How Difficult Are German Universities?

I used to study business administration in Austria, and one of the most difficult exam in the Bachelor program is economics maths. One of the hardest parts of the exam is the fact that students are not allowed to use calculators.
I passed it after my second try but I studied a year for this exam. I was glad when I moved to Germany since I feel like exams at my current Uni are not as difficult.

TUM is officially the number one university, you say? Number one of the big brother award, that is!!!
Though my university scored perfectly too.

Please remember that this video covers one specific degree at one specific university. Other courses of study at german universities are organized in completely different ways. I study veterinary medicine in Germany and I can tell you that most of the stuff he so blandly generalizes for "universities in Germany" doesn't apply for my course of studies at all. Don't rely on this video for your specific field of interest.

Studying in Stuttgart and tbh we dont have to do a lot of presentations

Sometimes it is arbitrary.

And always remember, you can either listen or take notes. Both will never work at the same time.

I studied Wirtschaftsmathematik and I had exactly 2 presentations - one for the seminar for the bachelor thesis, and one for the bachelor thesis itself. That's it.

I studied in Austria and at that time I only needed to do 3 presentations for projects I had done. Because of circumstance (they lost the documentation and I had to present it at the Diplomprüfung again) I needed to do one of them 3 times. One presentation was especially feared. There was the professor and some of his assistants together with 20-30 students. You talked about your project showed a diagram of an electronic circuit (of your work) and it was discussed. The professor saw every little wrong detail and asked about that. And you knew that nearly everyone in the audience knew more about the topic than you !

In my area the last test was rather easy (for most). You chose 3 subjects which you had done a test before. You could talk with the three examiners and mostly they gave you a hint what area would be questioned. And most important: you studied all that before and you chose subjects you were comfortable with. So it was very rarely that anyone failed.

For oral exams it was very common to sit in these tests as guest (if allowed) to get a feeling what would be questioned. On written tests a lot of former tests could be found for the same reason. You wouldn't get the same tests, but you could prepare for the type of questions. We had one test where they were very secret about the actual test. What we did in the excercises was rather simple and the real test was completely different. For that reason more than 80% (even very good students) failed and they repeated the test.

We didn't have cheat sheets but some open book tests. We even had a few tests where you were allowed to look at the first half of the questions and then decide if you want to take the test or better return to study without loosing one opportunity 🙂.

Is anyone doing masters in finance ? Want to know the difficulty level

Law student here, almost none of this is true for a law degree (that allows you to work as a lawyer, judge, state attorney/prosecutor) in Germany!
Most public universities here do not offer LL.B.s/LL.M.s but studies on the basis of two state exams (like the bar exam). There are some Bachelors/Masters in subjects like business law but those do not enable you to even take the first state exam and are not organized like the "classic" law program.

The Bologna system is not used and testing systems vary from uni to uni. Exams mostly are long written exams (between 2-3 hours) and/or papers between 15-30 pages, both usually between semesters. You are graded from 0 up to 18 points and pass with 4 points while 9 points are already a distinction. So you can imagine getting to those 14 points plus is very rare... The struggle with this is, if you want to change to the Bachelors/Masters program, your points will be converted into the Bologna grading system and although your 9 points are really good for a law grade, you will be stuck with a 2,7. The average achieved grade is more around 6 points, so not good at all if converted into an other grading system. Law is considered one of the hardest and toughest subjects here and objectively takes the longest to finish with a full degree (two state exams, if you are fast it takes 7 years, usually it's 8 years and honestly most people I know take even longer, myself included). Because of the different grading system and not using the Bologna system it is mostly a one-way-street, you just have to do it or just do something entirely different if you fail.

The most fun part is: none of your achievements in uni count towards your final grade of the state exam. You are basically taking all those tests and do weeks on weeks of research for your papers for years and years just to be allowed to even partake in the first state exam (usually 6 written 5 hour long exams in a course of about 10 days and if you pass those, one oral exam up to 3,5 hours long with 3-5 other students half a year later). Your degree that you worked for at least 4 years depends on whether you have ONE good week or not.

If you pass the first state exam you can take the second one after a two year "Referendariat", which is a legal traineeship at court and later at an administrative institution and/or law firm. You work and train there for 2-3 days a week, have the rest to study and get paid (also depends which Bundesland) around 1.000,00 to 1.700,00 € a month. It finishes with the second state exam which consists of 8 written exams, one oral exam and another oral exam, which is more like a presentation of a specific case that you have to prepare in advance.

