DD wanting to study at German University

[vdbfamily]

My DD is one term into a German/ Linguistics degree in UK. She has a German passport and thinks she would do better studying in Germany as she would become more fluent in German and it would only cost £800 for the 3 year course. There is some sense in what she is suggesting but I have no idea how the finances would work. Had anyone had a teenage do this? Do they need to have lived in Germany too be allowed to apply for an education grant. Any advice welcomed.

It's a great idea, she should go for it, but where in Germany? This has become a lot harder to organise since Brexit, so buckle up for a lot of admin and hurdles.

I would suggest she contact one of the German Universities she is interested in and talk to their admissions and finance offices. As a German citizen she may be entitled to the low fees even if she hasn’t lived there. She won’t need a student visa, she will have the right to work a PT job there, and she may also be eligible for German living stipend.

DS is at uni in the Netherlands, he has a Dutch passport. He gets Dutch student finance, will graduate with no debt. Rent is 350 euros/ month. DD might go also, but she might do law in UK and take the debt. With DS, he got help with info from relatives, but also from the uni. I'd just call them and ask how it would work.

BTW neither have lived there before but visited lots as Dad's family is there, they speak basic Dutch, both did UK A levels; didn't matter, they still got Dutch finance

She wants to go to Heidelberg which is where she had hoped to do her year out for the German degree. I will get her to make contact with them. There is a bit of pressure as due to sign soon for next year's accommodation.

She’ll be reading Germanistik?

AFAIK, funding may depend on which Land (state) she studies in. And Heidelberg is a pretty elite university so she should check how her A levels match up to the Abi score required.

But she needs to be prepared for a very different experience than in the UK. The instruction will be completely in German and the classes are generally much larger than Zuk teaching groups - even seminars will have about double the student numbers we would teach in cognate subjects in the UK.

There is very little of the extra student learning or psychological support UK undergrads (or their parents?) demand. And very little designated student accommodation.

Standards are high and if you fail a semester’s exam, you fail and you have to repeat. It’s rare that even the best students get through their degree in the minimum enrolment time.

You get what you pay for. German scholarship and criticism is excellent but there’s not such an emphasis on teaching quality and student satisfaction as in the UK. ( years of comparison with my German family’s experience of university)

Interesting! My daughter has just completed a German/Linguistics degree in the UK. She did her year abroad as part of her degree at Heidelburg, has a European passport (dual nationality) and hopes to move back to Germany to work in the future.

If your daughter's main priority is to become fluent in German (and also to save money) then I think she is absolutely right. Having said that, my daughter found she mostly spent her time with non-Germans speakers on her year abroad, who used English as their best common language. She mainly improved her German through working in a cafe. But maybe on a full degree rather than just a visiting year it would be different. It is possible to take courses in English too if she needs a break.

It's will obviously be more challenging than studying here, but if your DD is keen and confident then it's a great idea! I'm pretty confident she will be eligible for the local fees and finance, but best to contact the universities.

Heidelberg is lovely!!! (and accommodation was remarkably cheap compared to the UK too)

Not if you have a European passport.

@vdbfamily

I have a BA Hons. in German and French - I spent a semester in Heidelberg studying translation and interpreting.

www.uni-heidelberg.de/fakultaeten/neuphil/iask/sued/index.html

I would worry a little that she is considering this change in her degree after only having done one term of her current studies. The first term of a degree is always a bit strange, students are just settling in to Uni life; the real consolidation comes in the second term, as they become more confident in their subject.

It sounds to me as though she may not have found her friendship group at Uni yet.

If she has the option of a year in Heidelberg anyway, I would be inclined to suggest staying where she is and building on her German here so that she has a flying start when she starts her year abroad.

She might want to consider speaking to one of the staff teaching in the German Department at her current Uni to discuss how to increase her fluency.

