Help choosing a German university?

Germany2012
Fri, 20 Jul 2012 19:42:46 +0000

In Germany we have almost 500 universities of higher education.
Most coures are only offered in German, some also in English.

Whatever has something to do with international elite & research is very most of the times partnered by the four academic elite organizations or enterprises because also Top German Universities rarely have a funding higher than 600 million Euros per year though it is growing.

75 or 100 universities are highly academic universties.
Almost 200 universities are universities of applied sciences.
200 universities are dual programs of studies and corporate education but still universities.

There are a lot of private collegues which I would not recommend unless it’s a real university as Jacob’s University Bremen. At least you should know what you can expect, for example biotechnology is not a protected term.

For automative studies universities of applied sciences are highly recommended, especially for German speaking potential students. HAWtech consists of six leading ones: FH Aachen, HTW Berlin, HTW Dresden, HS Darmstadt, HS Karslruhe, HS Esslingen.

But now let’s get more academic:

There are 11 universities of excellence with internationally awarded future concepts, excellent clusters and renowned graduate schools for international PhD studies, by the way within Germany the Dr. title in front of the name after writing a thesis for some years still is often preferred much, Dr. habil. is the very highest academic rank in Germany comparable to somebody with a PhD from a top-ranked US university.

These so called elite universities (media term, all kinds of media say so but it’s not exact the title of these universities and also not totally true) are: RWTH Aachen, FU Berlin, HU Berlin, Uni Bremen, Uni Cologne, Uni Constance. TU Dresden, Uni Heidelberg, LMU Munich, TU Munich, Uni Tübingen.

Besides these there are 9 leading, the TU9, institutes of technology: RWTH Aachen, TU Berlin, TU Braunschweig, TU Darmstadt, TU Dresden, Uni Hannover, KIT Karlsruhe, LMU Munich, TU Munich.

I highly recommend the “CHE University Ranking 2012/13”.

Uni Mannheim is still preferred very much for business studies. TU Freiberg is worldwide known for its management of material ressources, TU Ilmneau europeanwide for informatics, Frankfurt for Finance, Mainz for physics, Bonn for PhD in economics.

I cannot say anything bad about TU Darmstadt. It still has an outstanding reputation though PERSONALLY I would prefer TU Dresden because:


much more beautful city
1500 companies with more than 48,000 employees make Dresden the largest European cluster in the microelectronics, information and communication technology sector. The power of small.
Europe’s leading location (in absolute numbers) for microelectronics, 3 Max Planck, 1 Helmholtz, 3 Leibniz, 13 !!! Fraunhofer Institutes
applies most patents among German Universities
leads the highly detailed CHE ranking in electronics, electrical egineering and information technology
recently became German “university of excellence”


This is just my very personal preference. I shoud not deny recommending TU Darmstadt because they are really known to be very good. I don’t know this special program but cannot imagine it to be displeasing. German universities are generally underrated specially when it is about such programs.

Uni Mannheim is an academic university, HS Mannheim is a university of applied sciences (similar ones are often called HS, FH or HTW), BA Mannheim is a dual education. Some refuse to call these studies and say it’s an apprenticeship for the smartest non-academics. The public administration has very similar programs (to BA) while a academic university is needed for the highest jobs in administration.

The best mark is 1.0 and 5.0 the worst.
Law students have an average IQ of 120.
Law graduates have an average mark of 3.3.
Biology graduates 1.3, psychology and mathematics 1.4.
Chemistry 1.5, History graduates 1.6, economits 2.4, physicians 2.4.

Generally the worse the university the better the average mark.