Sarah Fischinger

• From Austria
• Previous studies: Bachelor in International Business obtained at the University of Applied Sciences (Kufstein)
• Obtained the Master of Science in Business Economics - corporate finance in academic year 2016-2017

Sarah about her experience at the FEB

I met a lot of foreign students in China and they told me that Belgium has a really high quality of education. I wanted to give it a shot and prove myself that I can also succeed in a European top 100 university.

The teacher techniques used here were not just straight learning from the book but it was case studies, it was group works and it was writing a lot of papers. Overall you have to include everything you learned in your master thesis. That’s a good overall conclusion.

The modular system was new for me, I didn’t do that before in Austria or in China, there were classes over the entire semester. It actually worked out better than I thought in the beginning because you really work weeks intensively within the topic and that actually helped a lot to gather knowledge really quickly.

In my opinion, my studies here in Ghent were for sure the most valuable for my future career. I had the feeling that I learned the most important things now.

The professors here just have a better education, I don’t know, it seemed to me that they know better what they are talking about. We had lectures from a professor that was advising the finance minister in Belgium. One professor in particular was really a kind of role model for me, it was nice to see that a professor can be so fulfilled with their job and that they can actually make us think a little but different as well.

That’s why I thought about not working in the banks directly but more regulating them because my master thesis was my first big introduction to the research are and I actually really enjoyed it. Most people have some troubles with writing the master thesis because you get a really close input in one topic but you can say I’m kind of a specialist in this area now.