There may be a German Soc she can join; the Uni might have access to German films too. She should be able to access German radio and television too. She may want to buy German magazines occasionally.

www.newsstand.co.uk/124-german-magazines/subscriptions.aspx

It's worth having the German Grammar and Usage book plus the workbook.

https://www.routledge.com/Hammers-German-Grammar-and-Usage/Durrell/p/book/9780367150266

https://www.routledge.com/Practising-German-Grammar/Durrell-Kohl-Kaiser/p/book/9781138187047

The two books come as a pack:

https://www.routledge.com/German-Grammar-Pack-Hammers-German-Grammar-7e-and-Practising-German-Grammar-4e/Durrell-Kohl-Kaiser/p/book/9781032417110

There is a companion website too:

https://routledgetextbooks.com/textbooks/9781138187047/?

Thanks for suggestions, the same concerns have crossed our minds. Her plan is to finish year one as she had already paid accommodation and tuition. She has settled surprisingly well for someone who is neuro divergent and struggles with friendships. She had made several close friends, including a German girl. She gets on with all the students in her halls and was planning to live with 5 of them next year but it's worrying she will have to put down deposit soon and wants them not to be let down at least minute of she does leave, which is why she is feeling pressured right now too decide.
With her ASD she can get quite fixated. One thing has always been finances and the student debt annoys her. She always talked about studying in Germany but did not think she could live so far away, but having survived and enjoyed first term and joined several societies and a running group, I think she now realises she has it in her.
The second thing is she realises she took German as a degree mainly because she wants to be fluent. She is a perfectionist. Her German dad never spoke to her in German as he grew up in UK, but her A level teacher said that she sounds like a German when she speaks. Her Uni tutor is not German and that annoys her. Obviously a degree in German is about more than speaking it but that is the bit she wants from it. She is writing now what she will use her German and linguistics degree for, with the advent of A.I taking over a lot of possible jobs, but had found a course which is computational linguistics which she thinks will keep her ahead of the game. She could study an English degree along side that which would be mainly taught in English I gather.
A lot to think about. For the record, acedemically she was all 9's at GCSE and A*'s at A level having just gone to village primary and bog standard comprehensive school so pretty bright and motivated. Just normally quite anxious and an over thinker.

https://www.uni-heidelberg.de/en/study/all-subjects/computational-linguistics

She needs to rethink her annoyance at her tutor not being German. For a start, it’s borderline xenophobic and pretty arrogant.

And maybe she’s not aware that Germany is pretty multi-cultural? I was just at a dinner party of friends (I’m currently in Germany) where of the other guests who live and work in Germany, only 2 were born in Germany. They all spoke fluent German, with a variety of accents.

She’ll need to think about where she may want to live and work post-graduation. It can be trickier for graduates from EU universities to get back into the UK employment scene and German universities don’t generally offer the kinds of career services and focus on graduate employment than UK universities do.

I also wonder about doing a degree taught in English in Germany? What’s the point?

Also, her friends and peer group will be in Heidelberg. Can she make a decision about basically moving to Germany at such a young age? It’s quite a different culture.

I would also talk to heidelberg about entry requirements. My niece, with European passport but UK educated, wanted to study MFL in Munich, had 8s and 9s at GCSE and 4 A levels all A or A* grades but also all arts subjects - she was told she needed to do a maths or science A level to demonstrate an acceptable range of competence before admission.

My DS did postgrad at LMU and had a ball. Very different from siblings' postgrad uk experience, certainly not as much support, and certainly a lot less debt ... and you get subsidised travel too.

@vdbfamily I sympathise with your DD's frustration at her German tutor not being German. My DC is studying Italian (as a minor subject) at a London university and the tutors are all highly qualified Italians with specialist Italian-as-a-foreign-language Masters degrees and lots of experience. My DC has experience from school of being taught MFL by teachers who were not native speakers and it was always extremely uncomfortable for teacher and students alike when the students themselves were native speakers (even if not to totally bilingual standard).

LMU is probably one of the top 10 research universities in Europe (excluding the UK) in my field. I think the postgrad experience is quite different (anywhere) from the undergrad experience.

