MSc in Economics and Business Administration (cand.merc.)

Copenhagen Business School’s MSc in Economics and Business Administration — the Danish cand.merc. — is the degree most applicants searching for a “CBS Master in Management” are actually looking at.¹ CBS does not market a programme literally called “MSc in Management”; the cand.merc is its two-year, English-taught general-management master’s, offered across roughly a dozen concentrations, and it is the degree you apply to from abroad. It is free for EU/EEA students, requires no GMAT or GRE, and serves as the host degree for CBS’s selective CEMS Master in International Management track.¹ ²

Overview

CBS, founded in 1917, is one of the largest business schools in Europe and one of the small group worldwide to hold the “triple crown” of AACSB, EQUIS and AMBA accreditation. It sits on a campus in Frederiksberg, on the edge of central Copenhagen, and is a member of the CEMS Global Alliance alongside HEC Paris, LSE, Bocconi, SSE and dozens of others.⁴

The cand.merc is a 120-ECTS, four-semester degree running from late August of year one to summer of year two.¹ Rather than a single fixed curriculum, it is a family of concentrations — among them General Management and Analytics, Strategy, Finance and Strategic Management, Finance and Investments, Management of Innovation and Business Development, People and Business Development, and Supply Chain Management.² You apply to a specific concentration, and each has a limited number of seats. The shared design across all of them is the Nordic management-education model: small-group, discussion-heavy teaching, a strong quantitative and analytical core, and close ties to the Danish and wider Scandinavian corporate sector.

Curriculum & Tracks

The cand.merc’s structure varies by concentration, but the common shape is two years of taught coursework and electives followed by a master’s thesis. Early semesters build the management core of the chosen concentration — strategy, finance, analytics, organisation, or innovation depending on the track — while later electives let students specialise further or broaden across CBS’s large shared course catalogue. Teaching is in English on the international concentrations, case- and project-led, and assessed through a mix of written exams, group projects and oral defences in the Danish tradition.

The standout option layered on top of the cand.merc is CEMS. CBS is a founding-tier CEMS member, and its CEMS Master in International Management is a one-year track studied simultaneously with an eligible cand.merc — not a separate degree.² Around thirteen CBS master’s programmes qualify as the host degree. CEMS adds a mandatory exchange semester at one of 33 CEMS partner universities, an international business project solving a real challenge for a corporate partner, an eight-week internship abroad, skill seminars, and joint CEMS certification with access to a global alumni network of more than 20,000.²

Class Profile

CBS does not publish a detailed, FT-style class profile for the cand.merc (cohort age, average test scores, nationality counts), and because the programme is a family of concentrations rather than a single intake, an aggregate figure would be misleading — so we don’t invent one. What is documented is the shape of the school: CBS is a large, highly international business school, and the international concentrations of the cand.merc draw a substantial share of non-Danish students, particularly from across Europe.

The selective CEMS cohort is the part of the picture CBS quantifies. It admits roughly 50 students a year, drawn from the strongest cand.merc applicants, who must hold a bachelor GPA of at least 7.0 on the Danish scale and demonstrate proficiency in three languages (English at a minimum of C1).³ CEMS selection weights academic performance at 80%, with study abroad and international work or volunteering at 10% each, before the top 70 are interviewed.³ Most students enter the cand.merc directly from a bachelor’s degree or with one to two years of work experience.

Application & Deadlines

CBS splits applicants into two groups with different deadlines.¹ Group 2 — non-EU/EEA citizens who need a Danish student residence permit — must apply by 15 January, with the application portal opening in mid-December. Group 1 — EU/EEA and Swiss citizens, and others who do not need a residence permit — apply by 1 March, with the portal opening in mid-January. Both feed the late-August intake, and there are no rolling rounds: miss the deadline and the next opportunity is a full year away.

