Master of Science in Business Administration

Radboud University’s Master of Science in Business Administration is a one-year, fully English-taught Master in Management at the Nijmegen School of Management — the university’s AACSB-accredited business school.¹ ⁵ It is a genuine pre-experience degree — no work experience required — and, as a Dutch public university, it charges regulated tuition: roughly €2,694 a year for EU/EEA students and €18,873 for non-EU/EEA students in 2026/27.⁴

Overview

Radboud University (founded in 1923) is a comprehensive research university in Nijmegen, in the east of the Netherlands. It sits in the leading group of universities worldwide — 154th in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2026 and 279th in the QS World University Rankings 2026 — and its business school, the Nijmegen School of Management, holds the AACSB accreditation.⁵ ⁶

Two honest framings matter before you shortlist it. First, unlike a one-year British conversion master, this is not an open-to-any-discipline programme: it expects a business-administration or closely-related bachelor on entry, with a separate pre-master’s route for other backgrounds (see Admissions).³ Second, on rankings we are deliberately careful — the MSc in Business Administration is not listed with its own position in the Financial Times Masters in Management table, and we could not verify a specific QS Business Masters: Management position for it, so we do not quote a programme rank we cannot source. Judge it on the university’s standing, the school’s AACSB accreditation, its cost and fit rather than a single league-table number.

Curriculum & structure

The MSc in Business Administration is one year, full-time — 60 EC (ECTS) — taught in English at Radboud’s Nijmegen campus, with a September start.² Rather than one fixed syllabus, the degree is offered through seven specialisations, each a distinct one-year track that leads to the same MSc:¹

• Strategic Management — strategy, competitive advantage and the direction of the firm.
• International Business — managing across borders, markets and cultures.
• Marketing — consumer behaviour, brand and marketing strategy.
• Digital Management — managing technology, data and digital transformation.
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship — new ventures, innovation and growth.
• Organisation Design and Change Management — structure, culture and organisational change.
• Strategic Human Resources Leadership — people, leadership and HR strategy.

You choose the specialisation that matches your career direction; each shares the school’s core methods, research training and a master’s thesis.¹ The Nijmegen School of Management frames its mission as “Responsible Governance for Sustainable Societies,” so sustainability and responsible-management themes run through the teaching and research.⁵

Admissions

Admission turns on your prior degree rather than on a standardised test as a rule — though Radboud can ask for one. Direct access is open to holders of a research-university bachelor in Bedrijfskunde/Business Administration (Radboud’s own BSc, or a comparable degree from another research university) and to Radboud’s Law and Management graduates.³ Applicants with an HBO (university-of-applied-sciences) degree or an unrelated bachelor are not turned away, but they enter through a separate pre-master’s programme that brings them up to speed before the master proper.³ So this is not a conversion master in the British sense; if you studied something unrelated and want to switch straight into management, a conversion-style MiM — see our guide to a MiM without a business degree — is usually the better fit.

On testing, there is no blanket GMAT requirement, but based on your academic background Radboud may require a GMAT Focus Edition (≥565), a classic GMAT (≥600) or a GRE (315, quantitative 158).³ In practice, direct-admission candidates from a relevant business bachelor are usually admitted on the strength of that degree, while a test is more likely to be asked of borderline profiles — which is why we treat Radboud as GMAT-possible rather than GMAT-free.

The requirements Radboud publishes are:² ³

• A research-university bachelor in business administration or a closely related field for direct entry — otherwise the pre-master’s route;
• A GMAT or GRE only if Radboud requests one for your background (indicative minimums above);
• Evidence of English proficiency — IELTS Academic 6.5 or TOEFL iBT 90, with sub-score minimums;
• No work experience required — a genuine pre-experience master for recent graduates.³

Whether you need that test at all is decided by a diploma list, not by how well you speak English, and the Nijmegen School of Management writes its own version of the list. Radboud accepts, in place of a certificate, a bachelor’s from a Dutch research university or from a research university in “Australia, Canada (excluding Québec), Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, or the United States of America” — and then adds, for NSM only, *“An English-taught Bachelor’s diploma from an institution from an EU/EEA country.”*⁹ That is a genuinely wider door than most Dutch schools open, and it stops at the EU/EEA border: an English-medium degree from India, Pakistan, Nigeria or Kenya reaches no route here. The same NSM carve-out tightens one thing while loosening another — Cambridge C1/C2 results are valid five years across Radboud but two years for NSM programmes.⁹ One caveat we record rather than smooth over: the policy page carries its own stamp “Valid: 01 September 2024 - 31 August 2025”, so confirm it inside the application. Fifteen other schools’ rules sit side by side in IELTS and TOEFL for a European MiM.

