Guten Tag, if you are new here, my name is Jun

… and I am a Master student studying microbiology in Germany. I apologize for not being able to post for a while. I have been pretty swamped with labs and exams. Now I am in summer break taking an intensive German course along with exams and labs.

This is going to be a fairly long post about how I prepared to study in Germany. I have divided this into three parts and feel free to skip around the post if you feel like it.

  1. Pre-college
  2. College
  3. Post-college

If you don’t feel like reading long content, guess what! I have also made a YouTube video! There are also timestamps in the description section. Enjoy!

I had grown substantially whenever I put myself out in a new environment.

JunHyeuk

Preview of JunHyeuk's vlog
Preview of JunHyeuk's vlog "How I prepared to come to Germany for Master program"© DAAD/ JunHyeuk

PRE-COLLEGE

2016 was one of my transformative years. I got discharged from the Korean navy and transferred to a new university in the US (from public to private college). My brain was saturated with thoughts especially about my future: what I want to specialize in, where I want to stay after college, and so forth. I looked back at my pre-military journey. I realized that I had enjoyed exploring and learning about other cultures. Plus, I had grown substantially whenever I put myself out in a new environment (new language and culture). Based on my research and after considerably long pondering, I tentatively placed Germany in my top list of places I want to spend after my graduation.

I started doing fairly concrete research: googling, browsing around the websites, reading blogs, and even books. I consumed anything that could be informative. I was able to gain an overview of requirements for prospective international students and an idea of what I have to do in college to prepare for my next journey after college.

COLLEGE

Enrolling in a basic German language class is the first thing I did when I went back to college after military service. This is because learning another language was one of the main reasons why I wanted to spend my post-graduate years outside of the USA. In this way, cultural immersion comes handy along with academic immersion, just like it did in the US and Japan. This language class was a tremendously more life-changing experience than I thought it would be. It had so many complimentary programs in which I can participate including German club, German events, German coffee hour.

After taking two basic German courses, an opportunity to go to Germany for a month for language and cultural immersion came up. I ended up joining this wonderful journey with my German professor and 6 other US-American friends where we participated in an intensive German language course at Goethe institute and explored many cities in Germany from a variety of perspectives: art history, politics, history, and so on. It was a lot of fun to learn German with other international students and to interact with my host family.

I had an idea when I was in Germany.

“Since I am thinking about doing my Master here, why don’t I visit several universities and talk to the students and admission offices?” Thus, I ended up visiting and touring universities in Bonn, Munich, Heidelberg, and Berlin. In the plane back to the States, I was fully determined to go to Germany for a Master’s program.

I started doing more research about the universities and requirements in Germany. It turns out many German Master programs want to see a bachelor thesis from a student (not strictly required). Although it’s not required for my bachelor program, I sent an email to a professor if I could work in his lab and write a thesis. Thankfully, I had ended up having a wonderful laboratory experience in my senior year which greatly helped my admission and acceptance to universities and scholarships.

Next, I would like to share a little bit of the workflow of my grad school application. I listed little more than 10 universities with an English microbiology program along with a deadline. Because I wasn’t as modern as I am now, I wrote them down in my notebook. Nowadays, I use an app called “Notion” for personal knowledge and project management including my Ph.D. school list. If you haven’t tried notion, give it a shot! It’s awesome and free if you are a student.

Anyway, I finished listing the master programs around 2 years before my admission to German schools. I also looked into scholarships in Germany because I figured that I still need to fund my living in Germany. As always, I started with googling random scholarship and was able to narrow down. In Germany, there aren’t as many scholarships available as in the US and other countries in my opinion because their tuition is significantly lower. But don’t be discouraged by that. There are still quite a few if you look very closely.

I started applying to schools and scholarship programs in my senior year in the US. I put a lot of my time and effort in my motivation letter, which I will probably discuss in my future post. But one thing I want to point out is to make sure to proofread multiple times and have second and third eyes read your draft. I found this step very pivotal because not only it helped with my scholarship application and university admission, but it was also a great foundational outline of my academic plan in Germany and even afterward.

Preview of JunHyeuk's vlog
Preview of JunHyeuk's vlog "How I prepared to come to Germany for Master program"© DAAD/ JunHyeuk

How I prepared to come to Germany for Master programme

POST-COLLEGE

The admission deadline can vary to a great extent. In my case, it ranged from February to September, which is why I had to keep working on my application even after I graduated from my bachelor’s program. Furthermore, more research and studying were needed such as dorms, more scholarships, German language, and Germany itself. After getting accepted to several schools, I started narrowing down my options and looked more closely into the website to make a final decision: the University of Göttingen.

This is all I want to share in this post. If you like my content and want to know more about student life in Germany, feel free to browse around my other posts on this website!

