proficiency as part of that pre-requisite. This is conducted by the languages department at the Berlin campus (and not any external entity). It is a simple test and nothing to be worried about. Please do not compare it to TOEFL or such standard tests, this one is a simple one as a said earlier.

3rd week of September (2024) was the 1st trimester’s end-term examinations. During September, October, you’ll get emails from ESCP, you’ll get access to their e-library and most of the virtual resources an MiM student gets.

3. What is a Blocked Account?

How will you sustain once you come to Europe? For France, if you show a certain sufficient bank balance, it is sufficient for the visa folks and authorities. In Germany, that is not the case. They want a confirmation from your side. Enter the concept of blocked account. It is a german bank account to which you transfer certain amount of money. Once you are here in Germany, that account gets “activated” and you will receive a certain portion of the entire amount every month. I believe the standard amount to transfer for 12 months is 11904 EUR, so one will receive 992 EUR per month (conditions apply :P). The money is initially blocked and parts of it get unblocked/released every month once you come here.

Along with the blocked account, one has to have two other essential things:

  1. Health Insurance (will cost close to 150 EUR): So in essence, you’ll get 992-150 = 842 EUR in hand every month.
  2. Travel Insurance (Free of cost)

Getting these three are essential for the visa appointment. We submitted proof documents that we have a blocked account with sufficient money, that we have bought both the above insurances and ready to live in Germany.

There are different private blocked account services. I believe Expatrio [10] is the most popular and reliable one. It was decided that we open our blocked accounts on Expatrio. For this, you’ll need 11904 EUR (28-02-2025, it is Rs. 10,80,192) or close to Rs. 11 Lakhs. Ideally have the entire sum in your personal bank account (it is beneficial instead of having it even in your parents or some third party account). Opening up an account and even transfering the amount on Expatrio is straight-forward. You won’t have to transfer the sum to the german account directly. You will be asked to transfer it to some Indian account and they’ll take care of the rest.

But to my bad luck, for some technical reasons, I couldn’t open an account on Expatrio. The website kept giving some weird error and I ran out of patience to resolve it. So I decided to go with another service called Fintiba 11. The process was very smooth, I did it almost with zero supervision. More on the differences later.

Anyway, this opening of account, transfering money will take some time, so please keep this in mind.

4. APS Document verification

This is a good time to describe the entire germany visa procedure in short. This is how it goes:

  1. An entity known as APS (Academic Evaluation Center)4 does a thorough documentation verification of the candidate. At the end of it, if everything is alright, you’ll get what is called the “APS Certificate” - in our case, this certificate is a must.

  2. Once APS certificate is received, we go apply for VISA and this happens through another private entity known as VFS Global (Visa Facilitation Services)5. You first take a visa appointment, and once you get it, you go to the VFS Center and apply for your visa.

  3. You get the visa.

  4. Have about 40-45k Rs of liquid money in your bank - because you’ll need it for each of these steps.

Now onto the details of APS Document Verification.

One can find the exhaustive list of documents needed for APS vertification in their website6. And in that, I believe we belong to the “Process P” partnership category7. Here are a few tips or suggestions I have from my personal experience of gathering documents for APS.