You apply through Studielink and Radboud’s own online application. The deadlines depend on your background: roughly 1 April for non-EEA citizens (who need the longer lead time for a residence permit), and 1 May for EU/EEA citizens — though that 1 May date buys you Radboud’s housing assistance, and an EU/EEA applicant who does not need it has until 1 July, the same deadline as Dutch-diploma holders. The scholarship deadline is earlier still, 31 January. Enrolment is a separate step after admission, due 1 June for non-EU/EEA and 15 August for EU/EEA students.³ Because these are the university’s rounds — and a pre-master’s route adds its own earlier timeline — confirm the exact current-cycle deadline for the Business Administration master on Radboud’s application page, and map your timing against the wider field on our deadline tracker.

Fees & cost

As a Dutch public university, Radboud charges regulated tuition, and the amount depends on your nationality. For 2026/27 the statutory fee for EU/EEA students is €2,694 for the full one-year, 60-EC programme (it was €2,601 in 2025/26), while non-EU/EEA students pay the institutional fee of €18,873 for the year.⁴ So an EU/EEA applicant pays only a nominal amount for a one-year AACSB-accredited master, and even the non-EU fee undercuts most elite private grande écoles. See where that lands in how much a MiM in Europe costs, the low-cost & tuition-free MiM guide and our public vs private MiM comparison.

These are Radboud’s published 2026/27 rates, and — read at source on 3 September 2026 — they are the latest the university publishes: its central tuition-fee page carries 2025/26 and 2026/27 and no 2027/28 schedule at all.⁴ That matters on this page specifically, because the deadlines above admit to September 2027: the figures here price the year before the one you would start. Radboud’s own two published years show the size of the gap — the statutory fee went €2,601 → €2,694 between them, about 3.6% — so budget for a similar step rather than for these exact numbers, and confirm the figure for your nationality and specialisation on Radboud’s own tuition pages once the 2027/28 rates appear. The real budget line for most students is living in Nijmegen; a non-EU student must also show proof of sufficient means to obtain a student residence permit, and can look at the Radboud Scholarship Programme and other Dutch scholarships. For the wider funding picture, see how much a MiM in Europe costs.

For a non-EEA applicant, one award closes almost the whole gap — and it is competitive in a way the fee page never hints at. Radboud’s own Radboud Scholarship Programme “will reduce your tuition fee to €2,694”, i.e. down to the statutory rate an EU/EEA student pays, which against the €18,873 institutional fee is a reduction of roughly €16,180; it also covers “visa, residence permit, health insurance and liability insurance”, and explicitly not living costs.⁸ Two things temper it. It is rationed: 33 scholarships across the entire university for 2026/2027, of which six are allocated to the Nijmegen School of Management — the faculty this programme sits in. And it is decided separately from admission — “admission to the Master’s programme does not imply selection for the scholarship” — on its own earlier deadline, the same 31 January the scholarship route above requires.⁸ Unusually for a European award, Radboud also answers the question most funding pages leave open: “The Radboud Scholarship can be combined with the NL Scholarship”, the €5,000 national award.⁸ That explicit permission is rare enough to be worth planning around — see how MiM scholarships work in Europe for why most awards say nothing at all.

Class profile & careers

Radboud does not publish a Financial-Times-style class profile (cohort age, average test scores, nationality counts) or a weighted-salary outcome figure for the MSc in Business Administration specifically, so — as with any programme where the numbers aren’t published — we don’t invent one.¹ What is documented is the school’s aim: to prepare graduates for management and leadership roles across business, consulting and the public and non-profit sectors, in line with its “Responsible Governance for Sustainable Societies” mission.⁵ The Netherlands is one of the most English-friendly graduate-recruiting markets in continental Europe, and Nijmegen sits within reach of the country’s business centres and the German border. For what MiM graduates in the Netherlands typically earn and where they land, see our Netherlands MiM career outcomes analysis and our guide to working in the Netherlands after a European MiM, and confirm current outcomes with the school’s own careers service. You can also weigh Radboud against the other Dutch options in the best MiM in the Netherlands guide, across the Netherlands hub, and against the wider field on the full rankings.

Every hard fact above is sourced to Radboud University’s own pages and AACSB’s accreditation directory (see Sources), retrieved July 2026. Fees, deadlines, entry requirements and rankings change each cycle — always confirm the current details on the school’s official programme and admissions pages before you apply.