Word Of The Day~ das Abitur

[breakingthrunow]

WORT DES TAGES
das Abitur - high school diploma, leaving certificateEr hat das Abitur gemacht. - He got/earned his high school diploma

Comments

Re: Higher education meat grinder

[breakingthrunow]

Which German university is the best choice generally depends on your subject. There are no "elite unis" in that sense as you have in the US or the UK - in other words, there is no "Havard", "Yale", etc. -- no single university that is THE place to go for any subject. There are, however, particular unis that have particularly good programs in subject X. There is an initiative in effect as we speak that aims to identify and select Germany's "top unis" and continues to build something like an "ivy league".

In the first round of the competition (ended in fall of 2006), the unis that came out on top were Munich universities [Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) and the Technical University (TU)] and the University of Karlsruhe. Of the 70 higher education institutions that participated in round 2, the following have qualified to be considered for the title of “elite university”: the two universities in Berlin along with Aachen, Bochum, Freiburg, Göttingen, Heidelberg and Konstanz.

You might also like to have a look here, they sort by subject and city
http://www.daad.de/deutschland/hochschulen/hochschulranking/06543.en.html

And here's an article on the recent competition
http://www.goethe.de/wis/stu/thm/uni/en1818343.htm

You did a highschool exchange? Where did you go?

Re: Higher education meat grinder

[lakritze]

High school exchange-->Congress-Bundestag funded. I was in the Southwest---Kirchheim Teck. By your list up there, it looks like BW Unis did pretty well :p
The funny thing about elite US universities is that they really are not THE place for every topic, though at a good university, the odds are that whatever you study will at least be decent (i suspect this is another difference between the German and US students---most US students do not know for sure what they want to study---I started off as a pre-engineer, briefly entertained German as a degree path and then became a molecular biology major.) So in principle it is similar to Germany in that some schools are just better at some subjects. For instance my pharmacy studies (doctoral level) were at a state school, and for the most part state schools are the best for pharmacy compared to the private schools that have pharmacy departments. But for medicine, there are both great public school options and fantastic private school options. I could not tell you where the best political science is though :p