Meet our students
Meet current and previous International Full-time MBA students.
Why This Programme
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Class Profile
The world in your classroom
The International Full-time MBA is built on diversity. Diversity of thought, of experience, of culture, of background, of perspective. Our students come from all over the world. From a myriad of industry backgrounds. From a vast diversity of roles and functions. Each person brings his or her unique perspective, outlook and experience to a rich and challenging interchange that will upturn your preconceptions and broaden your thinking.
To view the full class profile of Full-time MBA Class of 2025, please click here.
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Curriculum
The International Full-time MBA is a 12-month learning journey that will change you and change your future. You will get into the issues that really matter. You will learn, debate, discuss, exchange, persuade and bring it all together with enough international exposure to pursue your career in any sector, management role and location in the world.
Module 1 (January - March)
The programme starts by building a platform for your learning journey and laying the foundations for impactful management in a world that is in transition: what should we expect of managers and leaders in relation to major social, technological and environmental challenges? How can we organize our operations for sustainable value? How to work with and manage diverse teams? How to read and use data?
Coursework includes:
- Managing for Positive Change: The PIT Project
- Organisational Behaviour
- Quantitative Platform of Business
- Business of Sustainability
- Operations Management
Managing for Positive Change: The PIT Project
This introductory project course will help you connect with the vibrant community of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and your fellow MBA classmates. This course addresses the contemporary challenges of business and management in the 21st century while aligning with your personal ambitions for your MBA journey. You’ll explore how global issues you care about intersect with organizations in the Netherlands and collaborate with your classmates to create meaningful connections. Your journey will culminate in the development of a professional transition plan (the PIT plan), setting the stage for your MBA and beyond.
Module 2 (March - May)
During module 2, you will learn the language of accounting and grapple with the core functions of Marketing and Strategy while growing your skills for reading the dynamics of the economic environment. Your experiential learning during this module will include a marketing simulation project.
Coursework includes:
- Accounting
- Marketing Management
- Strategic Management
- Economic Environment of Business
- Markstrat Simulation Project
Module 3 (May - July)
In this module, you will dive deeper into key aspects of business: How to evaluate the financial value of projects and investments, how to nurture a context for innovation, how to improve your decision-making with data and analytics and how to lead and manage people. You will round off this module with a signature learning experience of our MBA: The Living Management Project.
Coursework includes:
- Corporate Finance
- Management Science
- Strategic People Management
- Innovation Management
- Living Management Project
Living Management Project
During the Living Management Project, you are tested on your ability to integrate and apply the knowledge and skills you have acquired so far. An intense, four-week project that requires you to work in teams to devise a solution to a real business problem within a real company and present your recommendations to the company’s executives and other panel members. Experience the typical challenges of a consultancy project – limited information and resources, tight deadlines and cultural differences between your team members.
Module 4 (end of August - December)
Study Tours
A week abroad, learning about key business issues in an international context of your choosing. This immersive learning experience exposes you to a different business environment and gives you the opportunity to explore new sectors and expand your network.
* Study trips are subject to rules and regulations around international travel.
Advanced Courses
In this module you will get the opportunity to focus your learning on obtaining advanced competencies in a specific business area
- Advanced Courses (choice of 1 or 2):
- Advanced Finance
- Advanced Strategy
- Advanced Marketing
- Advanced Supply Chain Management
- Advanced Sustainability
Electives
Every year we offer over 25 electives which allow you to further specialise in topics of your choice. The electives include professional skills and current topics across five concentrations connected to the advanced courses.
- Electives (choice of 3, possibility to obtain a concentration when choosing two electives that relate to the advanced course). Some of the electives* are:
- Business Negotiations
- Health and Humanitarian Logistics
- Managing Corporate Turnarounds
- New Marketing Strategy for the Digital Age
*Please note: electives are subject to change
The Craft of Managing for Positive Change
Integrative Learning, Critical Reflection and Impactful Action
The Craft of Managing for Positive Change is a course throughout the entire programme, which will help you reflect on the value of your MBA in a world that is in transition. The course will enable you to develop your “impact capacity” so that you can use your MBA learnings to navigate complex challenges and act with sustainable impact; or in other words to be a force for positive change.
Personal Leadership Development
Strengthening your ability to be an impactful leader is integrated throughout the MBA learning experience. All your coursework, assignments, and projects allow you to improve different elements of your knowledge and capacity to tackle complex business issues. Effective leadership, however, is only partly about what you know; it is also about who you are and how you show up in the world. To learn more about yourself, your values and your impact on others, the MBA also offers you a specific Personal Leadership Development (PLD) course.
The PLD experience increases your self-awareness and enhances critical interpersonal skills that are key for your success in the MBA and as a leader beyond. PLD offers you a chance to become a better version of yourself that you can skillfully bring to the job of leading others.
International Exchange
Spend a term at one of the 40+ leading business schools in RSM’s network. Exchange options are offered for those who are selected. Selection is based on academic performance and engagement throughout the year. Exchanges take place from January to March, after the programme.
*** Exchange options are offered for those who are selected, at the end of the programme.
Faculty
Big thinkers. Industry experts. Exceptional scholars.
RSM offers a distinct intellectual culture based on the values of being critical, creative, caring and collaborative, and we are committed to the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals as a framework for our mission.
We believe that leadership can be taught through a combination of intellectual and practical challenges – like those encountered when working in diverse teams – that can foster creative new approaches in business. And we encourage a flexible, broad and sometimes iconoclastic mindset in business practice and research – from the perspective of being a force for positive change in the world at an individual and organisational level.
Research and education by our world-class researchers and academics are among the best in the world, perfected at the Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM). Our think-tank is ranked as one of the top 10 research institutes in Europe.
