Good Universities in Germany, Switzerland and Austria

[tallandsweet]

I'll start studying Computer science and Mathematics in September/October 2020 and then drop one of these to pursue my Bachelor's degree in the other subject :)

I've decided to start studying in the Austria and continue studying (Master's and maybe a PhD) at one of the universities that are listed in this take. I'd love to hear whether you have any recommendations for universities in Germany, Switzerland or Austria :)

That's why these universities are only relevant for their Master's and PhD programmes to me.

The reason why I'd like to stay here is that I've been attending a bilingual school for the past three years and slowly but steadily my German has started to go downhill. It used to be above average and I also used to speak in a very complicated, untypical and literary way. I miss that a lot and want to improve my German again :)

Germany

Technische Universität München (TUM)

While this is probably the ugliest University on the list (which I don't care about), it's also one of the best ones, especially for Computer Science. For this worldwide ranking for Computer science, it's in the 18th place.

TUM

Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT)

This is also a good university with a female:male ratio (28:72) that is very attractive to me, I don't enjoy being surrounded by tons of women, though I can't put my finger on why I don't.

KIT

Switzerland

Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETHZ)

You knew this would be on here when you read I wanted to study Computer Science, didn't you? This university is ranked 3rd for Computer Science worldwide and while moving to Zürich would probably be the most expensive option out of all options I have (next to moving to Munich=München), it's my favourite university to go to because I'd be farther away from my parents than if I studied in Munich.

I've decided to apply there, but I have no idea how realistic it is to get in (given that I do everything in my hands: letters of recommendation from scientists I'll have worked with, GRE (graduate record examination) TOEFL/CPE, letter of motivation, good grades etc.) and it would be really helpful if people who went there could drop me a comment so that I can PM them :)

ETH

Universität Bern

I just really like Bern and I'd be thrilled to get into this university too. It would be easier to get into this one than ETH, but the stuff I'll do for ETH should help me get into this one too. Personally, I love the dialect spoken in Bern. I think it sounds great.

Uni Bern

Austria

Technische Universität Wien (TU Wien)

What I don't like about this university is that I'd be a Diplomingenieur (Dipl.-Ing.) after studying for my Master's degree there and that's just a little off to me. I should add that one has better job opportunities in Austria with this title though. Vienna is a beautiful city and I'm also considering studying at the regular Universität Wien.

They have great Master's programmes and Vienna is the world's best city to live according to this ranking (Zürich is in second place) and has been on the top of the list for ten years now.

TU Wien

Technische Universität Graz (TU Graz)

This is also a hard university to get in because they only have 30 open places for Computer Science and 30 for each year (Master's degrees).

It's very small but I know two people who go there so it shouldn't be completely impossible to get into. However, I'd probably have to do an additional test to get in. I'd again be a Diplomingenieur (Dipl.-Ing.) after studying for my Master's degree, which is "interesting".

TU Graz

I'm also considering other Universities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland: RWTH Aachen, Johannes Kepler Universität Linz (JKU Linz) and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL Lausanne).

What I'll do to try to get in

The only thing I can do really is look at the toughest admissions process and this definitely is ETH's - hence I'll try to meet their requirements. They want top 5 to 10% grades, a TOEFL/CPE English certificate, 2 letters of recommendation, a motivational letter and - for some reason - the general GRE (graduate record examination). It'll cost me about 600€ to meet those requirements and I'll have to work my arse off but that's fine, all I ever did was study to be honest.

If I don't get in, I'll have plenty of experience, I'll have had fun and my CV will be fuller, which is always nice. No regrets.

Final words

I speak English and German fluently and my French is between B1 and B2. I don't feel confident enough at the moment to study at a University located in a French city (although I know that the courses are taught in English). Therefore, Lausanne and Geneva are both off the table more or less for me at the moment though the EPFL would be an excellent university too.

I'm extremely lucky to have been born in one of the most beautiful countries where people are wealthy and can afford basic necessities (almost all of them at least). Again, Vienna, Zürich and Munich (München) are close to me and all have extremely high standards of living. They're ranked 1st, 2nd and 3rd in Mercer's Quality of Living Survey. The fact that they're all within a 750km (=460miles) radius of each other is amazing for me.

Vienna-Zürich: 730km (=450miles)

Vienna-Munich: 400km (=250miles)

Zürich-Munich: 320km (=200miles)

I wasn't born in a city and it's not my goal to live in one for a long period of time, but we'll see how life works out for me.

