

Ask HN: German Universities for Masters in Computer Science - haidrali

I am BS computer science with two years of development experience in Java, Python and Ruby with multiple frameworks and platforms. I am planing to study Master&#x27;s but i can&#x27;t afford much so Pakistan and Germany are my options. Problem with Pakistani universities is that they really didn&#x27;t focus on research also option of specialization in Information Retrial or Natural Language Processing is not there so don&#x27;t want to be there.  
Would you recommend me to study Masters from German university keeping in mind i want to have specialization in Natural Language Processing or Information Retrial. Suggestion by universities name if any will be highly appreciated.
If there is any other university&#x2F;institute where NLP and IR specialization are offered in Masters please do comment.<p>Thank you so much for reading my post.
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Tomte
The TU9 could be a starting point:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TU9](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TU9)

In computer science, Karlsruhe, Aachen and the TU Munich (TU -- there are
three universities in Munich) are the most prestigious, although I've always
percepted alumni from those three as being somewhat snobbish.

When it comes to computational linguistics, Saarbrücken is probably the very
best, but Stuttgart (my alma mater) is also really good.

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haidrali
Can you please tell me about tuition fee and avg living cost for a person in
Germany. I came to know that most of the universities didn't have tuition fee
Thanks

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j29h
As long you want to study at a public university there are just tuition fees
which have to be paid once per semester. How much you have to pay depends on
the university, I'm currently studying in Osnabrück, Lower Saxony and here we
pay around 280€. But the fees include a ticket for the local public transport
and you get to eat a lot cheaper at the university restaurant.

Regarding living costs I would say I need around 500-600€ each month including
rent. If you wanna study in one of the bigger cities you probably have to add
another 200€ onto this.

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haidrali
@j29h Thank you for your reply it really give me an idea. Can you please tell
me about accommodation and part time work also. 1- which type of accommodation
is best university hostels or Portion ( in term of cost and living standard )
2- How much can we earn with part time keeping in mind 2 year of experience as
Software Development Engineer

Thank you so much

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j29h
It's pretty hard to answer your specific questions.

1\. I guess the living standard in dorms really depends on the city. And even
where I live the standard is very diverse between the different dorms. Also
the rent mainly depends on the city. I would suggest to get in touch with the
university of your choice and ask those specific questions regarding the
living situation there.

2\. How much you can earn is also really specific. I guess you can expect a
pretty good hourly fee as long as you can find a employer who speaks english.
I have no idea how the market for english speaking programmers is. Your best
shot is probably to work as a freelancer over the web.

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haidrali
Thank you so much

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mtmail
In case of Munich look for the 'computer linguistics' department
[http://www.cis.uni-muenchen.de/ueber_uns/index.html](http://www.cis.uni-
muenchen.de/ueber_uns/index.html) The [http://www.en.uni-
muenchen.de/about_lmu/contact/int_office/i...](http://www.en.uni-
muenchen.de/about_lmu/contact/int_office/index.html) department coordinates
helping foreign students. The 'Fachschaft" is the student body if you want
direct access to well connected students that currently study there
[https://fachschaft.cis.uni-muenchen.de/](https://fachschaft.cis.uni-
muenchen.de/)

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mushfiq
For NLP and Information Retrieval, University Stuttgart and University of
Saarland. And for part time software engineering jobs are also available with
better hourly rate than any other HiWi (Student job). By the way, learning
German (at least basics) will take you a long way.

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zeynalov
A good information portal about this is PIGAS (
[http://www.pigas.org](http://www.pigas.org) ) p.s. shameless plug

Email me if you need help about this, I studied in RWTH Aachen and Heidelberg
Universities.

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Harrisburg
RWTH Aachen may be a good choice. I had a colleague that studied there.
[http://www-i6.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/](http://www-i6.informatik.rwth-
aachen.de/)

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qwerta
Do you speak German? Otherwise I would recommend small post-soviet countries:
Estonia, Slovakia...

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haidrali
At the moment no i don't but i have heard that medium of instruction is
English at master level in Germany Is it right ?

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detaro
Unless you go for programmes that explicitly are in English only, no, it's not
certain. I'm a CS masters student right now and it's a wild mix: fully German,
German but with English slides, fully English, ... If a student requests it
many will switch to English (if no-one objects), but you can't rely on it. You
probably could complete it without speaking much German, but don't expect to
be able to take all classes. Might be problematic if you need more points in a
category than there are english lectures for it.

