Why I’m Skipping my Graduation

(After a year studying abroad in Germany)

I’m the guy people come to when they need encouragement for their big ideas. In most cases I’ll say the same thing: GO FOR IT. And today is no different. A friend inquired about whether he should study in Germany. The short answer is YES. Let me tell you why it’s the best choice.

I’ve been studying abroad in Germany for over a year now as en exchange student, finishing up my American bachelor’s degree. My graduation is supposed to be in a few days, but let me tell you, I won’t be coming home for my graduation ceremony! I’m staying. I’d love to celebrate my success with my friends and family, but we can postpone that until I visit my old home again. Better yet, you come here, and I will show you a proper German party!

To anybody who is considering studying in Germany, I’m telling you, from the bottom of my heart, GO FOR IT. It is enriching, practical, and fun. Whichever of these factors drives you, the answer is the same: come study in Germany!

There are three main selling points on why you should study in Germany:

1. Personal enrichment
2. enjoying life to the maximum while you are young
3. Studying for free and therefore not being a debt slave.

I’m trying to keep this blog short, so if you want to hear me expound more fully on the aspects 1 and 2, you can check out my study abroad vlogs here. But today I’m going to focus primarily on cost, because that is the biggest factor making higher education inaccessible to young people in North America.

Why you shouldn’t study in the USA

If your friends were jumping off a bridge, would you jump off too? Everybody taking on massive debt to pay full price for an exorbitantly overpriced undergraduate degree in North America is doing roughly the same thing.

The Europeans treat education is a basic human right. In America we just aren’t there yet. I’m can’t fully explain how our higher ed system got so perversely inaccessible, but I’m telling you this: you don’t have to be another victim. There is a better way.

Don’t be a cash cow

My friend Ash is also outraged about the perverse price of North American education. He describes the universities as a dairy where they milk you as a cash cow:

“don’t walk into the dairy unless you want to get milked”

German students are not treated like cash cows, but rather people who should be helped. And this shines through in all areas of student life:

COLLEGE FEES (if applicable)

USA
The CHEAPEST you can get is community college, coming in at about $7000 per year, plus all of the headache and heartache that comes with keeping your car in good working order so you can get there every day.

Germany
No cost. Unless you count the 100 euro enrollment fee, which is negligible in comparison to American education.

STUDENT HOUSING

USA
Pay about $1000 per month in rent for a SHARED ROOM where you have limited freedom and they kick you out during the holidays.

Germany
Pay 300 euros rent. Live in a cool flat with other Germans and internationals. Don’t get kicked out. You have your own room. And if you are clever, you can even rent it out to somebody else for a month while you are traveling during the semester breaks.

FOOD

USA
Living at Umass forces you to buy a meal plan for their tasty yet costly all-you-can-eat buffet meal plan where you need to eat there every single meal to even break even, and that is assuming you consider it acceptable to pay $14.50 for dinner and$ 11 for lunch and $8.50 for breakfast. Every. Single. Day. There’s no way you can get your money’s worth at Umass without also gaining 50 pounds and being in a yearlong food coma.

Germany
Student meals for 3.20 euros. Not as luxurious as Umass, but who cares? Also, food here is insanely affordable at the supermarkets, so you can cook your own if that’s how you roll.

TRANSPORTATION:

USA
If you live on campus, everything is close. But you are getting exploited, being made to pay for the hotel and restaurant that they call a campus. If you are crafty enough to live off campus, guess what? You still maintain the headache and costs of maintaining a car, you get exploited for a multi hundred dollar parking pass, and you get to spend lots of your time in traffic hell. No thank you!

GERMANY
You get a semester long bus pass for about 40 euros, but the towns and cities here are so bike friendly that you’ll see old ladies cruising about no problem. AND since Germans are extremely cautious drivers, you can rest easy knowing you’ll be safe on the roads. I’ve been carless and careless for the past year and am completely satisfied on a bicycle.

BONUS: if you want to get a scooter/motorbike/vespa etc etc, they are cheap, abundant, practical, and only cost 80 euros per year to insure.

There are a million other ways in which Americans get ripped off for basic life necessities that I will list at the end, but the main point is this:

Just because everybody else is getting exploited doesn’t mean that you have to.

A better way is possible, and studying in Germany is the best way that I know. If I have you hooked by now, the next question you’re probably asking is this

But how can I study in Germany?