If you have any tips, information, help, advice, suggestions etc., feel free to share below!

Which university did you go to?

[IlyaTheImpaler]

I like that you think about choosing grad school at 18 lol

>I don't enjoy being surrounded by tons of women, though I can't put my finger on why I don't
because you want less competition in dating 😂

Regardless of whether you end up with CS or math you need to know basic math, and basic computing. Let's just say the following is what my experience tells me that the average math/CS student (who could get into schools at the level of ETHZ) should know:

1. Basic computing
First of all, note that computing is not the same as Computer Science

Computer Science is about studying the nature and behaviors of abstract computing machine (such as Turing Machine, register machine, automata etc). It is a very constructive style of mathematics: you don't just need to know that object X exists and satisfies some properties, you also need to know how to construct X, while keeping track of the cost of your construction. The name `computer` is because X is a computing machine. And the properties of X are profound 20th century ideas such as Computability and Complexity (some people like Wolfram thinks computing machine like cellular automata are behind fundamental physics, evolution, God etc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton#Modeling_physical_reality ). So CS is basically math, and funding to CS department are extra funding to math department. Studying CS makes you a theoretician, and not a 'girl coder' or anything like that.

Further reading (if interested)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computability
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_complexity

Computing is more about how to make the consumer grade computer (the type you can purchase from Amazon) yield to your commands and solve math problems for you. What kind of math problems you solve depends on your skill, could be useful and simple like this kind of computation https://www.creditcards.com/calculators/minimum-payment/ or it could be stupidly hard and sadistic like this https://projecteuler.net/problem=579. Programming is perhaps the more general term, when you use computer to do things other than solving math problems. Programmers generally don't study much math. I think computing is what you need to learn first, knowing computing you can do programming easily, not the other way around.

You can learn basic computing from these two courses (pick one is fine, if you finish both I think you will have a huge advantage over your peers):

1.1 https://www.edx.org/course/cs50s-introduction-to-computer-science
Need to make an edX account to enroll, completely free. It's the same course Harvard students take, not watered down, if you dont like edX registration you can get the materials directly here https://cs50.harvard.edu/college/2020/spring/ but you're not a Harvard student so you won't be able to access their discussion board and the graders. At the end you will have some projects for your CV, it's good for applying for jobs or grad school.

1.2 https://cs61a.org/ This is my school's equivalence of the above course, it's much harder. The projects can be pretty impressive: http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/fa17/proj/scheme_gallery/#fiat-lux (of course I might have some bias here but see for yourself)

I have more resources about computing but it's pointless to list here unless you can finish the two courses above.

[IlyaTheImpaler]

2. Basic math

I'm a math major so my advice on CS is probably more helpful to a beginner than my advice in math.

If you're interested in what I read before I started university:

people.math.harvard.edu/.../when_is_one.pdf
img.4plebs.org/.../1460059215690.pdf
piazza.com/.../isv14pknyni2z3

Technically Conceptual Mathematics and Naive Set theory can be read by high school students, they require literally zero background knowledge. However not many high school students like them. There's a chance you might like them, and you will become like me (not sure if that's a good thing 😂)

Anyway, the main point is basic math for CS students should have these components (for each part I include some open textbooks I found from googling, haven't read them but they look ok, apparently designed for self study)

2.1 Logic + basic set theory
https://www.people.vcu.edu/~rhammack/BookOfProof/
www.people.vcu.edu/~rhammack/Discrete/index.html
I think the average CS student should know several versions of the axiom of choice, maybe you can google axiom of choice when you're ready, it's not included in these books.

2.2 Combinatorics/discrete math :
http://discrete.openmathbooks.org/dmoi3/dmoi.html
(the average CS students should know discrete structures like graphs, trees)

2.3 Concrete mathematics:
www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/.../...%20Mathematics%202e.pdf
This book is a must read for any math/CS student tbh, it's written by the legendary Donald Knuth. Legend has it that Knuth wrote a manual as an undergrad and his uni immediately adopted it as a textbook. The following year he was a student in a class and he was the author of the textbook used in the class. Concrete mathematics was the appendix of that manual. The name of that manual is The Art of Computer Programming en.wikipedia.org/.../The_Art_of_Computer_Programming - the books that old school programmers like Bill Gates grew up learning from.

