Looking back, dated two days after the admission weekend in Berlin.
Scholar of the sdw: how I got in, and what the first semester looked like
Since October 2025 I am funded by the Klaus Murmann Fellowship of the Foundation of German Business. Notes on the application, the admission weekend in Berlin and the regional group.
Since 1 October 2025 I am a scholar of the Stiftung der Deutschen Wirtschaft, sdw for short. Its programme, the Studienförderwerk Klaus Murmann, is one of Germany’s 13 federally funded foundations that support students for achievement and for what they do for others.
The application was in March 2025. Six short questions, each with room for about 500 to 600 characters, which is less than it sounds. One asked for a concrete example of initiative. I wrote about PneuNet. Another asked what I wanted to bring into the regional group. I wrote about my work with the Red Cross, about AI from my studies, and about founding. On top of that came a three-page overview of my volunteering and 77 pages of certificates. The selection has two stages, first on paper, then in person.
What you get is two things. One is financial support, about which I say nothing further. The other is the part I applied for: a regional group, seminars and people from other subjects.
The first semester in numbers: four meetings of the Potsdam regional group, one Christmas event that the three newcomers organised (my job was the venue), and a network meeting in Thuringia. Last weekend the admission event in Berlin followed, with a workshop called “Privileges and responsibility”. I liked the rhythm of it: input first, then an exchange of experience.
It was also the semester in which I took 42 credits instead of 30, kept up my Red Cross duties and started working. I treated it as a stress test, to see how many things I can do at the same time.
From the summer term on I take over PR for the regional group.
Note added later: my exam results did not get worse that semester, so I count the stress test as passed. What came out of the PR job is in the post about our social day in July 2026.