After the state exams you actually won't have a "proper" academic title given by a university, only a state certificate. Improper in the sense that it is not that comparable to LL.B./LL.M. The university only can award you the title of "Diplom-Jurist" or "magister iuris", a diploma of law.

I like that in Germany the differences between universitys are neglible. I would even say, the "famous" universitys are worse for students. Sure they score high in the academia department and many ppl go there. They can offer you expensive cutting edge research. However if you just focus on what is taught you are usually better off in cheaper universitys. My Professors in Trier are easily approachable and I talked with all of them in private at one point during my Bachelor's. Now I'm in my Master's and we have a lot of students who joined from different universitys. The RWTH Aachen is also very famous in the computer department and I met someone who did his Bachelor's there. He said it was fun in regard that he was able to work with interesting hardware (especially robotics), but the quality of the lessons wasn't as good as here. The Professors mainly wanted to do their research and saw teaching students as an annoying thing to do on the side. Also there were way more ppl, so the individual contact was very bad. So even if you go to just a small university: If you go for a degree in something usefull, you shouldn't be able to get it for free and should have extensible knowledge.

The reason I am mentioning this is because I had a friend who studied abroad in the USA (I think in Detroit). The things he was able to get away with for his bachelor's in computer science were laughable. Things like "Fairytales" and "Story Telling" were actually courses he could get credits for. It seems to me that the education is more of a business model there selling degrees, rather than education.

Sorry to say this but presentations is the most useless thing ive "learned" during my school career. This is only important for jobs in marketing and other kind of businesses where ppl just have countless projects that take many years or even fail or just talk talk talk all day. Im an IT Admin and what do I need to be able to present? My work of upkeeping the server room or how I set up countless new virtual machines? It is really dependant on what area you later go into but most areas where you need to have a lot of presentations is usually the "we talk alot and dont rly do anything" kinda work environments. Now the art of beeing able to document something is much more important and should be taught way more. So many people just work and study into a new area but never leave any kind of documentation behind on how that system works. If theyre missing and someone else has to take their part, be it cuz ill or getting laid off or quitting the job it is just really annoying to get into a topic like that without documentation of what's been done before.

Normally u don’t have another try before the next semester if u fail. Also it’s important to know, that u can’t compare a „Fach-Hochschule“ like yours to a real university with international prestige. There is a huge difference in quality and difficulty. the workload at a normal university is twice or three times the one from a FH and at a university maybe 50% make their degree, while at a FH nobody fails. At a real uni there aren’t much presentations, it’s also a FH thing. good video but pls don’t call it university it’s not

pretty accurate, its about the same when studying CS in Berlin

I studied 2 semesters of physics at TUM before i switched to medical engineering and later biology in Ulm, i have to say, the best and easiest course/seminars were the ones in the master degree, you get en bloc 4-6 week practical courses with a written or oral exam at the end and usually one graded presentation during the seminar part. all my masters courses were in english btw. and we had to pass a special english exam for biologists to be able to apply for the masters program.
the real filters are the first 4 semesters, it was a real shock to have the whole content of the math and physics abitur packed in the first two weeks of your university courses
the best way to pass exams is to get a hand on the exams of prior years and do those as practice

Two additional tips:
1. Form study groups. To understand concepts and be able to use them, it helps to discuss them with and explain them to others.
2. Do not think you can prepare for the exams at the end of the semester. This is not helpful at all. Your failure rate will be much higher. It is way better to recap the new stuff every week and repeat other stuff as well. It does not need to be long, but it helps to get the stuff in your brain so a short recap before the exams is possible.

I gave these two tips all of my students and those who followed them performed way better.
Do not skip tutorials (Übungen) in CS. People perform less well if they skip tutorials or lectures. Statistically speaking, people who do not attend both failed software engineering exams 80-85%. People skipping tutorials but attend lectures perform better with 50% failing rate. Visiting both has a super low failure rate.

At some universities, you can apply for part time study program which gives you time to work on the side.

Also in case you have trouble keeping up do not hesitate to use student advisory service, student counseling and psychological support groups available at most universities for free (in case you are a student). They will help you if you have trouble keeping up, become unsure whether the course is the right thing to study, or if you have other mental issues. According so some studies at least 1/3 of students get depressed or have other issues during their time at university. It is vital to get help. Please do so.

Is german exams are really difficult ?