  1. Have originals of every single document from your past - 10th, 12th, Bachelor etc., What happened in my case is I graduated in 2020 and out of the 8 semester markcards, I had misplaced 2 of them during the course of time. I was able to manage everywhere (including MDI admissions time) because I had official transcripts(consolidated marksheet) issued by my college. I had not cared about getting the duplicates for the 2 I had lost. But I came to know that APS will require the original marksheets and transcript may not help. I live in Gurgaon, my college is in coastal Karnataka and to top it, the procedure to get the new certificates issued is not straight-forward - I had to file a police complaint in the city where I had lost (I was not even sure if I had lost it or just misplaced somewhere in my home), and get an affidavit issued by notary or some court saying you have lost so and so documents - and it would help if I submit the request for new markscards in person. Email would do, but them responding to it, them sending the certs through a courier to Gurgaon would have taken a good 2-3 weeks. It was 09 Oct 2024, I decided that I’ll go to NITK/Mangaluru, apply for the certs and as far as possible get it with me. But the police complaint had to be given in Bengaluru, at my home (I went to Sector-29 police station to see if I can file one there, but I was clearly told I can’t do it). So I flew to Bengaluru on 12 Oct 2024, got the complaint filed at the police station nearest to my home, spoke to my lawyer and got the affidavit done in a day and on 14 Oct 2024, Monday morning, I flew to Mangaluru. I was at my college by the time admin office opened. Special thanks to a close friend of mine, I went to his home, had breakfast, took his mom’s two wheeler and went to my college. I submitted the request, paid up some admin fee and explained my situation to the Registrar. Fortunately admin at NITK have been very accomodative, I saw this even during my B. Tech times. I was asked to wait till 4pm, that is the end of day (for admin staff). At 4pm, the duplicate certificates were ready. I had gotten the certs in a day. I couldn’t miss more classes, so I flew back to Delhi directly from Mangaluru that very day. So if you want to avoid all this shitty hassle, either have all the documents in-tact, or now that I have told you want you need, get them ready well in advance and not at the Nth moment like me. Unfortunately I had no info that I’ll specifically need the originals, I was told maybe 2-3 weeks before we had to submit. Anyway, now you know.

  2. Name Discrepency Affidavit: I was Adwaith Gautham at Cisco, am Adwaith V Gautham on my Adhaar, Adwaith Venkatesh Gautham on my PAN Card and Passport. This is a very common problem Indians face, where we have 2-3 words, a bunch of initials and all in different orders in each of the identity cards. Anyway, the name on the passport is the REAL name for the outside world, so I am Adwaith Venkatesh Gautham here, but most of my official records have it as Adwaith V. Gautham. So there was this discrepancy and to avoid any issues at the APS, we were asked to get an affidavit from the haryana high court or the notary saying all the names refer to the same guy, Adwaith Venkatesh Gautham. This took about 2 weeks to get done. We contacted a lawyer and he promptly got it done and couriered it to us.

The way things were going, we were atleast 2 weeks ahead of our seniors in the process. But there came a few things that delayed the APS verification by 2 weeks (or more I don’t know).

  1. MDI First Trimester Markscard: The end-term exams got over on 23rd/24th of September I believe. We would have gotten the markscard in 2 weeks post the last exam, but there was quite a delay here - about 2 extra weeks, not from the admin’s side, but because one of the students fell ill and re-wrote almost all the papers, so until his scores were out, the grades couldn’t have been generated (or so we are told). So this caused a delay. Maybe get it checked once if this markscard is absolutely necessary for APS. Because without this, one can apply for APS right in mid-September right after the English test, that can help a lot. So my suggestion is to see if this markscard is absolutely necessary. I think we got it around 23/24 Oct 2024.

  2. It was told that we’ll need one more document, which is issued by ESCP Paris and we’ll have to submit to the APS. I don’t recall which document, but in the end it came to light that it was not necessary at all. This would have caused a delay but was masked by the delay the markscard caused.

  3. Let me add 2-3 days of delay because a couple of them were simply laid-back and did everything in the last minute causing delays.

APS requires some form-filling and so on, pretty easy, no surprises. You’ll have to pay 18k Rs per head for APS verification. And in case the verification fails, you’ll have to pay it again and re-apply. So ensure all the documents are in perfect order. We submitted the documents (of all people together as a group) for verification in October last week.

25 Sep 2024 - the first trimester end-term was over. If we had gotten the markscard in 2 weeks, we probably would have applied for APS somewhere between 15 and 20 Oct 2024. Try to get things done as soon as possible, and know every step of of the processes until you get the visa before hand.