At RSM, we are proud to claim:
Learning Experience
So much more than a classroom
The MBA classes are important of course – and ours rank among the top international business schools globally. But standing out in the competitive world of business takes more. You have to step out of your comfort zone and into the world around you. Students come to us from all over the world and from a vast spectrum of industries, sectors and roles. In class, in project work, on campus, on treks – the rich exchange of ideas and approach will push your boundaries and broaden your mindset exponentially.
Study Tours
Our study tours are immersive learning experiences that expose you to the complexities of global business. Previous international study tours and topics included:
The Living Management Project
Every year, companies come to Rotterdam looking for help with specific business challenges. And every year, they leave with innovative new solutions developed by MBA students at RSM. This intensive, four-week project requires you to work in teams to devise a solution to a real business problem within a company, before presenting your recommendations to the company’s executives and other panel members. You will experience – and learn how to tackle – the typical challenges of a consultancy project, like inadequate information and resources, tight deadlines, and cultural differences between you and your team members.
International Exchange
As part of the programme you can opt for an international exchange. Spend your fourth term at one of the more than 100 leading business schools in the RSM network.
Events and Networking
Take full advantage of the unmistakable energy on our campus. Dive into events and networking opportunities hosted by the MBA Student Association and MBA Career Centre.
What is your ‘I WILL’?
RSM’s I WILL movement allows you to define your goals, your ambition, your drive. It’s our forward-thinking community that asks you to say something about your future. Your I WILL statement becomes part of the spirit of RSM’s diverse community of students, researchers, staff, professors, alumni and others related to the school. Making a public commitment to your goal will allow you to achieve it faster and better. What is your goal?
Leadership Development
What kind of leader will you be?
Leadership is comprehensively integrated across the entire MBA learning experience. We call this Personal Leadership Development (PLD). Every class, every assignment and every project is informed by a leadership development component: a challenge to apply theoretical concepts to real-world scenarios. To make decisions based on what you know and what is in front of you. To think like a real business leader.
The Personal Leadership Development programme will help you build your leadership competencies via dialogue and interchange with inspirational peers and leaders from a broad diversity of backgrounds and cultures.
Leading knowledge
Our faculty and professional coaches have their fingers on the newest insights and best practices from all over the world. You will have access to all of it through the PLD programme.
Leading in action
Apply your managerial savvy through active lessons – such as in-class exercises, simulations, group work, peer reviews and mentoring opportunities.
Leading solutions
Put your critical thinking to the test. For four weeks, you will work in teams to solve a real-world business problem for a real firm, and present your solution to executives.
Personal Leadership Coaching
At Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) we define coaching as ' partnering with an individual, teams or groups in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximise their personal and professional potential.' Coaching focuses on the transformation from potential into reality and impact.
In this video Hetty Brand-Boswijk, our Director of Coaching and Lead Coach for the Erasmus Center for Women and Organisations (ECWO), shares the benefits of personal coaching.
The Craft of Management
Integrative Learning, Critical Reflection and Impactful Action
Taking your MBA at RSM exposes you to the biggest, most relevant ideas shaping modern, global business and challenges you to dive deep into the theories, the problems and the technical issues that, as a future decision-maker, you will have to navigate. But becoming an impactful manager is not just about mastering the granularity of today’s challenges within specific problem domains. Modern management is also a craft that requires you to be able to step back, critically assess the big picture (using the different tools acquired during your MBA) see the risks and the opportunities ahead and join the dots that connect them.
Running across your MBA journey at RSM is an integrative programme that empowers you to re-evaluate each of your core subjects as a function of the whole and critically reflect on how the different pieces fit together and where you will need to apply your own personal touch in order to create holistic and sustainable value.
The Craft of Management is the red thread during your MBA. Each session invites you to question what you learn in the broader context of today's management challenges and responsibilities. You will be challenged again to reflect on why you are pursuing an MBA, what you hope to achieve and what kind of impact you aim to have after the MBA.
You will explore:
- The taken-for-granted assumptions (including your own) that are associated with conventional management thinking
- The important and complex roles that organisations and their leadership have in propagating current systems of management—for better or worse
- The need to be an open and engaged force for positive impact as a future manager
FAQ
Do you have any questions about our International Full-time MBA (FTMBA) programme? Find answers to commonly asked questions in our FAQ section, covering programme structure, admissions, and more.
1. What are your application deadlines?
We operate on a system of admissions rounds, with specific deadline dates for applications throughout the year. Following each round, interviews are conducted. This year, our admissions rounds fall in February, April, June, August, October, and November. If you apply by the deadline of a given round, your application will be assessed, and if selected for an interview, it will typically take place within two weeks after the round's closing date.
2. Does RSM have a September intake as well?
No, our FTMBA only starts in January of every year.
3. How long does it take to hear if I am accepted into the programme?
Normally the admissions process can take 4 – 6 weeks but if needed it can be done quicker. It all depends on your schedule and that of your interviewer.
4. Can I already apply without a GMAT or GRE?
Yes, you can submit your application without a GMAT or GRE score for initial evaluation. However, to proceed with further stages of the application process, such as the online KIRA Talent Assessment and potentially an admissions interview, you'll need to provide a valid score report. Additionally, you'll be required to submit an official score report using one of the following school codes:
GMAT code: QK8-CX-30
GRE code: 0798
Alternatively, if eligible, you may choose to take the RSM Business Admissions Test (BAT). For more information, please visit https://www.rsm.nl/education/mba/international-full-time-mba/admissions/bat/
5. Do I need to take the TOEFL or IELTS?
Generally, it's not mandatory; it's an optional requirement. However, you're welcome to include your TOEFL or IELTS scores with your application to strengthen it. Please note that we retain the right to request proof of English proficiency at any stage of the application process if further verification of your language abilities is deemed necessary.
To access the complete list of Frequently Asked Questions, please click here.