CBYX is a full year of free study and free living (replete with an allowance, free public transport, general coddling) in Germany, with the added bonus of being official guests of the German parliament. The only requirement is that you have a high school diploma and be between 18 and 24.

The program has a 'professional' focus, but when I did it most of us were still in college and returned to finish our degrees in the US. Back then that seemed very important, but today much less so and there's absolutely no reason why you couldn't participate in this program and then opt to stay in the German university system. Again, for free.

If you take parent post's suggestion to do two semesters of college in the US first, consider going to a community college. Much cheaper and comparable education to a state school.

Happy to answer questions if you're interested in hearing more about my experiences in the CBYX program (1999-2000) and/or community college.

A degree from Germany will not be ABET-accredited.[1] Licensure requirements for engineers differ by state. For CA, I believe it only affects the number of years of professional experience required before you can take the PE exam (1 year for ABET-accredited vs 4 years for non-accredited, or something like that).[2] I don't think accreditation matters for EIT.[3] In general, unless you intend to open your own practice asap, how quickly you become a licensed engineer is not the top priority. Everyone gets there, a bit sooner with an accredited Master's (typically 1 year degree), or later without one.

[1] http://main.abet.org/aps/Accreditedprogramsearch.aspx [2] http://www.bpelsg.ca.gov/applicants/flowchart_for_pe.pdf [3] http://www.bpelsg.ca.gov/applicants/eit_lsitapp.shtml

This is a useful website to determine whether your high school qualifications are enough to attend a German university: https://www.uni-assist.de/zulassungsvoraussetzungen/index.ph...

In other words, someone trying to save money on tuition via a German undergrad would be trading a LOT of time and energy to learn German in exchange for the tuition.

I suppose this is part of the reason for allowing foreigners free education.

There definitely are. I studied entirely in English at TU Darmstadt for example (that was in 2004). They also offered free German classes in a preparatory program back then.

TU Munich, TU Aachen and others are in no way worse than the US Universities. Degrees are respected internationally​.

Learn German, though. For master's courses you will find English classes at every University, but bachelor's not. At least not on TU Munich, as far as I know.

Bachelor level is usually in german. Master level can be done in english but much is in german, too. Without knowing the german language you will have a hard time. If you know the basics in advance and take a language course here, you should be fine.

Accredited in the US? I don't really know. We have a student exchange program with the CMU and that works well. For job hunting it is probably MIT/Stanford/Harvard XOR the rest.

(I am working in the computer science department at the german university KIT, which is one of the best for computer science along with TUM, Saarland and RWTH)

I guess this makes "enough" evidence that German cities have character and one should visit before deciding where to study.

They are also considerably less expensive places to live in.

For many degrees there's no GPA requirement at all. Engineering might very well be one of the cases as it tends to be one of the "harder" degrees (natural sciences, math, engineering etc.) and GPA requirements are mostly for the "popular" ones like business, social sciences etc. Always depends how many slots are available at a given university, too.

Also: if your GPA isn't good enough you can get on a list and "wait" a couple of semesters and for each semester your GPA is virtually improved.

Note: that's how it works for German students but I'm pretty sure it's the same for foreign students (but most will have a requirement of C1 or sometimes B2 German skills). All universities have international offices that you can contact though.

I think Germany is still very much considered an "engineering country". Career wise it's probably going to be a very good thing to hold a German engineering degree. The education is good and there's usually great contacts to engineering companies. I'd be shocked if the degrees weren't accredited in the US. If you can pick a university I'd go with a "TU" (Technische Universität). Also note that we have two different kinds of universities. Universität = "proper" university and Fachhochschule aka FH or Hochschule = university of applied sciences...I'd stay away from these mostly because there's subtle differences that will probably make it harder to have the degree accredited in the US (and they are usually considered lower tier by employers as well).

University regulations differ on a state level so it might be wise to check out different German states. If saving money is one of the focus points I'd advise against Munich. RWTH Aachen is probably the best university in that field, TU Dresden and TU Dortmund are relatively cheap from a cost of living point of view and still good universities.

Also, rents in Jena, Tübingen or Ilmenau are often on a Munich level, but you can always find a few shortcuts (like living in Weimar and taking the train to Jena).