It might seem so daunting. How does one transplant themself into a new country? I’m telling you it is more accessible than you’d ever think, and there are countless resources and people available and ready to help you, including me.

I’m going to tell you three ways you can study in Germany and you can decide which one best fits your situation.

1 The normal way: As an exchange student

2 The smart way: As a master’s student

3 The genius way: As a full time undergraduate

1 Studying abroad in Germany the normal way: as an exchange student

The typical way (and the way I did it) to study in Germany is on an exchange from your American university. The benefits of this are that there are dozens of people there to help you make the transition. Help is out there. The international office is your friend.

Exchange just means that you get to study in Germany while a German student gets to study in your place. Sadly you still pay the usual student fees/tuition to your home uni, but even so, it is entirely worth it; not only for the money you will save in living expenses, but also the mind-expanding experience you will have.

As an exchange student you will have a 1 month orientation where you get to make friends with a few hundred other international students. This is the time to build up your global network! In group settings there will seldom be two people from the same country. The international community in Konstanz was like one big family, and our Whatsapp group that has 1000 members will likely be active years to come.

Studying abroad on exchange makes your GPA bulletproof

Your home uni has NO IDEA how to interpret German grades, (1.0 being best, and 4 being the worst passing grade). So they don’t even calculate them into your final graduation GPA. If I could have done it all again, I’d have stopped maximizing GPA sooner, but old habits die hard. At least know that any mistakes you make while studying out of your league, won’t haunt you forever.

Language

For exchange students there is no required German skill level. They will make you take some German language courses, but you will be able to find plenty of classes taught in English. The Online course selection software lets you simply filter to courses that are taught in English. You’re good to go!

PROS

• Your GPA at your home uni (if you still care about that kind of thing)
• you can take any classes you want. I took an intro to UX design in the computer science department. This would never have been possible at my uni in the US.
• You get to form a community with hundreds of internationals from all around the world!
• You can easily get scholarships from Germany

CONS

• Still paying high US student fees at your home uni
• You will be sad that you can’t stay here for your entire bachelor (1 year is the maximum for exchange students)

How to study abroad the normal way, as an exchange student:

• Get accepted into a US university that has an exchange program with Germany (Umass Amherst has one).
• Apply for an exchange year (trust me, don’t do a semester, do the full year)
• Move to Germany, live happily ever after, maybe never come back!
• Bonus points if you do it as a senior like me, so you can stay overtime after you graduate and start a life here.

2 Studying in Germany the smart way: as a master’s student

Most of the international students I’ve met in the past months are actually master’s students. And they are so young! It turns out when the state invests in your success instead of your exploitation, it is possible hammer out an undergrad in 3 years, and a master’s is possible in 2 or less.

As an American, they teach you for 10 times the cost of Germany, and since they are milking you like a cash cow, they also take their sweet sweet time letting you leave the dairy (university).

Doing a masters here in Germany is a no brainer, that I would certainly take advantage of, if I didn’t already decide on my life path of entrepreneurship.

Now my state, of Baden-Württemberg, just added a 1500 euro per semester fee for international masters students. The backlash to this was astounding. There were actual German students protesting in the streets about it. They were protesting so that we wouldn’t have to pay for education. Amazing. As a student from North America this fee is a literal joke in comparison to what we are made to pay.

Pros:

• free or almost free master’s education

Cons:

• none

How to study in Germany as a Master’s student:

• finish up your exploitative bachelor degree wherever you live (or combine with an exchange year!)
• apply for a masters program in Germany
• enjoy studying in paradise

If you missed your opportunity to study abroad as an undergraduate, have no fear. Studying in Germany as a master’s student is always an option.

3 Studying in Germany the Genius way, as an undergrad

I only know one person who truly broke out of the Matrix and did his entire bachelor’s degree in Germany. Hats off to my friend Jake. This way is certainly challenging, but also the most rewarding in terms of money saved, and experience obtained.

Now if you still haven’t started your bachelor in the dairy (North America) there is still time for you to do it the genius way, if you are up to the task. Here’s how it works:

How to study the genius way:

Apply as a normal undergraduate student in Germany. If coming from USA, they are going to want to see good grades and advanced math on your high school transcript. If you are coming from a poorer country, they have more lax requirement for incoming undergrads.