I am also a Student in Munich. I study teaching and although I wrote a bachelor thesis, the University of Munich won’t recognize it as one, since I have not „collected enough credit points“ even though I studied 3 subjects.
Our finals are super tough. One of my subjects is German and I’m supposed to know everything - there no guidelines in what I am supposed to know or not. I just have to look at the former state exams and figure out myself what is necessary.
I have been studying for 6-7 years now. If I fail, I will only be able to do the exam a year later. And even if I pass it was only my 1st state exam - which does not count as a real graduation certificate. However, If my grades were good enough (which they are not) I could do a phd (mind you, I neither have a bachelor or master). I wish I would have just studied something else, seriously

watching a video about exams in germany the night before having an exam at the german uni

I study social sciences. Most Students failed the law exams. Some of them are open book exams, but there´s no time to have more than a glance at best.
In social sciences one can often choose the topics to engage with, which can be a very hard choise and require a lot to stick to.
Decisionmaking, Planning, structuring and delivering on time is the challenge. Most students take a few semesters more, honestly I think it´s the right way to go, as good deeper or special topics are much more likely to yield recognition and reputation it´s also more engaging, fun and the wisdom or concepts will more likely stick for a lifetime rather than just for the exam and be forgotten.

I have 3 exams this semester... on one day

You have to mention that working a part time job in germany as a "Werksstudent" alongside your studies, takes a lot of time and is not well paid. Especially in expensive cities it is difficult to get the whole thing financially organised.

Edit: For me personally, a simple degree programme was nothing, it didn't feel right and it was just very one-sided and very theoretical. I am now dedicating myself to my dual study programme, where I can gain practical work experience directly.

Oh. There are different systems at universities and universities of applied sciences. I'm currently studying at a university of applied sciences and we do not have retake exams. So if you fail an exam you have to wait a whole semester to try again. Thats why in my studies I have other students who study for 8 semesters because they had to retake 4-5 exams during their study time.
Before you start to study check out what your university or university of apl. sciences has worked out.
When you do your masters it's very typical to have more scientific papers that you write as an exam than written exams. In technical fields you can also have modules in your masters where you have projects. It really depends on where and what you are studying.
And think about the fact that every university bitches around when you come there as a new student from another university and want to simply start your masters degree or want to complete your bachelors degree. Then you have to retake some modules because the modules are not all the same in the bachelors based on the information taught there. That's such a huge bullshit in our education system. That your degree is not the same everywhere (which it should be by design of the bologna process).

Same in Austria

Reading through the comments i am so glad that the physics department in cologne abolished exam limitation. No way would i have passed some of these exams if I knew I have only 2 or 3 tries, I only needed more than 3 tries for one course anyway but this would have been enough to get exmatriculated.

We have no real presentation as exams, only written brutal ones and oral for lab courses (sometimes also brutal with the most malicious questions way outside the scope of the lab projects).

I studied law in my country, and now I study data science in Germany.
Since I had to write at least 10 exams in like 10 days in my previous studies, now writing 5 exams in three weeks is a great luxury to me. However the problem is, as one of the professors told me, they don't expect us to answer all the questions, so it doesn't matter how well you know all the topics, in the exam you never have enough time to answer all the questions.

Oh, die Kommentare sind hier nicht sehr ermutigend. Ich bin ein ausländischer Student in Deutschland, studiere Biophysik an der HU zu Berlin

Another interesting observation. At least during my time it was like that:
If you fail an exam, you can have another try. If you fail that, you have an oral examination with professor (s). If you fail that. You get expelled and here is the kicker: You are not allowed to study the subject at any university in Germany. So if you studied mechanical engineering in Munich and failed like described above, you are not allowed to study mechanical engineering anywhere else e.g. at TU Berlin or so.

So better do not fail your first two tries otherwise the pressure is really high😂

Just a small comment: You said TUM is "officially" the number 1 university in Germany. I think there is no "officially." Sure, there are some rankings, but let's be honest in Germany. Nobody gives a damn about these rankings, especially in engineering and science. Companies hire more for specialization and grades rather than university names. Sure, some people think the TU (Technical Universities) might be better or so. But it's NOT like in the US or UK. This thinking is different since almost all universities are public.

