Studying at the Technical University of Munich

I originally wrote this to give English students an idea of what studying in Munich was like. I’m in the 5^th semester of a Bachelor of Science degree at the TU Munich. It’s my second degree, my first being a philosophy BA from Leeds in England so please be aware that by perspective is limited to experience gained from reading these two particular subjects at these two universities. I cannot comment on any other English or German universities. Or, for that matter, what studying Physics at the TU is like. It’s really aimed now at those English people living in Munich who are considering studying here and who maybe would like to hear what someone who previously made the decision to do so has to say. I will refer to the subject I am studying as “informatik” throughout which is “computer studies” in English. There’s also a section on accommodation. I left this in in case it’s useful to anyone not living in Munich at the moment. Those of you who already have accommodation know the score so can skip it without missing anything. I’ll start with some informal opinions about the Uni. generally and then tackle the course itself although I recognise most of you will read the university’s own literature for this. 

Student Union

One of the first main differences that is very apparent upon studying at the Technical University in Munich (henceforth known as TU) is the absence of a body such as the Student Union. The Student Union in Leeds boasted two clubs, three or four bars, a restaurant, two halls for small to medium sized international bands (The Orb, Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, Beats International) and/or raves, a radio station (which broadcast in stereo, don’t you know), a stationary shop, a bookshop as well as the normal feeding pits (cafeteria's, larger dining hall), lots of different clubs to join (like hang-gliding, fell-walking, sailing or whatever) etc and all this within it’s own building. There was a constant throughput of people selling posters, stationary, books, clothes and so on. There was a bank (or two – can’t remember), an on site doctor’s surgery,  a laundrette, a flower shop, a record shop etc. There was also a large administrative body responsible for student welfare, helping to find accommodation, student health and whatnot. There were art galleries and band rehearsal rooms, recording studios and parks. Generally, it was the heart of the Uni., fairly big and must have had a turnover of a few million pounds a year.

At the TU, there is a Fachschaft which plays more or less the same role but it is much, much smaller and there is less of the “student culture feel” if that’s the right way of putting it, on campus like live bands and so on. I have never seen official figures but I reckon the Fachschaft at the TU consists of about 20 people and it plays almost no role in my life at the uni. I get a “Semesterticker” mail every two weeks or so and they do a kind of “survey” of student feedback of the lectures. Oh, and there’s a film club which shows the occasional film in English. Apart from that, there’s not a lot else on offer in terms of the “student feel”. This is probably for a variety of reasons like lack of funding and volunteers. There is a MENSA where you can get canteen quality food at relatively low prices and, specific to the Informatik building, is a cafeteria where the food is much better but prices are somewhat higher. As far as live gigs go there’s a festival called TUNIX where local bands get to play an open air stage from 14:00 to 22:00 for five days – about four bands a day which take place sometime in the summer semester but I’m not aware of anything else happening during winter or, for that matter, during summer. The main hall of the informatik building doubles up as a disco hall about twice a year.

Location

 The TU moved about a year ago at the time of writing to Garching. It is now a campus university but students don’t live in accommodation on the grounds of or next to the University because there is none. I live near the Poccistrasse underground station so I’m fairly central and it takes me between an hour and a quarter and an hour and a half to get there by public transport. So I’m commuting for about 2 and a half hours a day. One of the reasons is that they are building a new football stadium at Frötmanning so you have to get off there and catch a “Pendlezug” to go one stop (how would you translate that? It’s not “commuter train” because that insinuates travelling a long way – this train only goes one stop) before catching a bus that takes another 15 minutes to get there. They are also in the throes of extending the U6 line to take students nearer to the Uni but that won’t be finished until 2008
. It’s now 2005 and I’ll be finished in two semesters. Great. But bluntly, it’s miles away and there was no attempt to synchronise the public transport infrastructure with the opening of the uni. The physics students moved first and I’ve no idea what it was like for them. I can honestly say, if I had known they were going to move in the middle of my studies, I would have gone to the LMU (another Uni here in Munich) to study without a doubt. I don’t care what the reputation of the TU is, it’s a mother to get to at the moment and will be for the next three or four years. The course of study leaves very little time anyway and now it’s just eaten up standing waiting for busses and trains. Having said that, the campus itself is nice but big. Think about investing in a bike to leave at the uni so you can get around quicker

Workload

The second difference big difference is the workload. I studied Philosophy at Leeds and had approximately 15 – 18 contact hours (hours in lecture halls or tutor groups) per week at the height of my studies. I seem to remember having about 10 in my final year. I remember having time to attend my lectures, do my homework and have a bit of free time to go to the pub of an evening (I didn’t, I might add, get a first in my degree...). It’s all different here. The workload is intense and you’ll need to stay on the ball if you’re to pass everything according to plan. Many profs quietly admit that that “plan” asks too much of your average student and the statistics certainly show that that is the case. The German style “Diplom” takes 9 semesters according to “plan” but the average time needed is 12.8. I’m doing a Bachelor (B.Sc.) which takes 6 semesters according to “plan” but there’s no way I’m going to finish in 6 semesters! I reckon on finishing in 8. There are no statistics as to how long the average student takes to finish the bachelor course as I’m in the first intake of students doing it and no one's finished yet! The advantage to having such a massive workload is that when you’re finished, you’re an expert. I tried working 2 days a week during the first semester which I quickly reduced to one day a week during the second. I found it difficult (although I do have to fly abroad in my job). In the third, fourth and fifth semesters I haven’t worked during term only during the semester holidays. I know some people who do work during the semester but they find it hard going. 