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Comments

Me ha encantado leer tus palabras, ha sido genial, exitos y gracias por compartir tu trayecto con nosotros.

written by Surhy Polanco Gabin created on

wow great, from this we gain a lot of knowledge regarding how to prepare for the study abroad in Germany .. nowadays there are many students who want to study in Germany ..it will helpful for them.

written by Dr_Roma created on

Hallo, I enjoyed your story and I look forward putting my step for a journey like you did. Thanks

written by Tingwey Eric created on

Hi I really enjoyed and appreciated you for this piece of write up you have enlightened some of us.but I need a scholarship programs in Germany to further my studies.i had a diploma in nursing in cameroon.so I wish to further by taking public health.i plead with you to help search for any university which can help go about it.thanks

written by WASE NJANGE JENET created on

Thank you for sharing your story!

written by Jack Milgram created on

Thank you for sharing your experiences....

written by Jay created on

I would like to get a high school scholarship in Germany

written by Brian created on

Although I am an electronics and communication engineer,I wanted to divert my interests towards mangement courses. I need a lot of help in terms of this. So can you tell me if how good management courses are there? The scope in future in terms of job opportunities for international students and more info on that? Thank you.

written by Apoorva created on

Hi Apoorva, to get started, take a look at the My GUIDE page: https://www.myguide.de/en/ - there you will find a lot of information on various subjects that you can study in Germany, also on management courses. If you have general questions, you will most likely find an answer in our guideline on: https://www.study-in-germany.de/ten-steps. Feel free to contact a DAAD office near you. Please visit the DAAD website to search for DAAD offices in your country: http://www.daad.de/local. The DAAD offices provide information and advice about studying in Germany and about DAAD scholarships. Best wishes, Your Study in Germany Team

written by Redaktion created on

Hi :) May I introduce myself? @LearnAuf Helping you & others in your German! So, have a look on my Twitter Channel. Meine besten Wünsche Brigitte

written by Brigitte von Kenne created on

Hi How can I get a admission to a Germany Public university to study African languages and literature?

written by Ruth created on

Hi Ruth, to get started, take a look at the My GUIDE page: https://www.myguide.de/en/ - there you will find a lot of information on various subjects that you can study in Germany. Further, you can contact universities directly on My GUIDE. If you have general questions, you will most likely find an answer in our guideline on: https://www.study-in-germany.de/ten-steps. Best wishes, Your Study in Germany Team

written by Redaktion created on

I want to study my higher in Germany so can you please explain me in computer science courses.

written by Laxmi Swetha created on

Brother, i want to know about master in geography (ma) from hamboldt university. it is good decision Will do master in geography from Germany. also, about job opportunity after master in geography. And which public university are best for Master in arts (geography)

written by Shubham chauhan created on

I also want to about course of Geography in Mphil program can you tell me about it ??

written by Dasrat created on

Hi, you can find all degree programmes offered by German universities in the DAAD database: https://www.study-in-germany.de/en/plan-your-studies/find-programme-and-university/. You can find extensive information about working in Germany on the website: http://www.make-it-in-germany.com/en/. Best wishes, Your Study in Germany Team

written by Redaktion created on

I am planning to do my masters in Germany.same as your feild.Microbiology and also kept another option of Immunology.Help me find good universities and tips to pick good choices.How are the job opportunites in our feild?Did you find searching job as challenging?

written by Bhav created on

I am an electronic and telecommunication engineer and terrific intrested in research in communication and signal processing domain. I read ur blog nd atleast for an beginner it feels good.please help me out with the actual pre-requiste to get eligible for masters in any of the good university (nd ofcourse suggest if possible the bit since i do not know much) and what r those scholarships we could make it to hav an financial assistance. Since i have completed my engg in 2017will it affect on my upcoming admission?? Please ans please.. I truly need help

written by Komal Gaikwad created on

Sorry for my late reply. I am afraid I am not very informed with master programs in other majors than biology-related ones (because I study microbiology)... As for me, I just started with googling stuffs and browsing around other blogs and articles about master programs in Germany. People share great stories and I am sure you will be able to find them. There aren't so many scholarships available in Germany because the tuition is relatively low. But the first one you should look into is DAAD scholarship. If you are seeking a master program in Germany, this foundation provides a master scholarship opportunity for all disciplines. There are other scholarships available from other foundations too such as Rosa-luxemburg or something (I think it requires German knowledge). I am sure your home country would offer some scholarship opportunity too. For your last question, you mean that you got your English certificate in 2017? I am not really sure exactly how German schools are treating English certificate because I did my bachelor program in the US. But normally they want language certificates less than 2 years old... It would be better if you ask directly to the study programs of your interest. They might be able to give you much better and concrete answer to this. I hope this helps. Best of luck on your application.

written by JunHyeuk Shin created on

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