Physics Graduate School in Germany?

[PICsmith]

Hello everyone,

Does anybody here attend a university in a German-speaking country or plan on doing so? Or is anybody from Germany/Austria/Switzerland or does anybody live there or have previously lived there? I'll be graduating in a couple years and I'm seriously considering graduate school in Germany or a german-speaking country. Why? I'm not sure exactly why...I speak only English and German so that limits my choices of places to go, and I guess I just want to try something new.

And now I ask you: why should or shouldn't I? Do the public universities charge tuition for graduate school? Is it difficult to get into a graduate program in one of those countries? Is an american diploma equivalent to the the german diplom? Are there many research opportunities? Pros, cons of living/education/working/whatever in Germany/Austria/Switzerland? Any advice or comment is greatly appreciated, thanks.

 

[silverpig]

I'm also interested in this. I'm Canadian, and will soon have a B.Sc in Astronomy (with a heavy emphasis on physics) from a Canadian university. I'm considering a lot of options, and one of them is Germany/Denmark/Sweden.

 

[PICsmith]

Hi Silverpig, I don't know how much you know about the universities in Germany but here is a good website to learn the basics about studying/researching/living in Germany,

http://www.campus-germany.de/english

and here you can search universites and see how they are ranked in different categories,

http://www.daad.de/deutschland/en/2.2.9.html?module=Show&tmpl=ha2

Hopefully someone here will come along and enlighten us about the intangibles.

 

[PICsmith]

A couple guys at physikforen.de gave me some info:

http://www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/
This is the university section for spiegel.de (Der Spiegel is a popular magazine)

http://www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/studium/0,1518,grossbild-409357-328679,00.html
And here is a list on that website that ranks the universities by different programs, physics is on this page.

Apparently TU München as well as die Uni Freiberg and Leipzig are some of the best for physics.

 

[Igor_S]

I don't know how much this helps, but I spent 1 month last summer in Mainz, Germany at the Institute for nuclear physics and it was great. The only problem was that I don't speak german, but I somehow managed to understand with people. If I knew german, I would apply there for gradute school, but since I don't, I'm thinking somewhere in USA/Canada... (I'm from Croatia, Europe).

About work... it was pretty much great, you work kinda like from 9am to 12am (although no one will ask you anything if you are late or missing), then get a break for about 1 hour (I took 2 hours every day ), then work like 2 or 3 hours more. At fridays, work hours are even more reduced - you work until about 2pm.

About tuition, I think there wasn't any at the University of Mainz (however the living expenses aren't small, but I think they aren't small in U.S. either), but you should definitely check with those where you apply.