themo98

German student here🙋‍♂️

Have you decided which University you'd like to study at? I don't want to brag but for all reasons I can definitely recommend you my own University (University of Cologne). We have a wide range of biology masters, are one of the most LGBT friendly Unis (and the City even more so!) in the world and also the biggest university in Germany with lots of international students. If you'd like to have affordable accomodation though, I recommend you and your partner apply for the dorms many semesters before even applying for studying (yes, it's common practice here in many cities and doesn't cost anything to apply for the waitlist). You two can request living in the same appartement in a dorm. There are some very modern two bedroom appartments you might easily be able to share if applying early. There are quite a few things to consider but they'll usually listen to your wish.

Why do I emphasise so much on the dorm stuff? Because I really wish someone had told me all this when I was in high school. Studying in Cologne is cool but living, meh, expensive and there is fierce competition for housing all over the city!

Anyway, good luck with your studies and have a great weekend☀️ (It's Saturday lunch time over there right? Over here, it's night and Sunday started an hour ago)

Allright you're welcome! :) She may want to check out check out the TH Köln/Deutz (the Technical University in Cologne, Deutz is the name of a part of the city where one of their campuses are) as they have most engineering degrees here, renewable energies should defo be among those.

It depends. Dorms are usually 200-300 (good rooms in 2-4 person appartments) per person, though the range goes from 140 (cheap and, well, not luxurious to put it nicely) up to 340 (single appartments with your own kitchen and bathroom and stuff), Euros.

Living prices outside of state owned dorms is much more unpredictable. Close to the uni, you will usually end up paying between 500 and 700 euros for a single room appartment, though I've seen prices going up to 900 euros for (sometimes) nicer places. Two bedroom appartments are somewhere around 700-1300 Euros, the closer to Uni or city center usually more expensive. It should be noted that in rare cases the houseowners of single bedroom appartments are against couples living in those. This is not the case with the single room appartments of the university.

All students at the unis i mentioned get a mandatory subsidised state-wide public transportation ticket, it costs us around 500 Euros a Year. If you are okay with commuting, you can live a bit more affordably in the outskirts of the city and reliably enough commute to the university. But counter in the time it wiuld take to get to a workplace and living inside the city may be worth it.

Ah before i forget, the kstw (Kölner Studierendenwerk) is the organisation responsible for the dorms. You'll easily find their website by googling kstw wohnheime

This might sound weird, but how should a student deal with fear of the future, especially the fear that one's life after graduation will be more or less boring and consist of nothing else but work?