„Dont put emphesis on memorising things“ me, learning Biologie in Karlsruhe:

From my experience the cheat sheet is useless 90% of the time. It can be helpful in physics or math to look up huge formulas tho. Usually you havent got the time to look everything up when you write down plain text

in my 1st semester after my A Levels i had to study the equivalent of those A Levels (so 3 years of school) for ONE exam at university ... i must admit that i wasnt corageous enough to learn just 80% of the material lol so... not everyone will do it like this. But the change from school to university WAS brutal

I deliberately chose not to pursue a traditional university education at that time, as I found the instruction at the college, with its practical connections to the business world, to be more engaging. Here, we are afforded equal opportunities, and as computer scientists, we have a vast array of job prospects on the horizon.

I am honestly surpriseid to hear that exams are that much different in other countries. I mean how are people supposed to become good engineers, mathematicians or something like that without truly understanding what they are dealing with?

In my experience (studied Computer Science and Electrical Engineering) the recommendation to not skip lectures is true, but even more important are the tutorials! There you learn to apply the math you learned in the lecture correctly. Doing dozens of practice exams is also really good for math based classes. Once you start having to look up formulas, you are loosing the time needed to actually solve the questions.
One EE professor in fact told the students "you won't have time to do solve all questions in an exam. You have to also learn to pick your battles in order to pass."

It seems that a lot of things were watered down. When i studied engineering (Diplom) we had one presentation in the Hauptstudium and it counted for a half point or so and zero oral tests. We had 2 chances for tests and 2 times a third chance. And no, presentations are not important if you work in the engineering field or CS. Whoever told you that lied to you. The reason why you have so many presentations is to make it easier for the students. The same for oral tests, when i studied only when you did not pass a test you could take a oral test to convince the prof you just had a bad day but you where graded a 4.

I study prehistoric archaology (humanities/ cultural science) in vienna, austria. 5 to 8 exams within 10-14 days at the end of the semester do occur regularly in my schedule, plus 2-3 presentations each semester to train working with scientific literature, public speaking and presenting archaeological topics to an auditorium. I couldn't do it if I wasn't preparing good and structured learning material during the semester as well as intense, but short learning sessions along the way.

In 7 semesters, I only failed one single exam, typically I land an A or B grade.
If you know your learning type and adapt a strategy that works to make progress happen, you're invincible.
Anything is possible.

I studied at on of the top ranked engineering university 20 years ago. 1000 people started with me and only 300 got their degree.... After 4 semesters already 60% dropped out.

I am physics phd and do assist the teaching now for while. I can tell by experience, that the level of the first semester students worsended latetly. Its not a subjective thing, because we used the exact same exams as 10 yeaers ago. Result: Much worse results.

Hey wo hast du Die Lehrer und profs gefunden bidde keine horror Story

I don't know about the new system with Bachelor/Master since I received my university-level education in the older (and significantly superior, better) Diplom system.
The German Diplom system in STEM subjects relied heavily on a very difficult type of examination: oral exams. Written exams were hit and miss. You won some, you lost some, the purpose was to survive the first two years, the so-called "Diplomgrundstudium" (Diplom fundamental study period), which essentially used to be as intense as an entire 3.5 year Bachelor's degree today. Once you had survived the first 2 years of your 5-year or 6-year-programme and the many written exams, you were granted access to the "Diplomhauptstudium" (Diplom advanced study period), where almost all of the exams were done as oral exams!
Oral exam = long, intensive, exhaustive, deep "discussions". Professors turned into dentists, drilling into everything you knew and even more so into everything you didn't know.
The reason for this was the special and unique character of the German Humboldt system that no other country entertained: Going to university (in contrast to going to college/Fachhochschule) was supposed to make a thinker and a problemsolver out of someone, as well as a mature, positive, educated person.
To obtain a degree for getting a job and earning money *was not* an objective of the Humboldt university system! That was just a mere side effect, a byproduct.
In addition to direct oral exams, for complex tasks and semester projects the typical form of examination in the Diplom era was the "Beleg", for example, in a STEM subject a student would be assigned a specific task regarding design, calculation, making drawings and simulations of an entire machine or apparatus -- fully by himself without any babysitting. Each and every Beleg I had to do during the Hauptstudium meant lots and lots of work over many months, sometimes almost the entire semester. The associated oral exam centered on the professor going through your "Belegarbeit" (project thesis) live (!) together with you at the table together, involving you into a scientific-technical discussion at expert level. The oral exams to grade a Belegarbeit were extremly random and went as deep into the given problem *and* the presented solution as possible.
It was a tough system...but it guaranteed Germany to have the best high-level engineers in the world and to have a significant pool of oustanding physicists, chemists, mathematicians etc.