Accommodation

The third big difference is accommodation. The standard of student accommodation in Munich is much higher than in Leeds. You wouldn’t believe some of the cesspits I’ve seen in LS6 (mushrooms growing on the carpet in the bathroom anyone?). Now I’m not saying that students here keep their places any tidier than students in Leeds. Students create the same mess whichever country you’re in, it’s just that housing is securer here – you’re not at the mercy of locals robbing your stereo and then coming back in three months to rob the new one you got from the insurance unless the landlord put bars on every window in the meantime. Incidentally, the crime rate is very low here. You can walk the streets anywhere in Munich at any time of day or night and feel safe. In fact, I’ve been living here for six years now and I’ve had a few all-nighters in the city centre in that time, let me tell you, and yet I’ve never once seen a fist fight - compare Liverpool/Newcastle at closing time on a Saturday. (Don’t tell me I don’t know nowt – I’ve been to the Dog and Parrot and had some of that beer at 16% and gone out after. What’s it called.... I think it’s called Roger, Over and Out or something like that. I can’t remember now; all I can remember about the first three or so is that you can stand a spoon up in it.). Not even at the Oktoberfest (which in itself is an advantage or a disadvantage of life in Munich depending on how you look at it). Any road, accommodation is better quality but a lot harder to find. If you’re not given accommodation by the people in Erasmus or whatever, my advice is come over for a week three months in advance and spend all week looking. And here’s a rough guide to cost: your average student room in a student block of shared house will set you back between 100-400 Euro a month depending on location and size. Normally you get a room with your own bathroom and possibly a small balcony, all in all about 25 square metres.

Academic Year

In England the academic year is split into three. At the TU it’s split into two: the winter and the summer semester:

                    Start             End 

Winter Semester           15th October            8th February  

Spring Vacation           9th February            12th April 

Summer Semester           15th April            19th July

Summer Vacation           19th July            15th October

 Informatik Studium (Computing Science Course)

Thorsten has written a perfect description of how a German “diplom” works. Here I’ll describe the Bachelor course.

the link to the original is: http://wwwpa.in.tum.de/inf-bachelor/Studienplan.html

Key

L=lecture hours

T=Tutor group hours

P=Practical hours

E=Exercise classes

S=seminar (yes – you have to get up there and give a talk in front of everyone)

DS1=Discrete Structures 1 (it’s “maths 3”, as far as the Bachelor students are concerned)

The subjects marked in red are those conducted in English (or those in which you can hand in your work in English). I’m re-reading this a year or two later and this is not entirely true. Someone in the year above me did software engineering and it was in English. I did it and it was all in German. It depends which professor you get.

In total there are 186 points to be had. I don’t know why it’s 186. It just is. Every time you pass an exam you get the points shown in bold (e.g. maths 1 is worth 10 points) regardless of what mark you got until you’ve got all 186 points. Then, when you’ve finished the whole course they multiply the number of points each exam is worth with the mark you got. The person with the least points gets the best mark. Why’s that, you might ask. well, in Germany, you get one of the following marks:

1.0 – the best

1.3

1.7

2.0

2.3

2.7

3.0

3.3

3.7

4.0 – the lowest mark you can get and still pass

4.3 – fail

4.7 – fail

5.0 – fail

etc

Again, I don’t know why it’s like that. It just is. So there’s no 1.2 or 1.5. For example, you pass maths 1 with a 4.0 whereas your mate passes with a 3.0 You and your mate both get 10 points. It’s like that with every subject until the end of the course. Then they multiply your 4.0 with 10 and give you 40 points but your mate only gets 30 (3.0 times 10). Repeat for all exams. The person with the least points wins. It’s kind of turned on it’s head but it works.

There’s a couple of snags:

1)      you have to get 45% of the total points before you start semester 5 (that’s 83.7 points) or you’re out.

2)      you have to have attempted all the exams once before the end of the 7^th semester or else those exams you have not yet attempted will be considered as failed once (see point 3)

3)      you only get three chances to pass an exam or you’re out. But you only get 2 chances to pass your Bachelor Thesis.

4)      you have to have finished everything in 9 semesters or you’re out.

There is no minor subject like there is in a German Diplom. Instead you have to specialise in one of three areas:

a) networks

b) software engineering

c) databases 

Lectures

The first two semesters are identical to the Diplom. Then the Bachelor students and the Diplom students begin to have different lectures. Usually there are no more than two consecutive hours (90 minutes) of the same lecture after another. Sometimes, though, you can have two and a half hour tutor groups in Info. You have to make sure you keep up to date with what courses are on offer and when. Some courses run only in the summer semester and none is going to hand you a sheet with a timetable on it. You have to do all the legwork yourself.

