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janeausten

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Everything posted by janeausten

  1. If you want to move out, but still pay less tuition then maybe other EU countries would be better options? (Netherlands, Denmark etc). As I understand, as a German citizen, your fees would not be too high within EU. US is too expensive and I am not sure whether as a Bachelor student you will be able to make enough money with side projects to support yourself. I have not personally studies in the US but have friends doing Masters there, ans even for them with side jobs it is not very convenient. I am not sure how advisable it is to rake up that much in student loans. All the best!
  2. Disclaimer : I did Masters in Germany. I was offered PhD, but did not want to do, so my answer is based on my experience+ what I hear from friends continuing for PhD. I agree with stuff @societyisinteresting has written. Unless the PhD job post specifically mentions that you need to know German, language wont be an issue. Although if you plan to study sociology, you may have to check whether such programs are available. What I have noticed it, for sciences and especially computer science, biology etc, language is never a barrier in Germany. But the more you move away from this cluster, language may become an issue, meaning that it may be difficult to find courses and projects available which do not require knowledge of German. If you do have to move to Europe, UK and Netherlands may be a better option from language perspective, as projects would expect english knowledge. Atleast in my college, I had noticed that if you wanted to study law, social science, philosophy or even theoretical maths, subjects were only offered in german, and same for projects. As for funding, you wont need to pay any money in Germany and funding and salary is pretty good. All the best!
  3. Doesn't Toronto have an MS in Stats. You could try that. Oxford had Masters in Scientific Computing (Not sure of they still do). You can also look for something like MSc. in Computational Science in Europe. Should not be too difficult to get in with your background. As for US, Georgia Tech has an MS in Computational Science I think, maybe someone from the US would be able to better guide in this regards. All the best!
  4. I recently completed my MSc. degree in Germany. When I started there was not much real information about the pros and cons of studying here. Generic higher studies websites posted generic higher studies terms , and I did not know anyone personally who had moved to Germany. I hope my blog post would help out other people with deciding. About Me : I am from Asia and attended one of the elite engineering colleges in my country for Bachelors. For Masters, I was interested in a course which allowed me to study computer science but was also interdisciplinary. Since Europe seemed to have such courses available, I decided to apply here. My results : I got into 2 courses. One was MSc. Computational Science in University of Amsterdam (https://www.uva.nl/en/programmes/masters/computational-science/computational-science.html) and the other was MSc. Simulation Sciences at RWTH Aachen University (https://www.rwth-aachen.de/go/id/bnzu/lidx/1) . I finally decided to join RWTH. I would like to give my opinion about this decision, in retrospect, and also some comments. The good : 1. Education is free in Germany, even for foreigners. In some states some amount of fees has been introduced for non EU students (around 1500 EUR) which is still considerably less than in other European countries for non EU/EEA students. In my state (NRW) while I was a student, there was no fees for foreigners yet. 2. The cost of living was much much cheaper than Amsterdam. 3. Pretty good and pretty cheap alcohol :D 4. You get a semester ticket which lets you travel in public transport for free, typically in your state and maybe also in other nearby countries. eg my semester ticket allowed me to travel in NRW as well as till Maastricht in Netherlands. 5. The specific course I took had too many non useful mandatory courses. But as far as electives are concerned, we had a lot of flexibility. This also meant lot of flexibility in choosing your thesis topic and department. The bad : 1. Language issues. While my course was completely in English, there were many courses available in German I would have taken if they were available in English, specially from the Math department. 2. In day to day life, living without German knowledge is difficult in Aachen, and NRW in general. It would be much more convenient maybe in Munich, Berlin or Frankfurt. 3. Courses seem too theoretical. It seemed that emphasis was on preparing students for future as PhD scholars, and not preparing for job market. Recently a MSc. in Data Science course has been started and even their courses seem to be too theoretical. 4. Job market is not as good in Aachen as in other bigger German cities as well as compared to Netherlands. Too many jobs, including Software Engineer roles, seem to ask for German knowledge. It gets even more limited if you want to join banks, consultancies etc. 5. Social life : most college events, poetry / quizzes etc are completely in German. This is not the case in Netherlands. 6. Aachen is definitely not as lively as Amsterdam. Few more comments : 1. You should know about the Dutch 30% ruling for expats, if you plan to later take up jobs in Netherlands. 2. It is possible to find industry funded research in both these countries, if that is what you may prefer. 3. Unlike other countries, Germany does not seem to have concept of semester breaks (like a month or 2 break between semesters). I think this is also true for European countries in general. Which means if you would like to do an internship in a different city than yours, you may have to take a semester break and complete the internship. 4. It is normal for MSc. degrees to stretch beyond 2 years. Do not fret to drop a semester and do an industrial internship. Final comments : In retrospect, maybe taking up the MSc. course in Amsterdam would have been a better choice from study and job perspective, but it also depends on your personal situation. If you do not want to spend too much money on grad school, Germany is definitely a better choice, but try to go for bigger cities, like Munich or Berlin. Trying to get in touch with older students from your course over LinkedIn may be helpful.
  5. Btw German people are not that "strict" about nationality , and also the "cool" companies are in Berlin which is a totally different (read hip) place, and everyone speaks english there .
  6. Hey. Sorry for not replying earlier . Selection for RA in ML/DL does not require you to know any german at all . Most papers / research in this field is from english speaking countries , so while eg if you want to work in pure maths they may ask you to know some german, for fields like ML that is not asked . English is just fine . As for job perspective , startups dont care if you dont know german. But more "traditional" german companies expect you to be fluent in german .
  7. Hey , not sure if you are still looking for an answer , but I dont think this is a practice at RWTH . Maybe differs from department to department , but for the course , MSc Simulation Sciences, there are students from all over the world . As suggested above , you can check the current students / alumni page which will give you an idea of everyone's background .
  8. Leuven would probably be better , since projects might be better than the other two. Although Simulation Science would also offer many interesting projects , since this course is in collaboration with almost all departments . So you can pick up your thesis from virtually any field (perks of studying interdisciplinary course :P ) . One disadvantage is that the Simulation Science curriculum may not offer you enough number of "Computer science" courses as compared to Leuven . There are only so many electives one can take .
  9. A few questions : Could you tell us which programs you got into ? (like the actual name , MSc computer science , MSc software engg) . Also, for PhD , which area of research are you considering ? My personal suggestion would be that you should check which if these universities has better research facilities / projects for your specific area of interest , since your research project maybe the main parameter to help you land you a good PhD .
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