Interview Questions

1) What is the quality of the instructors? 2) What is the basic structure of class? 3) How big is the size? How intersperse are the buildings? 4) What is the demography of the class room? men vs women? 5) Are you living in dorms

Professors

Most professors have a professor degree or a PhD (and a "Lehrstuhl"). Most of his classes are in German. However, he thinks that that will change, since english is the lingua franca.

Students don't talk too often to professors. More often they talk to TAs. How formal professors are addressed depends on the different professors.

A lot of professor cannot teach probably. They are just nerds. In America, professors are more interested in student actually learning something instead of just preaching knowledge. Some are more interested in doing research.

Professors usually are experts in their topic, lecturer and do work in projects with the industry. Some professors actually work in their field but that is rather rare.

Classroom Resources

There are TAs, office ours and sometimes labs (rarely though).

Sometimes, there are (sometimes) midterms and almost always a final exam. It is similar to NCSU, where there are projects, exercises during the semester and sometimes a final exam. However, the material is more complex and difficult.

Homework is often done in groups. While this isn't encouraged, the university doesn't care too much about it, as long as not everything is the same.

Studenent Schedule

Homework is done on your own or groups. There are assisted homework classes but they need to be requested.

Student Culture

There are parties. Students go to bars and drink (drinking age is 18).

There is a dinning hall, however you only get a meal (not all you can eat). A meal cost around 2.80 euro - 5 euro. The food is not the best, but cheap.

There are also microwaves

Campus Size

The campus is huge. Most lectures, for him, are in the centre. Around there are the dinning hall/cafeterias and libraries. Outside the centre area are offices and institues of the professors.

There are two campuses (around 10km apart). A student can travel between the campuses with an s-bahn. However they need to pay for it.

Prevalence of Cheating

He doesn't think they're cheating. Cheating is punished harshly (bachelor is revoked/not handed out). It is just to risky.

Rigor of Courses

It depends.

It is harder then NC State.

There aren't really any resources available to you, and you need to rely on your (smarter) friends. It is partly more difficult because there is less assistant available but also the topics are more complex.

Expectation of Homework

Rarely homework. There are exercises but ,often, they are optional.

The final exam is where it counts.

However, that doesn't apply to every subject and there are courses where there are homeworks.

Clubs

They are less promoted, however they exist. But are smaller, and less clubs then at NC State.

Diversity of Student Body

A lot of exchange students (indian, korean, chinas, russian, ...) Some of them (try) to speak german, some speak english. There is some intermingling. But the ethnicity groups usually keep to themselves.

Essay

I interviewed Tomas, who studies in Germany. In the following paragraphs, the differences and similarities between Germany, Switzerland, and NC State are shown.

Very few classes are taught in English in both the master's and bachelor's programs. Contrast that with Switzerland, where every course in the master's program is in English and even quite a few in the bachelor's program.

Most lectures are a professor or have a PhD, while at ZHAW, my university, PhD, and professors are still common, not nearly every lecture has this high of a degree. In my opinion, this can create an environment where the material though is out of touch with reality. However, Tomas mentioned that this isn't the case at his university.

Also interesting was the format of a class in Germany. Like at NC State, the professor lectures and to get help, one can ask the TA or professor during office hours. At ZHAW, office hours don't exist because for almost every class there is a corresponding lab. In the computer science department, these labs are often comparable to assisted homework classes. The professor is present during the labs and can assist with questions and problems. Occasionally, we also use equipment, like oscilloscopes or special development board.

A large difference between NC State and Germany, and Switzerland is that, while there are sometimes midterms, most of the grade comes from the final exam. On the other hand, at NC State, midterm and final exams seem to only count for about 20% of the final grade. The rest of the grade comes from assignments and projects.

When they do have homework at Tomas' university, they regularly solve them in group. While this isn't specifically encouraged, it isn't punished, as long as not everybody submits a carbon copy of each other. At ZHAW, we at times also solve homework in groups at home or in the lab classes. This is often encouraged, since learning together helps everybody improve.

While these differences are in no way, shape or form exhaustive, they paint a good picture of the similarities and differences.