My application process to Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany was somewhat unordinary. I received negative decision from another place that I first applied to on 18th of June and at that point deadlines for applying processes had already taken place for most of other prominent destinations.
Luckily enough representatives of KIT agreed to take in my application a couple of days too late. All the necessary information was provided by their coordinator by e-mail. Picking courses for learning agreement was a bit laborious but I managed to find some fitting ones. Oh and mainly KIT provides business engineering type of courses because students here haven't pure business programs but business combined with some technological aspect instead.
The application process and preparations were rather simple since we are in Europe anyway. Had to provide copy of passport, European healthcare card, passport picture, some certificate of lingual capability ,which in my case was a copy of my high school diploma with grade of M from short German, and a small letter of assurance written by me, pay about 140€ of studying fees (incl. voluntary German, 50€), filled enrollment application and little else. Nothing problematic. Hunting for a flat is the problem.
There's a dormitory but KIT officially announces that housing situation is challenging and I heard a rumor that there's like 40 000 people in queue and 200 rooms changing owner each year. Probably exaggerated but nevertheless one should not rely on it. I didn't even contact housing official of KIT since it was clearly stated that they can't provide houses for all appliers, but rather started looking for a flat from free markets through facebook group "KIT WG Börse" and ingenious rent-house-portal www.wg-gesucht.de. In that portal one can save her application as a template and easily send it as a reply for a number of different flat offerings.
I spammed some 30 housing advertisements with basically only one condition: smoking not allowed. Maybe 5-7 of those 30 advertisers replied. There's yet another problem. Many won't promise or agree to anything without seeing in person. Well I got lucky and had an Skype "interview" with a very nice girl who has an internship during this winter semester, which is the length of my stay also. She agreed to under-rent her room in 2-room student apartment already based on that interview, which occurred some 2 weeks before I actually came to Germany. We made official contracts here so until that it was of course a question of trust, which neither of us didn't seem to lack.
Now I have myself a fully furnished about 16 sq.m. room with shared kitchen and bathroom right in the center of Karlsruhe, which is a middle size city with population of approx. 300 thousand. The house is old apartment building but interior seems pretty recently renovated with parquet floor. The rent is 390€/month including gas, water, electricity, heating and WiFi. Feels pretty reasonable to me (at least in comparison with super expensive Finland). Yeah it's girl's room but it's decorated with fine taste and I kind of like it. At the moment I actually haven't a roommate. Some guy who lives here will come back in December after his internship ends, but it remains unclear is his room to be rented meanwhile or not. Oh and I also got right to use this girl's bike, pretty friendly and nice.
So here am I in Germany since 9.9. and orientation week is about to begin on Monday 16th Sep. List of important dates and events was provided to e-mail along with the letter of approval. After orientation week there's 3-week-long voluntary German intensive course which I will attend and the actual studies begin in 23rd October or something.
Last words about language requirements: Some A2 or B1 level German is required. I don't quite know about those ratings and certainly don't know how is my Sprachkentnisse on that scale, but I have studied German from 5th class in elementary school to end of high school. I changed it to easier middle length group in high school though, which is meant for those who had begin it in 7th class. I didn't exactly shine in that group either, and wrote short (for those who begin in high school, study 3 years) German but with rather good grade M, equal to 8 on scale of 4 to 10 (best). Summing it up, I should have quite a vocabulary sleeping in depths of my brains. I plan to take a couple courses taught in German so that will be my purgatory. I'll know a lot more of my capabilities after the Intensive course. Anyway, it would be possible here to fill that 30 ECTS quota solely with courses taught in English.
P.s. Nearest international airport is probably in Stuttgart and there's train station right beneath which connects to Karlsruhe. My one-way ticket was 114€.
Next blog will be about survival and price levels here in Karlsruhe.
-Lauri
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