Journey from India to Germany's Masters - A real story

 Hi friends, & especially expats!

I hope this would be an eye opener to people who want to apply germany for Masters.

Paris, France

First thing, Who am I to write such big topics? Am I a government officer claiming some statistics? I am a commoner like you who once upon a time also dreamt of coming to Europe and other developed countries like Singapore or Australia. I wanted to explore outside my home country, India. When I was searching for Masters during years - 2015 or 2016, the situation in USA was not great, and for middle class indian families, going to USA leads to either loans or getting university scholarships. Then I found the golden news about some courses for german universities which are at free of cost or reasonable cost. I tried to research the truth behind it & finally found one of my favourite course in Aachen university. I applied only 5 to 6 courses, and was successful in coming to Europe through German masters university. 

I was warned by my well wishers that English is not the spoken language and I might need to learn German to survive here. Luckily my course was completely in English, and I managed with basic German, also to get a job after my masters even during post covid crisis. I would say still I struggled for the same reason for mingling with the locals and also my job opportunities narrowed down to english speaking opportunities.

Well, I got job also in a pretty big firm and the work culture is also good. I was initially very happy to start in a big firm like this as I was given good hikes in beginning of my few years, but then it becomes very stagnant too. Learning curve also peaked in the beginning. But then with new roles and new responsibilities, the excitement of learning started diminishing and rather job life started immersing with full of stress, headaches, work pressure and unfortunately the environment of blame game started emerging. The environment started becoming questionable with self doubt, lower self confidence and lesser being social in the office environment.

But this is just my story! What am I am planning to do next? What are my next plans? Just like everyone else, decided to move out from the toxic environment, searching new opportunities within and outside the firm. That's how I figured it out. That's how most of us start to find things to re-adjust. 

For me gathering and sharing knowledge is a part of an excitement, earning is a secondary factor and in general, engineers are paid well. Of course people with bigger aspirations of higher salary are never satisfied and it is significantly lesser than other countries like Australia or USA.

Here you might already ask yourself, why am I raising questions on doing masters and talking about salaries and the language? Because its all interlinked to each other :D unfortunately. I just made you walkthrough about the intricacies of Germany and the struggles involved in deciding to stay here being an expat.

Zugspitze, highest peak of Germany

I would start with the feature of salary expectations first. Salary is of course a big factor for 80% of the Indian students. Staying outside India brings sacrifice of not just friends, families, hometown but also Indian street foods, spicy recipes, colorful neighbourhood, happening picnics, family get-togethers. Overall you leave a very bright present life behind to hug a new country of new culture and new language and most important, newest weather. All is well in the beginning. Personally I love travelling, so coming as a student in Germany was just an excuse to travel to Europe to see multiple countries at a very young age. ;) This did gave uttermost satisfaction for initial months and then the stark reality comes into picture of the expenditure involved in the new nation such as Germany. So "Money" factor is one of the most crucial reason for going outside India, believe it or not, thats the biggest truth and we cannot run away from that. 

I would highlight the situations of  "Indian students - surviving in Germany". Here I would just say, yes, as students too we have the previlege to earn money and survive with that in this country. But, this is nominal and with that, you can just pay your basic rent, food and little bit travelling is also possible. For some students, they get easily technical jobs if they have past experience, but majorly people get part time jobs in kfc, MCD and factories as labourer jobs. I know you might have heard or read the same about Australia and USA students too. So till here not much of the difference you would feel compare to others. But then comes the other part of the coin. Your friends who would have gone to Canada would have already completed Master in even 1 year, in UK at least in the expected duration of 2 years. Inspite such friends can be rated lower compare to your quality in the past, because in Germany average number of years people take to clear masters is unfortunately more than 3 or 3.5 years. It would be 3 years only if you studied with determination, without distraction and if you did not face any depression which is also a common issue of expats who face home sickness, and are especially introverts, who feel very difficult to accustom in the new planet. 

Lets say when we plan, we would consider that we are good hard working lads, thus lets say we take 3 years too for our Masters. But the story doesn't ends here. Now is the job searching phase after Masters. If you are a fresher who had no experience in India, sometimes struggle a lot to get the first job. If its IT domain, and english speaking, still you might have better luck to crack job in couple of months. Its also expected that during masters you must do internship or assistant part time jobs in technical domain where you see your future jobs after masters. Getting internship or part time job also takes a lot of hard work with the language and other cultural difference stuff. But if you belong to non-IT & non-english speaking domains, first you have to parallely do your vigorous work outs in German language and then try innumerable months to crack an internship in your interested field. Due to all these reasons its not expected that you complete masters soon. You are competing with bachelor students who studied in Germany, who had better practical knowledge as they studied seriously compare to our stlye of bachelor studies in India. So with all these accomplishments, you might get a job with decent salary.

For non-freshers who worked in India for more than 2 or 3 years, sometimes its really easy to survive if they are not changing their domains. But even if their domain is same, sometimes they are not valued in terms of higher salary. They are paid as freshers. So they have to start from page one again in this scenario. People who switched directly from India with the bachelors degree and have worked in India for 2 to 3 years, would get more salary than you in the same job profiles. These are realities difficult to absorb. So in terms of money benefits, this country can be rated as one of the lowest compare to Canada, USA and Australia. Among European nations, Sweden is the better pay master, and Switzerland too pays significantly higher. Then why choose Germany? Germany is also the highest tax taker from the best paid jobs. Tax is around 42% and if both couples are working you are at loss, as both of you end up paying one of the highest tax. If you can convince to have a non working life partner, you can snatch the part of the tax benefits for yourself.

One more important part is with all above hurdles, once they all are done you might feel to have some luxury and want to buy cars. May be with decent salary you can afford cars, but you might have relucatant thoughts to get one of the costliest driving license of the world. The driving license is not just costly but also seeking it and acquiring it is like a project delivery of your office. You need to dedicate in average a year or two to learn it, pass in theory exam and then thriftfully start spending in the practical classes.

Innsbruck, Austria

I am not saying Germany is bad, but honestly its not the best choice especially for Indian students at the moment. May be its great for your exposure as you get to also know about so may european cultures, foods and traditions. As indians, we anyways love being a multi-lingual country with various religions, caste and creed, I would say Europe gives you similar vibes in that direction. Currently as India is blooming in its economy, Germany has been drowning due to its ever lasting inflation of last 3 years, it might not be wise to take a decision to come to Germany. Post covid and especially post Ukraine crisis, Germany government policies has been pulling in too many refugees and the development of the country has come to a stake. Its also investing its money to showcase Russia its power during the current war, and all of it in the tax payers money. So after staying for around 7 years in Deutschland, I can share that current situation is alarming, not the right time for many fields to dive into this nation as you might sink and drown before even floating. 

But if you have decided and you are already in the mind set considering Germany has one of the best industry in automotive and mechanical engineering sector, then I can assure you that you can still make your position in such an unknown world with lots of self confidence and self perseverance. We Indians can survive in any situation as we are grown ups either ourselves facing lots of difficulties or we see our loved ones around who struggle a lot to survive even in India. So we know the recipe of existence from our homeland itself. Bring colors and harmony from our nation, and make Germany also more happening place for expats.