Imagine this: You have opened a browser on your laptop and searched “best universities in Germany”. You have 40 open tabs in your browser, three of which are different ranking lists, and you are confused about where to start. Does this sound familiar?
This was me and this went on for three years.
When I started researching universities abroad, I was genuinely excited. Every time I searched a city or came across photos of campuses, I felt like I was sitting in a lecture hall in Munich, cycling the streets of Berlin or walking into a classroom in Sydney.
But I hadn’t imagined what would happen next; the series of rejections started.
The rejection slowly turned the excitement into frustration and a quiet voice started to suggest that my current bachelor’s degree did not have any worth in the world.
All this frustration and thinking led me to go and visit a visa consultant’s office, where they helped me decide what to do next.
After going through all this, I think there are two things that nobody explains to international students until they experience them themselves after diving deep into the process.
Everyone talks about rankings. Nobody talks about fit.
The common mistake that many international students make, including me, is that we see university rankings as a shopping list. We search the top 50 universities, and then start applying from top to bottom until someone says yes.
The problem with this approach is that global rankings measure the overall university's reputation, not the score of the specific course you are trying to apply to; they don’t tell you about the country’s visa process that will suit your condition, nor do they tell you anything about the city where you would live for the next three or four years.
After changing my approach, I got an offer from the University of Passau. Passau is a small city in Germany, near the border of Germany and Austria. I had not seen this university in the ranking list but this university turned out to be the best fit for me.
The lesson to be learned is not that rankings are useless; they are a helpful starting point. They should be the beginning of the research, not the end of it. However, as you choose your university there are a few things that you should ask yourself:
- Whether the course structure matches what you actually want to study.
- Whether the country’s student visa process is feasible for your situation.
- Whether the city, not only the campus, is somewhere you could see yourself living.
Now let us talk about money
When I received the admission letter from Passau, I knew that it was a state university and there would be no semester fees, which was a great relief for me. Then a few questions kept repeating in my mind:
- Could I survive there without a job?
- What would be the cost of groceries?
- What would be the rent for a room there?
The cost of living for an international student varies enormously from country to country and from city to city. Although Munich and Passau are in the same state in Germany (Bavaria), the room rent in both cities is very different. Sydney and Perth are both in Australia, but the living costs in these cities are completely different.
The brochure of a university will give you the tuition fee of the course, but it will not give an honest breakdown of what it would cost you to live there month to month.
Before committing to any university and city, research the real cost of living there. Look for the average rent of student accommodation, average grocery costs, and public transport prices, and lastly, how far you can stretch your monthly budget after the currency conversion. Understand the exchange rate between your home country and your destination country as this could hit hard if the home country’s currency is weak.
If I could go back in time and advise myself before the three years of searching, it would be to start with the course and city, not with the ranking and name of the university.
Search for a course that matches what you want to study and research the city and the cost of living in that city, not just researching the campus.
The right university doesn’t need to be the famous one. The right university fits your academic goals, your financial reality, and your life; in my case, the city and its university that I had never heard of.
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