Sounds like a great idea; hopefully it is straight forward with the German passport. Agree with the suggestion of contacting the universities.

I wish DC had that option and didn’t have yo get in so much debt.

DH wanted the DC to do this (they have German passports) as its free tuition but they don't speak German and didn't want to
I think you can do a lot of courses in English though and if my 2 were more the type to head off to another country to study at 18 I think its a great idea.

@vdbfamily

The funding would come, if applicable, via the BAföG system.

There are digital options now, something which didn't exist when I was there.

https://www.bafoeg-digital.de/ams/BAFOEG

One thing which she should consider, though, is that she may find it difficult to get as much support as she might need; something else is that it could be difficult to make new friends. It's true that there are a lot of students in Heidelberg, but it's also possible to feel quite lost there.

It's also possible to find oneself speaking English quite often there; not only are there native English speakers in the town, the majority of the students and staff speak English very well and like to speak the language when they can.

If she is going to do her year abroad there, I would strongly consider staying where she is at her UK University and taking every opportunity to work on her German.

Something she could consider could be the summer school this year in Heidelberg.

She could do that during this coming summer, return to her UK Uni for her second year and then return to Heidelberg for her third academic year.

https://www.zuv.uni-heidelberg.de/international/ferienkurs/faqen.html

Yes, that is a plan she had considered and is keen on the summer school. She is just fixated on the amount of debt she will end uni with and how much she will have paid off once all the interest is added. She also just wants to immerse herself in a German speaking place ASAP but as you say, if they all want to speak English that is also hard to achieve. So much to think about and she is back up North tomorrow morning so I will doubtless be getting lots of phonecalls to agonise over the decision making

I would also talk to heidelberg about entry requirements. My niece, with European passport but UK educated, wanted to study MFL in Munich, had 8s and 9s at GCSE and 4 A levels all A or A grades but also all arts subjects - she was told she needed to do a maths or science A level to demonstrate an acceptable range of competence before admission.*

This!

That is the reason why my dc (with German passports) chose the UK over Germany to study - the A level subject requirements are impossible to achieve (due to the need for breadth like the Abitur)

Indeed. Many moons ago I applied to have my A-Levels converted to an Abitur grade so I could apply to an NC subject - my AAB (pre A*) equated to a 1,3 but was regarded as a Fachabitur because I had not done maths, a science or a foreign language post-16 - essentially I was only allowed to study a humanities subject.
My DD received BAFöG for a while - I wouldn‘t have thought you would be entitled to get it if you weren’t ordinarily resident in Germany, but happy to be proven wrong. It’s a great deal if you can get it though, since 50% is a grant and they‘re incredibly reluctant to initiate repayments for the other 50%. It’s means tested according to parental income and there are BAFöG calculators online where you enter your income to discover if you‘d be entitled to any.
And to confirm what others have said, that German unis assume students are older and more independent so offer little in the way of pastoral care. The older, traditional unis like Heidelberg are often the worst for having massively oversubscribed courses with little individual tuition or attention, and some rely on the Darwinian approach of failing as many as possible at the end of the first term or year. (although maths courses are the most notorious for this).

The older, traditional unis like Heidelberg are often the worst for having massively oversubscribed courses with little individual tuition or attention, and some rely on the Darwinian approach of failing as many as possible at the end of the first term or year.

Yes! That is my own experience too (i studied in Germany). It's relatively easy to get accepted (for those with an Abitur, not A levels) but a lot of students fail after the first semester.

My dc did a UK degree with a year in Germany - even just having to 'pass' was very difficult (relatively to her Uk well regarded Russell Uni)!!

The UK Universities are harder to get in, but students are generally much better supported and less likely to fail!

So.... her A levels are German, Maths and Philosophy, all A*. Is that enough breadth. I am concerned about the lack of pastoral care though as she will be a long way from home and has good support at current Uni.

That subject combination will probably not be accepted. Your daughter should really do her own research into this imo.