Agreeing with what dunderklumpen already said, 21 for the exchange is possible, but only if everything went very smoothly. Before recent restructuring, it wasn't unusual or even considered a big deal for students to graduate between 26~28ish. For the mid-studies gap, I'd find 23~24 more normal myself, too. Some people also go at 19 right after high school. (Which can be another contributing factor that makes people older in uni.)
Slightly more detailed assessment of the 'eligibility' question: if this is late 90’s-early 2000s, I don't think you'd need to specify what program the character is/was on, as it's fairly normal to go abroad, especially to an English-speaking country, and there are various ways to do that. (Exception might be if you sent them somewhere fancy with high tuition fees. German universities are/were free, so people tend not to have a 'college fund' sitting around, expecting to pay thousands of dollars per semester or expecting to go into debt.) If your character is studying English at university level, they might in fact be required to spend at least 6 months in an English speaking country. What might be worth bearing in mind, if the character goes via Erasmus, the biggest exchange program and one that is useful if you want credits recognised, that your uni's partner school can be pretty random and not what you want.
I would like to partly disagree - based on personal experience. I studied English at university and spent one term in England in 1996. As already mentioned by others, I went after I had passed my "mid-studies exam". I was 22 and turned 23 during that time.
Back then, at least in Northrhine-Westphalia, it was not required to spend any time in an English-speaking country at all if you studied English. And next to no one did so. Only very few of us (we were several hundred) applied for an exchange program - either Erasmus or DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst). In my year, none of us passed the test to get accepted by the DAAD, but since we were so few applicants in the first place, most of us managed to get accepted by Erasmus.
I went via Erasmus. My university was in contact with two or three British universities, and I was able to say which university I would prefer to attend.
In my experience it depends on your home university in how far credits are recognised. My university recognised almost none.
Okay, thank you. The MC's mother would have been going through her education and exchange in the 70s/80s, but the story itself takes place some years later. I did ask further upthread about what age she would be for certain milestones, such as leaving university and then going on to become a teacher. She might be a better student than average, but not so good that the times she graduates would be very far ahead of her peers. So, I thought her being around 23 for her exchange, 26 for leaving university, and 28 after she's done her teacher's training would be around the correct timeframe, although I might be missing something?
Slightly more detailed assessment of the 'eligibility' question: if this is late 90’s-early 2000s, I don't think you'd need to specify what program the character is/was on, as it's fairly normal to go abroad, especially to an English-speaking country, and there are various ways to do that. (Exception might be if you sent them somewhere fancy with high tuition fees. German universities are/were free, so people tend not to have a 'college fund' sitting around, expecting to pay thousands of dollars per semester or expecting to go into debt.) If your character is studying English at university level, they might in fact be required to spend at least 6 months in an English speaking country. What might be worth bearing in mind, if the character goes via Erasmus, the biggest exchange program and one that is useful if you want credits recognised, that your uni's partner school can be pretty random and not what you want.
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Back then, at least in Northrhine-Westphalia, it was not required to spend any time in an English-speaking country at all if you studied English. And next to no one did so. Only very few of us (we were several hundred) applied for an exchange program - either Erasmus or DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst). In my year, none of us passed the test to get accepted by the DAAD, but since we were so few applicants in the first place, most of us managed to get accepted by Erasmus.
I went via Erasmus. My university was in contact with two or three British universities, and I was able to say which university I would prefer to attend.
In my experience it depends on your home university in how far credits are recognised. My university recognised almost none.
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