Learn German as if your life depends on it.

When I first heard Jake speak German, I was astounded at how he well he spoke. It turns out the undergrad courses here are taught in German, so you need to learn German, fast. He went beast mode learning German in his first year, and now he is able to learn physics taught entirely in German. Incredible.

Genius Route Pros:

• save the most money.
• Get a degree in 3 years instead of 4
• All the perks of living in Germany

Genius Route Cons:

• Grueling workload for undergrads compared to USA.
• Courses taught in German, so prepare for some binge language learning.

It is called the genius way for a reason, it is grueling, but the payout is enormous. If you aren’t able to learn German as rapidly as Jake did, just try and see what happens. If you fail some courses, there’s always next time. Luckily for anybody studying in Germany, we have a little bit more room to make mistakes here.

Room to fail

Outside of the classroom, failure is natural and good. The motto in the software design world is fail early and fail often. But in the US, you can’t drop a course without it eviscerating the GPA, you know that number that is make or break between getting those desperately needed scholarships?

GPA fixation is an illness that discourages students from taking risks. It was only towards the end of my college career that I said screw my GPA let’s take some risks. I took a Python course, and R course, and an app development course. I’m so much richer from those classes, especially because they gave me the inspiration for my startup.

No risk, no reward

If you fail a course, no big deal. It can get erased from your record. You decide if you want to get graded for a course, so dropping it halfway through won’t demolish your GPA. Also you don’t need to impress your prospective scholarship donors because education here is a human right. Germans fail courses all the time, they drop courses all of the time, and the sky is not falling.

What if you are trying to study in Germany the genius way, but realize you aren’t a genius? No big deal. Drop a course so you can focus on learning German. You’ll be fine. Nobody is perfect; why pretend?

General perks of life in Germany

Germany is a far better environment for students than the USA, but there are many aspects of normal life that are generally more inviting than back home.

Increased buying power

I have difficulty not getting angry at how completely ripped off we are as Americans. We pay more for practically everything. So just because we have a higher GDP per capita than Germany $57K and $41k respectively, you can throw that measure out in the trash. Because the efficient sensible Germans pay far less for all of the things that we consider life necessities:

Here’s a quick nonexhaustive list of things we get exploited for in the US that are super cheap in Germany:

• education
• healthcare
• housing
• groceries
• cell phone bill
• transportation (and being forced to own a car)
• internet

What I’m saying is that your monthly expenses will be so much lower in Germany for a higher quality of life that you will not want to go back home for your graduation either!

The fun you will have

So far I’ve discussed mostly practical things that a college student should think about, but I haven’t even scratched the surface of the fun you’ll have. You really get to pick your own path here. But rest assured you will make friends with tons of cool people from all over the world. Beyond that, the type of person who studies abroad is going to be more interesting, colorful, and open minded than your average person back home.

This post is meant to encourage you to study in Germany for practical reasons, but if you want to hear me talk more about the quality of life in Germany, you can check out some of my vlogs here.

But in short, know that you will be treated like an adult from age 18, and that means the clubs are always open and there is no need to party in an illegal, degrading, and unsafe frat house basement. C’mon ladies and fellas, you deserve better than that. Also in Konstanz there are free electro parties in the woods every month.

If the club isn’t your scene, no big deal. There’s always things going on. Take a free salsa lesson, or sign up for a sport program. There is a massive offering of sport classes at really low costs. For example at my uni (Konstanz) we have Sailing, Windsurfing, rock climbing, fencing, snowboarding, and pretty much anything else you can imagine. I’m telling you, you will have years worth of fun in just one semester. Study in Germany. You won’t regret it.

RECAP ON HOW TO BREAK OUT OF THE MATRIX

• You can do it the normal way as an exchange student
• You can do it the smart way as a master’s student
• You can do it the genius way as an undergraduate

If you study in Germany you will:

• save an insane amount of money
• live an awesome quality of life
• have more fun than in the USA
• Build a network of friends that spans the entire globe

If you are even thinking about studying in Germany, I’m telling you from the bottom of my heart: GO FOR IT. You won’t regret it. And if you love it as much as I do, you won’t be coming home for your graduation ceremony either.

If you have any follow up questions, please reach out to me. I’m happy to help make your dream of studying in Germany come true.