How do you plan and organize the accademic leave & what if a phd takes longer than 2 years or than expected?

Hi Edis, thank you for your question. I know of some people that have not finished their thesis within the two years. They usually try to finish writing over weekends, vacation days and some take a Sabbatical.

As for planning and organizing: I first looked for a topic that I felt passionate about and then went on to search for a compatible professor that would let me write a thesis. This, I pitched to my Mentor at Roland Berger and then began the PhD program 2 months later

Thanks! Because I often hear, that engineering topics demand a bit longer than 2-3 years, which is probably rare to do after working in consulting. But do you think, that there are such opportunities as well or does it mean quitting the job for long term.

HI Edis, I think this largely depends on the specific topic. I did my PhD in physics before Roland Berger and with 3.5 years I was rather fast. I have colleagues that needed 5 years overall because their experiment already took 3 years to set up. But you do get active support and can also get suggestions as to what topics might be available to see if there is something you like and can identify with :)

That's amazing. 3.5 years sounds really fast for physics to me!
I'm really passionate about the space industry (and future space propulsion technologies)
I'm a bit torn whether to gather working experience after graduating with my masters at the age of 25/26 and then do a phd within a scheme such as RolandBerger offers. Or first go for a phd at the university or in a company on that above mentioned topic. What did you learn from your phd would you recommend maybe first follow the research or afterwards? Or maybe I will be to "professional" then?

Also I will have an upcoming Interview with RolandBerger and hope that an internship would help me with this decision...

And I was also wondering what the topic was about, does it help you with future work?

Good question and I will be brutally honest as I am very much a tech head myself ;) If you really want to dive deep into a technical or engineering topic, in my opinion our PhD leave is not the right setting and you should pursue the PhD outside of RB. However, an internship is definitely something I would recommend because it also gives you the experience how consulting life is like.

Also, once you then have your "long-term" PhD, you are of course a very valuable asset because in general clients more and more demand team members with technical expertise that really understand their products.

So it will not work against you if you do your PhD outside of RB. And I can only repeat myself that if deep R&D is what you are after, definitely go after a longer PhD so you also have the time to really get into the most complicated (and most fun) stuff ;) I enjoyed it a lot.