Here, there are a few points to note:

  1. APS can call/email you regarding additional documents. Or to check the authenticity of the documents submitted, they might ask your digilocker credentials and take a look at it - so ensure you download all the documents (starting with Aadhar, PAN Card, License if present, 10th, 12th, Bachelors - literally whatever documents apply) and keep it ready. I studied at a central government institute, so all my bachelor degree related docs were present, it was all sorted for me and for a few others. But for a few, the documents weren’t in digilocker. So how would APS check the authenticity of the documents? In the APS form, they would have asked the contact details of a professor or admin from your bachelors, and that person will be contacted over email by APS and so on - it feels like a lengthly process. So right in the beginning, check digilocker, know if you are alright or some document is missing. If it is missing, talk to a prof or someone at your college and keep the communication channel ready. Don’t start after you get the email from APS - that is something my peers ended up doing (because we simply didn’t have any idea about the APS process) - these things lead to delay and loss of mental peace. I think one of them had to go to his university in person and let them know that the situation is time-critical. I got a call from APS, a few of my friends got email. I am guessing depending on the agent who handles your vertification, they’ll decide how to contact you, there is absolutely nothing to worry about here. About 10-12 working days after we submitted our documents, APS started emailing/calling us for authenticity check.

  2. As I said, the group as a whole receives one certificate. So if there is delay in one person’s process (say in his/her prof talking to APS), the process is delayed for everyone, because the issue of that one collective certificate gets delayed. So it is your responsibility to ensure all your peers are to the speed and help them out in any way possible - this is pretty much in all the visa related processes.

  3. At one point, all was done from our side, but APS took quite a bit of time to issue the certificate. We were already preparing visa documents etc., but we were yet to get the APS certificate. So this is a delay that was not in our control. So all the delays, problems that can be avoided by us should be avoided.

We got the APS certificate between 15 and 20 Nov 2024. You’ll have to pay the final fee installment around this time, so ensure to do that as soon as possible because based on that a fees-paid certificate is issued which will have to submitted as part of the visa application.

5. Getting the VFS Appointment

This is simply document submission procedure. You go to a VFS Center and submit all the documents they have asked for. Atleast for our year, there was no interview or anything of that sort. I was told all this is becoming online now, but I don’t know much about it.

Although we had started the documentation needed as part of the visa application, we were still trying to get a visa appointment.

5.1 Where to get the VISA appointment?

Since most of us are not from Delhi, we didn’t know if we need to get an appointment at the VFS Delhi Center or VFS Center closest to our home (mine would have been VFS Bengaluru, a bunch of friends’ would have been VFS Mumbai, some VFS Calcutta and so on). Can we apply at any center? It seems there is a rule that if you have to apply at a particular center, you need to stay in its “jurisdiction” for atleast 6 months. Here is the jurisdiction list8. I came to Delhi on 19 June 2024, and the date now was around 25 Nov 2024, so it had been just over 5 months in Delhi-NCR for me. So should I apply at the Delhi VFS Center? Or at the Bengaluru center back home? After some quick back and forths, it was decided that we all apply at the Delhi VFS Center only, and that we would get a proof of residence as well from the college.

5.2 When do we get the appointment?

It became very clear that getting a visa appointment at the VFS Center is not easy (not just at Delhi but at that time Bengaluru and Mumbai centers also had no slots in the forseeable future. I believe Chennai, Hyderabad, Calcutta had a few). Me being a Bengalurian, I wouldn’t want to apply even in Hyderabad/Chennai due to fear of rejection (because BLR/Karnataka don’t come under Chennai/Hyderabad jurisdiction). Even though we did verbal back and forths, we were set on applying in Delhi VFS. We all had applied for an appointment at Delhi VFS, and we were obviously on the waitlist - this was probably during the 3rd/4th week of November. We started doubting if we will reach Germany in time (that is before 01 Jan 2025).

If you know any influential people, good agents who can get VFS appointment slots for money, I suggest you should go for it. I would go out on a limb and say that even if only you end up getting a slot that way, that is still fine. The same happened with a couple of folks in our group, they were even done with their appointment and we came to know about 2-3 days later. So if you find someone who can get it done for a little bit of money, do not hesitate, go for it. At some point we all collectively decided to go through an agent, but I am guessing it was too late. Without high influence, I don’t think anyone can get a slot that easily that too during a peak season like November-December.

