Going abroad with MWP funding

Julia Zitzelsberger is study­ing busi­ness ad­min­istra­tion at the Deg­gen­dorf Insti­tute of Tech­nolo­gy (DIT). How­ever, the MWP schol­arship holder spent the winter se­mes­ter 2020/21 in South Ko­rea. To this day, she is fasci­nated by the cul­ture and has met won­derful peo­ple. Where she want­ed to go for her stud­ies abroad was clear to the bach­elor's stu­dent very early on in her plan­ning:

"My dream desti­nation for my se­mes­ter abroad was Asia, spe­cifi­cally South Ko­rea. Per­sonal inter­est played a role, be­cause I want­ed to get as far away from Ger­many as possi­ble to im­merse my­self in a com­plete­ly dif­ferent cul­ture. With the diver­sity of Kore­an cul­ture, no tui­tion fees and a very good repu­tation for Eng­lish-language stud­ies in Asia, South Korea is pre­des­tined for this. Thanks to the fund­ing by the Max We­ber Pro­gram, I was also able to take a Kore­an lan­guage course be­fore start­ing my stud­ies abroad. 

My fa­vour­ite uni­versi­ty was Kookmin Uni­versi­ty in Seoul, which is one of the most popu­lar part­ner uni­versi­ties of the DIT. As a child from the coun­try­side, I al­ways want­ed to expe­rience city life for a cer­tain period of time, and where better than in the mega-me­tropo­lis of Seoul? Nev­erthe­less, the uni­versi­ty itself bor­ders the Bu­khan­san Na­ture Park and thus offers a nice con­trast to the pul­sating city life. 

The cam­pus is quite large and there are many dif­ferent facili­ties such as cafés, shops, a gym and even a tra­di­tional tea house. There are many facul­ties such as Busi­ness Ad­min­istra­tion, but also Ar­chitecture, Law, De­sign and many more. An ex­change se­mes­ter there can there­fore be suita­ble for many de­gree pro­grammes. In addi­tion, the uni­versi­ty offers a va­riety of stu­dent clubs. For ex­am­ple, there are vari­ous sports clubs for judo or foot­ball, as well as music and engi­neer­ing clubs. The most pecu­liar club is prob­ably the Kookmin Cat Club, which takes care of the stray cam­pus cats.

The se­mes­ter abroad in South Korea was utter­ly re­ward­ing for me. You learn a lot about your­self dur­ing your stay, meet great peo­ple and create in­credi­ble mem­ories in an abso­lutely fasci­nating cul­ture. I can highly rec­om­mend South Korea for a se­mes­ter abroad and I am very grate­ful for the un­for­getta­ble time I was able to spend there."

Si­mon Höferlin is com­plet­ing his Mas­ter's in Man­age­ment & Tech­nolo­gy at the TU Mu­nich this year. To­day, the MWP schol­arship holder looks back on his expe­rienc­es abroad with grati­tude. At first, it was un­clear whether he would be able to take up his se­mes­ter abroad at the Uni­versi­ty of Cali­for­nia, Berkeley, due to the Coro­na pan­dem­ic. But in Au­gust 2021, the time had come and he moved into his room in the Inter­na­tional House. As a wheelchair user, he re­ceived fund­ing for a barri­erfree dor­mito­ry room in addi­tion to the MWP study abroad grant. A few weeks later, he shared his im­pres­sions of his time abroad with the Max We­ber Pro­gram:

"I've been in the US since 17 Au­gust and have set­tled in very well at UC Berkeley. My dorm room in the Inter­na­tional House is top-notch. Every day I meet new peo­ple in the Din­ing Hall, dis­cuss the Ger­man feder­al elec­tions with Span­iards and Frenchmen, learn about the latest genet­ic tech­nolo­gies from a doc­toral stu­dent or dis­cuss acute social chal­lenges with Americans. The cam­pus is in­credi­bly beau­tiful and ac­tive, alt­hough really steep, which is some­times a real chal­lenge with a wheelchair. 

I take my courses in the beau­tiful South Hall of the School of In­for­mation and deal with the topics Lean & Agile Prod­uct Man­age­ment, Prod­uct De­sign, Front-end Web Tech­nolo­gies and Py­thon Pro­gramming for Data Ana­lytics. The way of teach­ing here is very dif­ferent from what I am used to. There are quiz­zes, as­sign­ments every week and group pro­jects in al­most every sub­ject. The work­load is there­fore con­stant­ly quite high, but there is no con­cen­trated exam period at the end of the se­mes­ter. The pro­fes­sors are very ap­proachable and the lec­tures are inter­ac­tive. Sometimes you get the im­pres­sion that every pro­fessor here is an enter­tainer, which seems to have been in­grained in the Americans. I'm now in my fifth week of lec­tures here and over a third of my se­mes­ter abroad is unfor­tunately al­ready over.

Sometimes I look out the win­dow at the Bay Area and won­der how I ended up here. It feels a lit­tle surre­al and at the same time frightening­ly mun­dane. I'm grate­ful for all the peo­ple and coin­ci­denc­es that have made this possi­ble for me and proud to have seized the op­por­tuni­ties."

Elisa­beth Adam is study­ing law at the Uni­versi­ty of Pas­sau. In the sum­mer of 2021, she moved from there to Israel for an aca­demic year. She chose the He­brew Uni­versi­ty of Jeru­salem (HU­JI), a part­ner uni­versi­ty of the Uni­versi­ty of Pas­sau. Look­ing back, the MWP schol­arship holder would choose to study in Jeru­salem again at any time:

"The courses I was able to attend at HUJI were very re­ward­ing for me aca­demi­cally and per­sonal­ly. The Law de­gree pro­gramme there is less rigor­ous than in Ger­many and the teach­ing mo­dalities are var­ied. In addi­tion, I took an inten­sive He­brew course throughout the year and learned to speak and write the lan­guage well for eve­ryday use, which opened the doors to some friendships. Over­all, I would say that He­brew Uni­versi­ty is rec­om­mended for the Inter­na­tional Law de­gree and has a very di­verse and top-notch Eng­lish-language course pro­gramme.

In addi­tion to my stud­ies, I com­pleted an in­tern­ship in an Is­raeli-Palestin­ian wom­en's rights or­gani­sation based in Tel Aviv and was main­ly in­volved in a pro­ject to fund UN­SCR 1325 "Women, Peace and Secu­rity" in the re­gion. I also ac­cept­ed an offer to work as a re­search assis­tant to a pro­fessor of con­stitu­tional and com­para­tive law at Reichmann Uni­versi­ty in Her­zliya.

I would de­scribe my social life out­side of uni­versi­ty as very ful­filled. Jeru­salem has a lot to offer and thanks to my pre­domi­nantly Israeli circle of friends, I quick­ly knew the popu­lar places and knew about events. But the "Of­fice of Stu­dent Life", a HU­JI uni­versi­ty group, also pro­vided inter­na­tional stu­dents with event tips. One tradi­tion I grew to love were the al­most week­ly Shab­bat din­ners with one of my best friends. Regu­larly on Fri­day eve­nings, when the whole coun­try, but espe­cially Jeru­sa­lem, had slowed down for the holy day of rest and the shops and res­tau­rants were closed, we would get to­gether with other friends for din­ner. Eve­ryone con­tributed to the menu and we often sat up late talk­ing and play­ing games.

I would choose to study in Jeru­salem again at any time and also plan to return there for a longer stay abroad."

Text: Svenja Üing, Max Weber Program Bavaria