“My journey to studying International Business Administration at the University of Twente has not necessarily been a straightforward one. To be honest, in secondary school, I planned to go study in Iceland. Having lived in Greece my entire life, I felt like it was time to go abroad and experience a whole new country. After some deliberation with my parents and visiting a fair, however, I decided to stay a bit closer to home: I heard positive stories about the Netherlands and after talking with some other Greeks who already studied at the University of Twente, I chose Enschede.
I first started studying Psychology. While I was keen to help others in the future, I quickly realised the study was not for me. That’s when International Business Administration came onto my radar. With the help from my study adviser, I figured I was looking for something a bit more practical and goal-oriented that I could apply right away. I found all of my interests combined in IBA: a very hands-on programme about all things managing businesses, but with an eye for people as well. What also appealed to me was the variation in courses: one week you’re learning about finance and accounting, and the other you’re studying business law and management, for example.
Real-life business cases
What’s cool about studying IBA is that it enables you to understand real-life business cases much better. For example, in one project for business law, we had to analyse the bankruptcy of a real Swiss bank through the carrot-on-a-stick theory, which explains how providing extrinsic motivations for employees can backfire. This is exactly what happened to this bank: they put huge bonuses on their main managers, but this did not prevent them from losing trust in their employer. As a result, more and more employees quit, and the bank eventually went bankrupt.
Working on such projects goes to show how topical the study programme is, and how theoretical knowledge can be applied to understand and change a business. Recently, we also did a project in which we simulated a juice company. Every decision we made had an immediate impact on the finances, the return on investment (ROI) and so on: based on our business management, people invested and bought more/less. Seeing how your actions can influence a company’s performance on the market was really insightful for me!
Entrepreneurship
I’m not yet sure what I want to do after my bachelor’s. However, studying IBA has made me realise that I’m quite passionate about entrepreneurship: I love being able to use my knowledge of businesses and finance to create something new. I find the whole process of trying things and learning as you go really exciting, and I’m glad that at the University of Twente, you have the freedom and resources to go for it. For example, two years ago I participated in the UT Challenge, a start-up competition for students. We developed a social app called Mango to combat loneliness among young people. Unfortunately, we did not win, but it was a cool learning experience and I’m excited to start new businesses in the future.
Personal growth
Today, I can gladly say that I made the right choice studying IBA: learning more about the processes of defining, selling and managing a business product has been really exciting. That’s also why my biggest lesson so far has been that there’s no shame in making mistakes and trying out different things. Even your less unfortunate choices will help you grow – just like how my switch from Psychology to IBA has redirected me. As long as you’re learning and getting to know what you want, it’s okay. It was never wasted time for me: I met so many amazing people, coming here was not a mistake at all!”