Lastly, if the bachelor isn't meant to be your final degree it doesn't matter as much where you got it.

I would think that you were exaggerating but when I was in Amsterdam once I truly was amazed that actually everyone could speak English. In Germany, especially in Berlin, it's not like Netherlands but most people also do. The biggest difference is Germans are really shy about speaking a different language so they first try speaking German really slowly with hand gestures even when they speak English much better than I do :)

Also, the Netherlands changes tuition. The annual tuition fee at TU Delft for the BSc is 10 kEuro, 15 kEuro in the MSc program for non-EU citizens.

Look at the community colleges near you, and find out which one has better transfer statistics and planning. For example, De Anza College in Cupertino has a prominent page with transfer information[1]; Orange Coast College in Southern California has a nice list of community college ranked by number of students who transferred to UC/CSU[2]. It looks like in the many years since I went to OCC, there are now a number of programs to guarantee admission if you meet the program requirements (course requirements, gpa requirements, procedural requirements), which is nice because it reduces the stress of application processes when you're ready to transfer. Reach out to the transfer center to make sure you start on track, and stay on track to transfer.

[1] https://www.deanza.edu/transfer/ [2] http://www.orangecoastcollege.edu/student_services/counselin...

First of all, community college is a depressing place to be. It's like a cross between high school, juvenile hall, and the DMV.

For example, a lot of the students at community colleges are stoners who are only there because their parents have conditioned their financial support on college attendance, and those are the people who you will have to compete with for enrollment in impacted classes, and who will drag down your grade on group projects. The labs, libraries, and other facilities are pretty much a joke compared to what you get to use at a good UC or CSU, or even a good public high school. You are unlikely to develop personal connections that will help you build your career.

On top of all of that, transferring is not as easy at it might seem. You have to watch the transfer office like a hawk to make sure they don't screw up your paperwork. I had a guaranteed admission agreement, and even so, I caught multiple mistakes and miscommunications between the community college and the UC which would have voided my agreement, or delayed my transfer for a year. De Anza has one of the highest transfer rates in the country, so I can only assume things are even worse at other schools.

While you are trying to push your way through two years (at least) in this depressing and dysfunctional environment, your friends at CSUs and UCs will be enjoying higher quality classmates, instructors, and facilities, living the real college life, getting cool internships and other career opportunities, and making personal connections with people who will be successful in their fields.

In the end, the amount of money I saved by going to community college and transferring to a UC, compared to going to a UC for four years, adds up to the cost of a new Toyota Camry. That's a trivial amount of money, now that I look back on it years later -- a couple hundred dollars a month in student loans over a standard repayment term. Even people who are repaying their student loans don't bat an eye at spending that kind of money on a car, but for some reason people are apprehensive about spending it on two years of quality education and life experiences.

This may seem excessively negative, but I think it is a necessary counterbalance to a lot of the advice I see when this kind of issue comes up.

Mostly, it's weird to be in the position to tell young people that university is an enormous scam meant to sucker people who don't know any better into a gigantic mountain of debt that can never get discharged so you can learn a hell of a lot less than you would in the real world. Not only that, this debt is incurred to pay for football coaches, dorms fancier than any apartment you'll ever have, and administrators whose purpose seems to be introducing systems that necessitate more administrators. Exception for medical school, I suppose, since you can't really learn on your own when it comes to surgery.

* You could change to a non-impacted major - one with more spots open than students. If memory serves, this was none of them.

CCs tend to have much better faculty:student ratios and a much stronger teaching focus than many four year schools (including UCs) will, especially for lower-division courses. As a result, you can, with the right program, get a better lower-division education at a CC, than at a UC, even one that is strong in your course of study.

The Masters programs in top US universities are much easier to get into than their undergraduate degrees, and you'll only pay crazy fees for a short while.

Moreover, undergraduate teaching isn's all that different anyway, they mostly use the same textbooks, and most important: how much you learn is mostly a function of how much effort studying you put in (aka the negative correlation between party and learning). A good Bachelor's degree from a good European university coupled with a good letter of recommendation will get you into masters program in top US schools. (Source: I'm teaching at a European univ here, and I always gets my top students into US masters courses if I want to.)