[IlyaTheImpaler]

The only school from your list I've heard of is ETH Zurich. It seems big in physics, math and CS because it produced Einstein and John von Neumann. And then I realize:

- Einstein skipped classes all the time when he was at ETHZ en.wikipedia.org/.../Marcel_Grossmann and he thought his professor was a shit tier physicist en.wikipedia.org/.../Heinrich_Friedrich_Weber
From my understanding, they are polar opposites, one was a theorist, one was an experimentalist. I think it was Weber who told his student at the end of 19th century that physics was complete, Isaac Newton had it all figured out, physicists just need to work out a few details in computations :)) that student was probably Einstein. You can read more about their shitshow here www.reddit.com/.../

- von Neumann was at ETHZ for a meme degree he didn't care about (engineering, because his dad told him to, I can sympathize), by the time he finished his engineering degree from ETHZ he also finished his math PhD in Budapest en.wikipedia.org/.../John_von_Neumann so he probably spent on average like 15 minutes a day studying at ETHZ.

We wouldn't have spaceships (or modern physics) if Einstein had listened to the old guards at ETHZ like Weber, and we wouldn't have computers (or modern computing, or economics) if John von Neumann had chosen to be a fucking engineer from ETHZ because of 'practical applications'

In that sense ETHZ is no doubt a top tier school with long tradition, and we are also glad that Einstein and John von Neumann didn't take their teaching seriously 😂

[IlyaTheImpaler]

As for me, I'm studying math at UC Berkeley, in similar spirit, it is named after George Berkeley, a grumpy bishop in late 17th century who dislikes materialism, abstraction, loves God, loves tar water, hates calculus (https://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/The_Analyst ), his criticism of Newtonian mathematics was caustic, and as a typical idealist, he offered zero solution :)) but hey he influenced Kant, Humes, Lagrange, Cauchy etc, so without this grumpy man there wouldn't be modern mathematics or modern philosophy at all lmao

Apparently in term of ranking UC Berkeley is the best university in the US (and probably the world) if you're into algebra www.usnews.com/.../number-theory-rankings
😏

[IlyaTheImpaler]

After the basic math (at point 2) I can also outline the main ideas of the core math used in CS research, probably something that undergrads aiming for ETHZ should know, but then again they won't be meaningful unless you finish reading all the basics about logic, set, discrete math.

[tallandsweet]

Thank you for your extensive answer.
I have done my research on CS and Math and would like to kindly point out that I never wanted to be a girl coder.
I also never wanted an advantage in dating because there's only one guy I care about and that chapter is closed. It's a pity that you make so many assumptions, your responses are either short and basic or extensive, thorough and absolutely excellent. Thank you for sharing your resources, this is very helpful.
I've written my high school graduation paper on game theory, where von Neumann's axioms played a large role. It's not like I'm walking into this completely dewy-eyed, I just have zero background but am a quick learner.
Never been a person to settle for the easiest path.
I'll work through these resources, which will probably take some time because I'm still graduating lol.

[IlyaTheImpaler]

Yeah I wrote all those irrelevant stuffs on purpose, I was teasing you 😂

There are only 6 important links. And please do not study them sequentially, there are many connections and overlaps in the materials

www.edx.org/.../cs50s-introduction-to-computer-science
inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/archives.html
These two are for basic computing. You should study them at the same time, and compare their ideas. If you see how they are talking about the same thing in different languages most of the times, you will have understood what I consider basic computing

https://www.people.vcu.edu/~rhammack/BookOfProof/
www.people.vcu.edu/~rhammack/Discrete/index.html
http://discrete.openmathbooks.org/dmoi3/dmoi.html
These three are for basic math.
Same as above, read through them at the same time, compare and connect their ideas.

Also, remember that basic math, especially set theory is a language, it is meant to be used. If you find yourself translating ideas from cs50 and cs61A into sets and functions, it means you have understood basic math.

www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/.../...%20Mathematics%202e.pdf
is a bit more advanced, but eventually you need to finish it.

So are you in high school?

[tallandsweet]

Alright, thanks for the summary then.
Yes, I'm still in high school. Graduating this year and will go straight to university then and try getting a research assistant position (something similar and less prestigious to get good letters of recommendation in three years time lol).
We'll see, and thanks for all the links, it's very helpful :)

[IlyaTheImpaler]

Research assistant is less prestigious than what? PhD students? lol

[tallandsweet]

No, I meant that I'll do something less prestigious than research assistance... I don't think I'll get a job as a research assistant right away, that's why.