I had almost no contacts, I had to depend on luck that is all. And I guess most of our lucks kicked in. November last week most of us got emails saying slots are open and that we have a 48-hour window to book it. Bunch of us booked at the earliest date (mine was on 28 Nov 2024, 330PM slot). A few booked for 02 Dec 2025 and a few for later dates. A few didn’t get the slots, so they ended up waiting again and booked quite late.

See how lot of delays that are beyond your control creep in - only way out is to get things done in your control as soon as possible. There is a rule that one can apply for VISA 6 months before he enters European Union, so you can apply even in September/October if the documents are sorted. Please be mindful of this.

5.3 What documents to take?

You can find the list of documents for the application here9. Ensure you have everything, starting from photo (which you will have to get it clicked at a local photo-studio called Bathra studios, so get this done well in advance now that you know this. Don’t want till the appointment stage).

One suggestion at this point would be that if you get a document as a soft-copy, get one/two color printouts of that and keep it. In case you get a physical document, get it scanned (not docscanner, not camscanner or any of those mobile-apps, go to a normal printer-scanner shop) and keep the soft-copy with you. This habit came in handy quite a bit.

5.4 Appointment Day

It was a simple document submission procedure, nothing more than that. But note this: VFS offers two kind of appointments - regular and premium. ALWAYS go for the premium - people listen to you when you speak, if you have any concerns they consider it, they spend enough time on every application they receive and so on. I can’t stress on the premium appointment enough. So either while booking an appointment, you can choose premium then and there (my peers did that). I had not chosen it but went to the VFS Center and told I would like to buy the premium one and that is also a perfectly valid option. Either ways, go for premium. Along with that, choose the passport courier service too - I applied in VFS Delhi but I live in Bengaluru, so I want the passport to be courier to my place, this applies for most people.

Once the submission is done, it ended up costing about 12k Rs (about 9k Rs for the appointment, close to 3k Rs for premium access). Sometimes UPI may not work, or card may not work on that particular day. So please withdraw enough cash so that you are good to go even without UPI/Card (this actually happened with my friend, he relied fully on UPI and it simply didn’t work for him, he had to ask someone to pay 12k Rs and so on, so just be careful about these things).

6. When do we get the VISA?

Once the appointment is done, we wait. Do some travel prep or whatever, but we wait. One detail I had not put in the order is booking flight tickets. Tickets become insanely expensive as you approach December-January. So its always better to book it well in advance, possibly a flexi-ticket so that you can change the dates in case. I actually book it pretty late. On 11 Nov 2024, I booked a flight from Abu Dhabi to Berlin for 09 Jan 2025. My parents live in Abu Dhabi, and I wanted to visit them before to come to Europe. I had not booked the ticket from Bengaluru to Abu Dhabi though, I wanted to wait for the german visa (with that passport).

You’ll get a message from VFS saying your passport has been dispatched - that is the sign that you have gotten your visa. I got that message on 04 Jan 2025 (visa request was from 01 Jan 2025 lol). Some mishap with Bluedart-DHL, I got it on 06 Jan 2024. I flew to Abu Dhabi that very day. I had just 2 days to spend with my parents. But anyway, I came to Berlin on 09 Jan 2025.

I am happy with my case because I atleast got the visa well before my flight and my specialization. Many of them came to Berlin in Feb 2025, 2-3 weeks ago. They missed a bunch of classes, would have lost quite a bit of mental peace and so on. People who applied on or before 28 Nov 2025 got their visas before the semester officially start (that was 13 Jan 2025 this year). Whoever applied post this, even 02 Dec 2025 (that is a difference of 2 working days) ended up coming in February. This is why I consider myself lucky in this aspect. These are delays which are not in our control. Some say they embassy folks take a christmas-new year break which is why the delay, some say it is just the volume of applications. No one knows the exact reason, the sooner you get these things done, the better it is.

7. What after landing in Berlin?

I will cover only the relevant aspects, not going into the college related details.