Some don't even do that, but I think most (not sure) have some kind of language requirement for both German and English: https://www.daad.de/deutschland/studienangebote/internationa...

This is for Computer Engineering, which is a blend between Computer Science and Engineering at the university of Duisburg-Essen.

B1 shouldn't be that hard, but as a native speaker I can't really comment on the difficulty.

>Do they provide many undergrad programs in English?

At least the program I linked to has 50% of its courses in English and exams are always available in English. I have no idea about other programs.

- In the US, you study a broad range of subjects at undergrad. So my bro had to do literature classes and such, even though he really just wanted to mess with computers. My UK and Germanic (Scandinavian/German/Swiss) friends went straight from high school directly into Engineering and only Engineering courses. Advice for doctors: save time this way. You'll be cutting up carcasses your first week of uni. I've met doctors in their early 20s and nurses in their teens.

- "Being a student" is different in Europe, and it's different between the UK and the continent. In the US, there's a 4-year ideal. You go, you study for 4 years, you're done. Not everyone manages this, but the top end at least is very much aimed at you being able to do that with your life. In Germanic countries it's relatively normal to take time out, even have a baby. Plenty of people take 7 years to do a 5 year course. Many friends of mine have done this. You get stressed, you take a semester out. You have a death in the family, you take time out. You generally find that people try to balance studying with life. This also means you'll find older people at university. 27 year olds are common.

- The UK is similar to the US in this respect. Almost everyone I know did their UK courses in one stretch, in the allotted 3 or 4 years.

- Many European universities have no campus as such. They're just spread out around the town. A small town like Cambridge is maybe the closest you get to a campus university, but it's still got town in it. Oxford is also a bit hard to classify, being in a medium sized town but with the colleges all in one section, with independent businesses and shops thrown in. But being out in town might have a big effect on your social life, so think about it.

- Getting into college is more straightforward in Europe than the US. They look at your grades, and only a little at your work/life experience (secondary ways to get in). In many countries there's a GPA you need that's published each year per course. Assuming you did the right mix of high school courses, you can look up what you could have gotten into.

- In the UK it was just a couple of pages when I did it; a list of your predicted grades, and a half page recommendation from a teacher. For Oxbridge it's then a couple of 30 minute interviews, and an offer letter saying what they need you to actually get on the exams. But you're not going to miss the place if they send you an offer. And you can do 6 applications on the same form.

- Very little special treatment in the European systems. Not a lot of stories of rich kids getting into Oxford because their dad built a library. The most you get is the boat race guys who study something odd sounding, but these days a lot of them study a real subject and do the real homework while training like nutters.

- In the US, it's monstrous. First there's legacy and donation people, and sports scholarships. Those are not open to most mortal folk, and I have zero idea how exactly you wrangle a place that way. So then there's filling out a large form, which costs money. There's SATs which you need, more money, more time. Then you gotta find a bunch of teachers who will write that you're a genius. And then you gotta demonstrate that in an amazing essay. And repeat for each university. I ended up not applying in the US when I got my offer letter in mid December.

- Many, many courses are in English despite being in the Germanic world. They don't like to admit it, but their languages are slowly being invaded by English. Also they understand you need English in modern academia. A fair few higher level science courses will be in English entirely. All the young people will speak English, many of them well enough to write academic papers. Anglo culture is everywhere, people will have watched your TV series and they know your music. Even to the point where several of the top acts in those countries are known for songs sung in English.

- Are the degrees accredited? This is an interesting question. In the UK and US I've never heard of anyone being asked to prove they had some degree. The facility does exist to ask your uni of course, it's just I've never heard of anyone being asked to see their diploma. Now it might matter if you're going to use the degree to get a further degree, but from what I've seen plenty of Europeans show up at Oxford to do a masters or DPhil, no problem. Other way round probably mostly works too.

- The only place I've ever been asked to show my diploma was in Switzerland. I had to go collect it at my old uni.

- I think Cambridge is very much not a campus university, because it's scattered around the city. I think of a campus university as somewhere like Warwick, Nottingham or Reading, with academic buildings within a large park-like area sometimes including residence buildings, where people not studying or working at the university don't often walk.

- I was asked to show my diploma for my first job in the UK. I don't know if they checked it with the university.