Crucially, admission is not decided by an admissions test. CBS states explicitly that the GMAT and GRE are neither required nor part of the assessment.¹ Instead, the cand.merc is competitive on academic merit: each concentration has a capped number of seats, and applicants are ranked on the quality of their bachelor’s degree and whether it covers the prerequisite coursework the concentration demands — typically microeconomics, statistics or quantitative methods, and business administration, measured in ECTS. Applicants with a Danish bachelor that carries a legal right of admission (retskrav) are prioritised for matching concentrations; everyone else competes on the strength of the academic file. English proficiency must be documented by the deadline. Because the prerequisite rules are specific and revised each cycle, confirm exactly which courses your degree must contain — and the current English requirement — on CBS’s admission pages before applying.

For applicants weighing the testing question more broadly, our explainer on what European MiM applications actually require sets CBS’s no-test route in context.

Tuition, Scholarships & Funding

Tuition is free for citizens of the EU, EEA and Switzerland — Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, does not charge these students tuition.¹ This is one of the cand.merc’s most distinctive features and a structural advantage over almost every other top Northern-European management master’s.

Non-EU/EEA students pay EUR 8,000 per semester (DKK 60,000) — EUR 16,000 per year, roughly EUR 32,000 (DKK 240,000) across the two-year programme.¹ Even at the fee-paying rate, that is materially cheaper than comparable two-year MiMs at HEC Paris (€57,700) or Bocconi.

Living costs are the real budget line in Copenhagen, one of Europe’s more expensive cities. A realistic monthly budget for rent, food, transport and basic social spending runs roughly DKK 9,000–12,000 (about €1,200–€1,600). Danish state education grants (SU) are available to some EU students who work alongside their studies under EU rules; CBS and external Danish foundations offer a limited number of scholarships, primarily aimed at fee-paying non-EU students. For a fuller treatment of how tuition, living costs and earnings net out, see our piece on whether the MiM is worth it in 2026.

Career Outcomes

CBS does not publish a Financial-Times-style weighted three-year salary for the cand.merc, so — consistent with how we treat unpublished figures across this site — we don’t quote one. What is clear is the recruiting landscape. CBS is the dominant feeder of management talent into the Danish and wider Nordic economy, and its graduates concentrate in management consulting, finance, technology, and the strategy and analytics functions of large corporates.

Denmark’s economy gives the cand.merc a distinctive employer base: global shipping and logistics (Maersk and the Danish maritime cluster), pharmaceuticals and life sciences (a sector anchored by Novo Nordisk), renewable energy, and consumer goods and design. The major strategy consultancies and Nordic banks recruit on campus, and Copenhagen’s growing technology and startup scene adds a further lane. For non-EU graduates, Denmark offers a post-study job-search period to find qualifying employment after graduation — confirm the current rules, which change periodically, with Danish immigration before relying on them. Our cross-school read on which industries hire European MiM graduates puts CBS’s consulting-and-finance tilt in a European context.

Campus & Life

CBS is spread across several buildings in Frederiksberg, an leafy, well-connected district on the western edge of central Copenhagen, a few minutes by metro from the city centre. There is no single enclosed campus in the British or French sense; student life is woven into the city. Copenhagen consistently ranks among the world’s most liveable cities — cycling-first, design-led, and compact — though students should plan for the cost of living and the Nordic winter.

Student life at CBS is organised around an active set of student associations and professional clubs (consulting, finance, sustainability and entrepreneurship among them), case competitions, and the international cohort the CEMS and English concentrations bring in. The school’s Nordic ethos — flat hierarchies, group work, and a strong sustainability and responsibility thread through the curriculum — shapes the experience as much as any single course. For applicants comparing Nordic study against other European destinations, our framing piece on figuring out what you want walks through the trade-offs.

The Honest Read

CBS’s cand.merc is one of the strongest GMAT-free, free-for-EU routes into elite European management education, with the QS-recognised CEMS track sitting on top for those who clear its bar. The honest caveats are three. First, it is not a single “MiM” but a family of concentrations you apply to individually, each with prerequisite-coursework gates — so fit between your bachelor and your chosen concentration matters more here than at a school with one open-door intake. Second, CBS publishes less standardised outcome data (salary, detailed class profile) than the FT-ranked schools, so you are trading transparency for cost. Third, Copenhagen’s living costs offset some of the free-tuition advantage. For the right candidate — analytically strong, internationally minded, and drawn to the Nordic model — it is one of the best-value top-tier management master’s in Europe.