7.1 Home and “Anmeldung”

You need to find a home and register yourself to that address (Anmeldung is the german word for Registration, nothing more). Once you come to your home, you will have to get the registration done within 14 days. Here is a short description of how to get it done:

  1. You come to your home.
  2. Your landlord would give you your proof-of-residence, also called Woh­nungs­ge­ber­be­stä­ti­gung10. It is simply a proof that the landlord gives to the tenant that the tenant has moved in on so and so date and he actually lives at that address. Ensure you receive this proof-of-residence as soon as possible, this is the primary document needed for registration/anmeldung.
  3. You will typically need to go to a city corporation office (known as Bürgeramt) to get the registration done. You’ll need to take an appointment for it. You may take it here10. Select all the districts and go for book an appointment. Take a suitable but earliest possible appointment. Special Note: Start looking for appointments at 7am in the morning. 7am is when the schedule is updated and if any appointments are cancelled, they are freed and we get to take those slots. So start at 7am and take the earliest.
  4. 2 Documents: The proof-of-residence/Woh­nungs­ge­ber­be­stä­ti­gung and your Passport. You go there, enquire at the receptionist and confirm your appointment. You go in when your time arrives, the documents will be checked and a printed piece of paper with that corporation office’s seal will be given back to you - that is the Anmeldung. High chance they will take the proof-of-residence for themselves, so don’t worry on that. It is a 10-15 minute process.
  5. Anmeldung/Registration is done with that. Ensure the post-box at your home has your name (especially your last name) on it. That is essential. In a week or two, you’ll receive your Tax-ID (which is needed when you get an internship and you get paid in Germany).
  6. Some time later, you might get a post on something called “Radio-Tax” as well. You’ll have to pay that too.

7.2 Some tips on House-hunt

A sub-group in our Berlin group had already found home on AirBnB in December itself, and the owner was ready for Anmeldungs for all the individuals in the group, so that group was set when it comes to housing.

Our sub-group didn’t do the homework and we were a bit laid-back. I came on 09 Jan 2025, which is a bit early, and ended up visiting a few houses my friends had shortlisted. They were to arrive in Berlin on 15 Jan 2025. Most of the search didn’t help. I wanted to stay as close to the college as possible because the first 1.5 months of my specialization is extremely hectic (literally 6 days a week for 6-7 weeks straight). But they had a budget contraint for which we were not able to find any house close to the college. We used to find homes that 1 hour, 1.5 hours away. We found a couple closeby but the landlord was not okay with anmeldung for all of us. Anyway, I suggested that I would stay in a private room closeby the college and they can go for an apartment which fits their budget. So that was a Tuesday, I moved into my private room on Thursday. My peers too found a home very closeby to the college and they too moved in. So my suggestion is to talk about money, budget, distance, time - all these things well in advance so its easy to make decisions. We didn’t do that earlier and we came to Berlin and then started discussing all that, we lost some time and mental peace due to that.

Some advice at personal level: As much as possible, find a home as close to the college. College is in Charlottenburg, so atleast stay in the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district. Even though Berlin’s public transport is very good, you wouldn’t want to travel say 1 hour coming to college and 1 hour going back. You’ll have lot of time to spend in college, on other work, visit places or just rest. I can say we did not get sound advice on this. I wanted to stay close because of my distaste towards travelling even a small distance and my specialization was quite hectic first few weeks. So take all these factors into account and decide. People will try to save every EUR by living some 1.5h away from college, don’t make such bad decisions. Time is of the essence here, not money.

I found a private room in spotahome. If at all you decide to stay in a private room, you can check homes at housinganywhere, spotahome etc., they seem to be reliable. All the procedures will be done in 2 working days, 2nd day evening I had checked-in.

7.3 Working capital for Initial days

Theoretically, you are entitled to 842 EUR starting Jan 2025. But when you arrive here in Jan 2025, you have no home, no bank account, nothing. So you need some cash in hand and a forex card (or any international card you can use to transact in EUR) with you until you activate your blocked account and set up proper bank account where you can receive that 842 EUR per month. I can’t stress on this enough because I faced a massive issue, I got saved because I had enough cash in hand. My suggestion is keep 500 EUR in cash, 500 EUR in forex card.