The most difficult examination of my entire life were the exams for going from Diplom level to Doctor level. My university/Alma mater was very traditional and fired the whole medieval-renaissance catalogue of mad testing at you:
First, you had to do be accepted into a Ph.D. programme, then you had to do your scientific-technical research project, which in STEM was never shorter than 4 years, most Ph.D. students of the Diplom era needed 6 years in fields like mechanical engineering, electrical engineering etc.
The research had to be submitted and presented for judgement in the form of the so-called "Inauguraldissertation" (Ph.D. thesis) ideally accompanied by a couple of published papers during the 6 years of researching.
The thesis itself was not enough to be granted the doctoral degree though. Once the thesis was "angenommen" (accepted), it had to be defended by the researcher: In my case I had to publicly defend my dissertation in front of the entire faculty and anybody who wanted to sit in as a guest. This open-doors/public oral exam was called "Disputation" (disputation) or, using German instead of Latin, "Verteidigung" (defence). The disputation had two parts: the presentation of the research work and the Q&A session. At one point the Q&A session would be opened to the entire audience and anybody could ask you questions. However, this oral exam was not the killer. The most difficult examination of my life was the earlier oral exam, which was called "Rigorosum" ("strict exam"). The Rigorosum was a closed-doors/non-public oral exam in front of a selected group of academic people who would *roast you* straight to hell.
In my case it lasted 2 hours. The attending professors and postdoc experts came out of the gates storming and clearly had chosen violence for the entire test. They would start with questions about the topic of the thesis as a warm up. But those questions were *heavy hitters* and no joke at all (--> At that point they had read the dissertation, had graded it and had studied it for conducting the Rigorosum!). After 30 minutes of torture, the real torture began.
The purpose of the Rigorosum was to test whether a university-level Ph.D. candidate could be "deemed capable to represent his field of study in its entirety (!) to a highly satisfactory degree which weas supposed to go noticeably beyond the level of the Diplom degree in breadth and depth".
For another 90 minutes I was questioned about multiple topics adjacent and not so adjacent to my research including questions straight out of the left field of engineering and sciences fundamentals, mathematics, physics, and various advanced engineering problems. At the end they would tell you the grade for the thesis, the grade for the Rigorosum, and suddenly the mood lightened up dramatically and we talked about suitable dates for the upcoming Disputation.

I remember being mentally exhausted for 2 days after the Rigorosum. I had intensively and exhaustively studied for 6 months to prep for it. Some questions were outright mean bullshit and I did my best to deflect into other areas which I knew better. Some other questions perfectly hit my preparation. You never knew what they were going to ask you as there was only a list with general topics given to the Ph.D. candidate with respect to the preparation of the Rigorosum. It was part of the game and your individual study period to make a good guess about what content could be of interest for each topic. For example, on my list it just said "Mathematics" as one of the general topics. I simply assumed they would ask questions and request live-at-the-blackboard computations of things applicable to my research, and also things which were relevant in my engineering discipline in general. I re-studied partial differential equations, function theory (complex analysis), tensors, numerics and stochastics...it turned out to be a good guess, but not a perfect guess ;) Of course they managed to throw me a few curveballs. The other topics went in a similar fashion.

Protip one guy gave me and going threw the same pain is to pick a university in germany where you can easily pass the courses and not to pick a university because it has a good reputation.

STEM-Master's at classic universities is so much easier than bachelor's at classic universities.

Hi, very helpful. Do you have a video explaining the 4 different university categories?

As a Bangladeshi I 💕 Germany 😊

Bei uns am Institut (LMU) müssen die Masterstudenten Statistik/Mathematik und R oder Python können. Das alleine ist schon ziemlich eine Herausforderung 😊

That is why German engineer are considered some of the best in the world. Because we have to learn to think for ourselfs or we will fail our studies. It is expected that you can solve problems of your own. I always took what notes I was allowed o bring, but once I had written and understood them I rarelly referenced the at exams. No time and after doing practices exams, I know most of the formulars anyway

I'm so happy it's over. I'm not overly social so I avoided study groups and tutorials and did it all by myself. It was a stressful and lonely time. My actual job now is easy and relatively stress free compared to my time in university. It relies much more on quick and creative thinking and problem solving rather than learning and replication. Suits me more.

Alle sind deutsch hier können wir bitte alle einfach auf deutsch sprechen...