[IlyaTheImpaler]

In university you will have to complete some projects under some professors, that's the time you try your hardest to impress them. Then you can get your letters of recommendation from them when you graduate university.
You don't necessarily need to have a job as a research assistant when you do the project with the professors, right? I think during the whole process from now until you're accepted into a grad school, you might never need to have a job (as research assistant or anything)

[tallandsweet]

I'll have to work for experience and for financial reasons. I don't want my parent's support in moving away, there is an upper limit I can make to still receive child support from the government (which my parents have been investing for some time now).
I'll need a minor job, preferrably at the university :)
Any recommendations?

[IlyaTheImpaler]

Well if your school is like mine, you can apply to be a Teaching Assistant, because the cross department classes like calculus, linear algebra or cs61A etc have like thousands of students with one professor. So they need student TAs to grade papers and hold discussion sessions (where you prepare some slides like this drive.google.com/.../1rw75DNkydaUDOotywe2qfnKVqVFZPxSU or write notes of exposition then basically answer the questions students have or just chat with them).
If there's no TA job, try find a tutoring job. The most important thing is to maintain perfect grades, I'd say this is even more important than finding projects or jobs, because unless you're a genius, whatever project you work on as an undergrad is not gonna be good enough for a research university like ETHZ. In summary the realistic priority is:
1. Perfect grades
2. Good Letters of Recommendations. This can be acquired from 1, get LoR from the profs who teach those classes you got A on. If your uni has a professor at the caliber of the best professors at ETHZ (or the school you're applying), then this has higher priority than grades, but I assume it is not the case.
3. Perfect GRE
4. Research work or some experience in a topic that is relevant to the department you're applying (e. g. CS or math at ETHZ). If you could do something ground breaking like hermes.ffn.ub.es/.../Einstein_1905_relativity.pdf, then this alone is enough. But again I assume that's not gonna be the case 😂

Get a job if it does not affect your priority 1, 2, 3, 4. Ideally your job should be related to 4, but I find that unlikely.

[JesseTheMan]

I mean sciency and technical universities/programs often seem to have more men, vice versa with lots of other things.

[JesseTheMan]

I sometimes consider computer science but will probably just go other way with studying.

[tallandsweet]

That's literally a good thing to me, can you suggest any universities?

[JesseTheMan]

I mean I don't know much about universities outside my country apart from the few most famous ones like ETH and the big British and American ones.

[Anonymous]

Oh if you decide to study in vienna, i really want to see you in person haha.

[tallandsweet]

Lol you'd be surprised, most people are shocked when they see me for the first time although I don't know why

[Opinion Owner]

Hahah why

[SecretGardenBlood65]

Good take.

[Avicenna]

I'd recommend TU Muenchen. I've worked with graduates of that university in Mathe and have been to the Garching campus numerous times.

[daredevil6969]

I have done my masters from TU Darmstadt..., it all depend in which field you want your career to thrive.
Do message if you need some information about TU darmstadt, it offers masters PhD base on experience too.

[Jjpayne]

Thanks for all detail!!! I wish you the best of luck!

[ProfessionalMusician]

Congratulations and I wish you the best of luck and your desires be realized

[tallandsweet]

Thank your very much for sharing your kind words with me :)

[Plitty-Tank]

Maybe they are good but don't know anything about them.

[sixxx]

Do you like math?

[tallandsweet]

"I'll start studying Computer science and Mathematics in September/October 2020 and then drop one of these to pursue my Bachelor's degree in the other subject "

Uhuh. Why? :D

[sixxx]

Well math in uni is really hard and very different from what you learn at school. So just curious if u re really good at math

[tallandsweet]

I'm aware of that. I like math and am good at it, otherwise I wouldn't want to study it.

[sixxx]

Hahaha good to hear that. Just remind you if math in uni is more about analysis stuff and abstract things. It's completely different with high school. So just strong at calculation formula is not enough. You will see it later.

[tallandsweet]

My dearest dude, I'm graduating with a focus on statistics and analysis, my teacher said that people who do my type of graduation sometimes skip a semester or the first year of university in math entirely.
I'll be okay.

[sixxx]

Great to hear that. Hope u enjoy ur class later such as real analysis or abstract algebra. Good luck for ur study.