7.4 Activating the Blocked Account

Although you are entitled to 842 EUR starting Jan 2025, when you arrive in Berlin, you don’t have a bank account to which this 842 EUR can be deposited. The blocked account is just a repository, it cannot be used as a regular bank account. You’ll have to receive that 842 EUR on a regular current/savings account and then it can be used.

Here comes Expatrio vs. Fintiba’s 2 core differences:

  1. Transfer of money: In Expatrio, you transfer money from your account (which will be an Indian account) to another Indian account, all the INR to EUR hassle will be managed by some trusted third party. But in Fintiba, I had to transfer EUR directly to the german bank account. Fortunately, I had a HSBC account, enabling international transactions was very easy, so Fintiba worked for me. I don’t know what the case is if we need to transfer EUR from an SBI/CBoI account.

  2. Current Account support: Once you come to Berlin, you are entitled to receive 842 EUR. But where will you receive that? You need a proper bank account to receive it. Expatrio as part of the blocked account package also offers a current account, which just needs to be activated once you come to Berlin - very easy. Fintiba does not offer that current account. So I ended up going to Deutsche Bank and opened a student account there.

Checkout the second difference. Folks who took Expatrio (everyone except me) got their blocked account activated very easily. To activate it, you’ll need a home address (anmeldung is not needed, just home address is needed, so the moment you get a home you can activate the blocked account). In Expatrio, activating blocked account means automatically linking it to the current account Expatrio itself offers. So it is a good hassle-free solution.

But I struggled with Fintiba. Fintiba does not offer any such current account. So I opened a student account at Deutsche Bank. To open a bank account, the anmeldung is compulsory. So I survived on the cash I bad brought for a while. Once I got the anmeldung, I opened the account that very day. Things work differently here in Germany. Details like the Phone Banking PIN, the Telephone Banking PIN, the Card all arrive separately and by post. I ended up getting some 5-6 letters from Deutsche Bank about 7 working days after I created the account. Once I made that account, I took its IBAN and linked it with Fintiba’s blocked account. Here bank transfers are also slow - can take a day or two. So I waited for Jan and Feb’s blocked account money to get transfered.

A note on Deutsche Bank’s Giro Card: I hope none of you who are reading has to go through this stupid hassle, but in case you end up in this situation for whatever reason, this might help you. When a bank account is opened, Deutsche Bank sends you a card yes, and they call it “Debit Card”. It has a special name called Giro Card. Try googling it. It is not the normal Debit Card with 16 digits that we use in India. It is just some weird card that can be used for tap-transfers and withdrawing cash (that too at certain ATMs). One cannot make online payments with it. So I ended up ordering a regular Debit Card for an extra 18 EUR per year. So there is quite a bit of unwanted hassle with Fintiba. So as much as possible, go with Expatrio. If not, follow these steps, you will be fine.

7.5 Indian and German SIM Cards

7.5.1 Keeping Indian SIMs alive

Even if you are in Germany, you want atleast the SMS Service to work on your Indian SIMs, so that you get the OTPs and such important information. To make that happen, simply recharge your SIM with some annual plan - this should be more than enough to keep the SMS Service alive throughout the year.

The moment you land in Germany, your Indian SIM won’t work, you can’t make calls, you won’t have Data(only SMS will work if you have got it recharged as said above). So my suggestion would be to buy roaming for certain number of days (I went for 2 weeks), that gets activated only once you land here in Germany. By the time 10 days are over, you will have a functioning German SIM.

7.5.2 Getting a German SIM

People who bought the premium service at VFS got a German SIM free. Unfortunately I lost that SIM somewhere. So I came to Berlin and ended up buying a SIM at one of the Lidl12,13 stores. The SIM would cost you around 10 EUR, you’ll have to go to a post office (search for Deutsche Post Filiale on Google Maps) to get it activated. I pay 8.99 EUR for 15 GB data per month, sufficient talk-time and messages14. The Lidl-Connect SIM is essentially a vodafone SIM, but with better customer-facing services. Once you activate it in the post-office, you’ll never have to visit any store for recharge, problems etc., You can recharge online and you are good to go.

