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.

She has spent most of the Christmas holidays researching this and has been in touch with Heidelberg Uni directly. I am not getting too involved but wanting to understand in the background what the issues might be. This is totally led by her and may just fade away from whence it came.

@vdbfamily

What is the current situation, OP?

Her current plan seems to be to move to Heidelberg and get on a course that they do for one Semester learning the kind of German she will need to study a degree in German. She then hopes to work for the rest of that year and get onto a Computational Linguistics course the following year.
I am a bit concerned that she is overly relying on the fact that she got all 9's and A*'s and seems to think they will be delighted to have her study there! She has told her current friends she was planning to live with next year that she will not be there so is pretty serious!

If she has an A* A Level in German and the ability to get on to a German course in the UK, her German should be good enough already; the preparatory course would be an unnecessary expense, I would have thought.

She has a German passport. Europe is hers to embrace.

Computational linguistic course is quite heavy on programming. Does she have any experience with coding to know whether she would like it?

We had some linguistics -> computation linguistics "converts" when I was at the uni, and they typically struggled a lot, unable to do the standard course work.

She is taking a computer science module currently on top of her German and Linguistics and doing some coding. She is a gamer too but not sure if that helps!? I think she is concerned that A.I may replace a lot of jobs with language skills needed and wants to get the other side of the curve in that so that her degree will help her into a job and not just be a degree for the sake of it.

Gamer is mostly irrelevant, but the computer science module sounds good. Even if each school would use different programming language, adjusting is much easier than starting from scratch.

That logic makes sense, thought if I understand her plan correctly, it would mean accepting 2 years delay - and 2 years is a long time, maybe finishing the current path and making it as much computerised as possible might work better.

Why not finish the degree in UK and then go to Germany to do a masters or second degree? The year at Heidelberg would give her a feel for the place.

She sounds a very smart and sensible young woman and the kind of personality that will get on in Germany - I come into contact with German students and am always amazed how mature most of them are compared to many 18 year olds in UK and self sufficient too- far less halls and house shares - quite tough for her I would think but ultimately it's her life and may be the making of her - I have a soft spot for Germany

I've no idea if it would be an option - but can she defer her UK course while she tries Germany, so that in principle she can return to it after 1 or 2 years if the German course doesn't completely work out?

@vdbfamily

OP, if she is absolutely convinced that this is what she intends to do, might there be something to be gained from applying for a summer semester start? Some Heidelberg courses do allow starts in both semesters.

I think that she may still be in time as far as the closing dates for applying for this course are concerned.

I think that it's important for her to see the Admissions Tutor for this as soon as feasible; an actual application would facilitate this.

https://www.uni-heidelberg.de/de/studium/alle-studienfaecher/computerlinguistik/computerlinguistik-bachelor-100

https://www.uni-heidelberg.de/en/study/all-subjects/computational-linguistics/computational-linguistics-bachelor-100

Thank you. This seems to be her current plan.
I am passing on people's comments and advice