Darmstadt University of Technology is ranked 251 in World University Rankings by Times Higher Education and has an overall score of 3.8 stars, according to student reviews on various study portals. Below is a short FAQ about MS in DSS offered at TU Darmstadt from a student’s perspective. The opinions below are purely subjective and not in anyway generalized.
Question 1: I heard from many people that course is very tough and generally takes 2.5 to 3 years to complete. Is this true?
According to me, the course is doable in 2yr. I finished all my credits in 1.5 yrs. I’m planning to do a voluntary internship just for my own desire before my thesis. So I essentially completed the course in 2yrs and I strongly disagree with the fact that the course is tough. Maybe because previous semesters the university did not filter properly in giving admissions to foreign students… as a result, a lot of less motivated students got in and only they keep spreading such false news. If you are focused it’s kinda normal.. not very easy, not tough either. Many of the good students from year intake have almost finished their credits in 1.5 yrs and about to start with thesis coming semester.
Question 2: Since this course is more focused on Distributed Software Development, what level of coding or programming skill is required?
This is new to me. Are you talking about Distributed Software Systems? Maybe I haven’t checked the homepage for a long time. I would say, basic programming skills are sufficient, but you should have a willingness to learn. Else it would be useless to do the course. Because every theory lectures are complimented with an exercise session which in turn has theory and practicals. However, Exercises are optional.
According to me, and to professors, taking a lecture without exercise is like just mugging up theory and writing exams. You don’t gain knowledge. By taking exercises, you can improve programming skills in different areas, step by step. Even if you didn’t have a super-duper coding skills already.
Question 3: What is the job prospect after this course?
Plenty of job opportunities for this course, but we need to put in efforts to find them and pick them. Motivated students get recognition from professors, thesis, and research opportunities keep coming to your hands. But if students want to just time pass and do some part-time job earn money not concentrating on course, professors won’t even mind you exist
Question 4: Due to many international students coming in, finding part-time job and accommodation is quite difficult. Is this true?
Accommodations. Yup. It is crazy. You will have a tough time finding one. But don’t worry you will have a bunch of guys accompanying you in the search and for your initial stay, you can always manage with some Indian friends here. In your second semesters, you would get your own accommodation from Studentenwerk, which is a kinda government and university accommodation thingy. Hope you have already registered for that.
Part-time jobs: I am not a big fan of part-time jobs. Nor do the professors encourage them. They strictly dislike it. The reason, if you do part-time you tend to miss out on many lectures and exercise classes. However, you can still pass the exams, which many Indians do. Some get carried away by the money they earn and concentrate more on part times than the study. So, they take only a few credits per semester and keep doing the course for 3 years or more. Now you understand where does the rumor, the course is tough, it takes 3 years to complete come from. Finding a part-time IT job is pretty easy here. Every tom dick and harry has a part-time here. You also have opportunities like student assistant and research assistant at the university.
Question 5: What type of profile does the student target after this course? What type of Job do they get?
To be frank the scope is wide. Students can align their interest and profile based on their interests such as
- Communications and technology
- Peer to peer
- Cloud Technologies
- Security
- Databases, Data Analyst, Warehouse, Mining – is another possibility
- Wireless Technology, Mobile Applications
or
Completely into Static Code Analysis, OS Security, Optimizers, functional programming, Software Design, etc. So once you are specialized in any of these areas based on your interest, your search for related offerings in Industry. I am focusing on Big Data Analysis, Cloud Technologies, Search Engines, etc.. for which I am doing a few external courses also. So for full time, you get a start as a Software Entwickler(developer) in any of these fields.
If you follow this advice, you might get good grades but I don’t know. But I am not sure you will enjoy your stay much.
If your goal is to study and go back to India. This might be a good approach but, I am not the best person to tell you this.
If you would, however, like to stay back, this is a horrible approach. It is not at all a big deal how long you took to finish your masters if you have good reasons. Student life is a great time to learn the culture, make friends across different cultures. A good way to meet new people is to try out different things, find things you like and gradually you will make friends. If you want to try out different things, you will need money. To spend money you need to earn money. ( most people who come here are from a strong economic background, it is just not pragmatic for a 22+ old person to spend in Euros from money earned by their elderly parents in INR). As the post says, getting a job is fairly easy here (Germany has significantly low unemployment rate, so do not worry. but do not forget to celebrate the fact you landed a job in a different country, not EVERYBODY can do it either, but it is easy)
If you work, you will learn a lot of things, things you will never learn at University ( e.g. what is expected of you after your masters, applicable only if you get a job, related to your field of study, but if you struggle, no worries, get any job and keep trying) . You will not learn anything less if you take an extra year and a half to finish. Often in Europe, people do Erasmus and exchange courses or year abroad so everybody elongates their studies. If you earn money, experience different things, or people, you will grow a lot and get a good enough time to reflect on yourself. And student life is much more forgiving when you want to grow than professional life. Just do things at your own pace, based on your own will. Set your own priorities.
But what I can tell you is that, do not let “I finished my masters in 1.5 years” be the only sense of pride in your life ( you are not in 6th grade anymore). Just enjoy and experience new things. There will be a life ahead of your masters, you want to have friends to hang out with, grill some meat in summer or backpack with your friends, you would want to find a partner to cuddle with. You will want to have a cool relationship with your colleagues when you start a full-time job. Trust me on this, how long you took to finish your masters will not matter to them at all. so go on, enjoy life.