A bunch of friends bought actual vodafone SIMs, and oddly itseems they have to get it physically recharged (on option of online recharge) and they have to come to the store where they bought the SIMs to get it recharged. A few are using the free SIM we got at VFS, but I think the tariffs are costly on that.

Either ways, it is easy to get SIM here and get it working.

7.6 Transport in Berlin

The Public Transport is quite good here. With a single monthly ticket (known as the Deutscheland Ticket), you can essentially roam anywhere in Germany. Inside Berlin, there are Buses, Trams, U-Bahn (Underground-Rail) and S-Bahn (SubUrban-Rail). S-Bahn connects major locations in the city, U-Bahn connects sub-locations in particular routes, Buses and Trams are mostly for last-mile connectivity. You can buy the Deutscheland Ticket on many apps, I would suggest you to go with the DB Navigator application15. One advantage of using DB app is that it provides very reliable info on the routes, which bus/Train is scheduled when and so on. As of Jan 2025, the Deutscheland Ticket per month costs 58 EUR. Google Maps is excellent for Intra-city routes (inside Berlin, its great), so you may use that.

7.7 Where to buy stuff?

So many supermarket chains everywhere. ALDE, Lidl, REWE, DM, Rossman, TEDi - huge chains which sell different consumer products. You can explore around and decide which suits you. There are a number of Asian/Indian stores spread across Berlin, so find one if you want spices etc.,

8. What after Berlin?

You will have to find an internship in Germany, for April to August. Post that, fall semester in Paris. We’ll have to apply for France visa as well while in Germany. Details on that later.

8. Conclusion

Alright, so this is all I wanted to cover. Intention is that students who take up the IB program should know before hand what the end-to-end processes look like so they can be better prepared, something that did not happen in my case. There can be variations in these processes every year, but this will probably be the general skeleton. I didn’t want to give just the timelines and list of events, I wanted to describe it how it happens. I feel it helps to know all this in the very beginning. I wanted to add all the relevant documents as well, necessary at every process, I will update the article with that in some time.

As of 28 Feb 2025, I am just 1.5 months into my European journey. I have a lot of time left here. This article will be updated and I intend to cover all the relevant details. Goal is to let the future incoming batches before hand what they will be doing from exchange year point of view.

I will be writing a couple of more articles on the lines of this one, one on specializations at ESCP, a deep-dive into my spec and overall life here.

Until then, take care.

Cheers,
Adwaith

9. References

  1. ESCP MiM Page: https://escp.eu/programmes/master-in-management
  2. AI and Big Data for Business Innovation: https://ent.escpeurope.eu/Syllabus/SylView/view/11760857/2
  3. MiM admission pre-requisites: https://escp.eu/programmes/master-in-management?_ga=2.65451178.583266999.1740774431-9632027.1724510350#Admission
  4. APS India: https://aps-india.de/
  5. VFS India-Germany: https://visa.vfsglobal.com/ind/en/deu/
  6. APS General checklist: https://aps-india.de/checklists/
  7. APS Process-P checklist: https://aps-india.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Leaflet-Process-P_English.pdf
  8. VFS Jurisdictions: https://visa.vfsglobal.com/ind/en/deu/attend-centre/what-to-bring
  9. VFS Documents checklist: https://india.diplo.de/resource/blob/2667080/85ccf154e38cd7c5c36721503a49774c/infostudents-data.pdf
  10. Expatrio: https://www.expatrio.com/
  11. Fintiba: https://fintiba.com/
  12. Lidl: https://www.lidl.de/
  13. Lidl-Connect: https://kundenkonto.lidl-connect.de/mein-lidl-connect.html
  14. Lidl Tariffs: https://www.lidl.de/c/lidl-connect/s10007717
  15. DB Navigator: https://int.bahn.de/en