Hey guys, is there anyone among you who studied in Germany or hold a degree in aerospace engineering from Germany? Can you please tell me which universities offer English-speaking courses in aerospace engineering, and others which offer aerospace engineering courses in German? Can you also please tell me good universities and how to enter, what exams I need to take, and what grades I need to maintain in High school? And what about the difficulty? Thanks.
First of all - you rarely have pure English engineering courses. You have a more or less high portion of English lectures here. It is the best to ask the engineering departments directly, if they are capable of supporting a fully English course.
Grades in High school are secondary in Germany, most engineering courses are without Numerus Clausus. You only need something equivalent to German "Hochschulreife" - which usually is Gymnasium, but there are also alternative paths to it. You must be very good at maths, because the worse you are at it, the more trouble you will get (and you are never good enough at it to call it easy). Next, you should have a good technical understanding and not be afraid to get your hands dirty (The 6 week metalworking internship at Volkswagen is infamous here).
Not sure if it similar extreme in other countries, but if your grades for your Bachelor degree are not perfect, you will have a very hard time finding a university for your master degree.
What you should be aware of is the structure of German universities and that they have different ideas of what your career later should be:
University = 100% academic career afterwards
Technische Universität/Technical university = 70% academic career, 30% business
Fachhochschule/Applied sciences = 30% academic career, 70% business
Should you aim for an academic career later, you should research which collaborations an university has or which kind of spaceflight component a university is often designing.
Otherwise, you should look which companies are often seen at university events - those companies will be the first address for you to get a good job.
Finally: Especially in engineering, joining student clubs and organisations is extremely helpful for both studies and later career. It is like networking, but with more hands-on-experience and fun. Especially racing teams, experimental rocketry and sailplane teams are not that rare.
And stay away from high-profile, high technological risk research projects with a lot of dedication requested as student. Those eat you alive. Especially as bachelor thesis, its easy to get into a project, that's a lot of boring work and little experimental space for making a good thesis. Such projects are more rewarding as master thesis, especially if you aim for a doctorate.
Recommendable places in Engineering... well, there are many universities. The engineering department in Braunschweig is a well-organized department in a chaotic huge university.
As insider tip, I can recommend you the applied sciences university of Magdeburg (not the Otto von Guericke university next to it). My brother was there and it was a very good place. Modern equipment, good teachers almost zero tuition fees. And better business career chances than in many technical universities. But then, Magdeburg is mostly automotive.
But for example, you can study Bachelor of Engineering at one university and switch to Master of Aerospace Engineering somewhere else...