The first lecture can start as early as 8 am. The last can start at 6 pm. Usually lectures start at "cum tempore" (ct), 15 minutes past the full hour. But there are also some lectures starting at "sine tempore" (st), which refers to the full hour. For example 10ct means 10.15 am and 14st means 2.00 pm.  

ABSOLUTELY VITAL AND AMAZINGLY IMPORTANT POINT 1 !!! ---

Make friends.

This cannot be overemphasised. Unless of course, you wrote in it your own blood on the side of a horse and then stapled it to your forehead. In which case you might be on the verge of overemphasising it. The reason is this. If you miss lectures due to illness, hangovers etc – you’ll need to copy notes from them. But more importantly you never get informed of anything, ever, by the powers that be so it’s up to you to find out the where and when’s of lecture times, exams, exercise classes, changes in class times, holidays, pre-requirements to exams and so on. Really, I’m not joking, if it weren’t for word of mouth networks created through friends at the TU, I can guarantee I’d have missed deadlines for applying for exams (yes – you have to apply to do an exam) and pro-seminars and stuff.

You’ll have enough students to choose from. There were 1300 students in my year. The year below me has more. There were only two lecture theatres that were big enough to hold us all in the first semester! The numbers dwindle quick, though when people realise the course isn’t for them. Note – after having re-read this a year or so later I feel it necessary to say that informatik has become a “numerus clausus” (is that how you spell it?) meaning that the number of people taken on is restricted like it is in law or biology and now you have to have at least a certain grade in your A-levels to get in. Don’t know what it is though. Needless to say, the numbers dropped when they introduced this. This year 300 students were admitted, so I heard. I emphasise that this is NOT official. I’ve never seen the official admissions figures. 

ABSOLUTELY VITAL AND AMAZINGLY IMPORTANT POINT 2 !!! ---

There’s loads of maths in this course.

Don’t go creating any illusions for yourself that you’ll be learning how to programme in HTML, C++, java and all those useful languages you see in the job ads or how to install network cards. There’s none of that. You don’t learn how to programme; it’s kind of assumed you already know how. It’s not to everyone’s taste. I hadn’t learnt maths for over 10 years when I went back to college and found it really hard. I needed all three opportunities to pass maths 1.

In the main studies, all lectures are partitioned into the groups; theoretical (e.g. predicate calculus, formal languages), practical (e.g. artificial intelligence, neural networks) and technical computing science (e.g. system architecture, distributed systems). Some lectures contain a tutorial. In most lectures every week the students get a sheet of homework. This work is supposed to be done by a certain date and handed in (usually in the following week). It is usually corrected and handed back to the students during the tutorials. Further questions and problems will also be discussed in the tutorials. The mark for the homework is not important for the final mark of the lecture (module). However some lecturers want their students to do at least forty percent of their homework before they are allowed to do the exam at the end of the semester.

Praktikum (Practical)

Diplom students have to do at least two practical's, one in practical and one in technical computing. Of course students can do more if they are interested, but as a Praktikum is usually very hard work and keeps a student very busy during one semester. Only a few people have done more than the two necessary Praktika. It is absolutely impossible to do two Praktika in the same semester while attending a few lectures and/or working on a programming project.

Doing a Praktikum, a sheet of work is handed out every week. The work is intended to be finished at the Praktikum afternoon (four to six hours). Usually it is too much for a single afternoon and the remaining work is finished during the rest of the week before the next Praktikum afternoon. Most of the Praktika involve team work and the exercises are solved in teams of two or three students. Dependent on the semester a Praktikum consists of ten to twelve Praktikum afternoons.

Hauptseminar (Main seminar)

This section is basically lifted from Thorsten’s bit on “Main seminars”. A Hauptseminar is also performed by students in their fifth semester. It is a seminar consisting of ten to twelve students and one professor. The seminar is about a certain topic and every student has to prepare and give a lecture about a topic being related to or being a subtopic of the main topic. A Hauptseminar meets once a week every Thursday afternoon for three hours. During the first one and a half hours a student gives his lecture. In the second part of the seminar course the lectures contents and further questions are discussed. Students needn't be afraid that they have to answer all the questions by themselves. Of course the Professors support them with their wide background knowledge. The lecturing student is also required to hand out a summary sheet (about 20 pages) about their lecture.

Additional Information

Additional information about the university, the computing science department, lectures and practical's can be found on these web pages. Click on “Studium” and then search for each Lecture.

There’s a great article similar to this about the German Diplom written by Thorsten Schmitt.

If you have any questions, you can  contact me, Karl Ritson. © 2005 All rights reserved.

Munich Germany
© www.perob.com 1996-2008
All rights reserved
Disclaimer: All information contained in this document
is the responsibility of Karl Ritson and no indemnity is
offered by the Munich Portal at www.perob.com
updated:21-Mar-2008