Prior to the Studies

Excellent supervision ratio

Compared to other universities, there are relatively few students of electrical engineering and information technology at TU Dortmund. Nevertheless, there are many professors and academic staff so that good support can be provided. After a few weeks, you will be able to identify most of the faces in your semester - but there are still so many of them that you are sure to find fellow students with whom you can learn well. At the beginning of your studies, there are events with full lecture theatres, where students from other degree programmes are often present, for example, from physics or industrial engineering. Later in your studies, and especially in the Master's programme, you are close to the professors and staff, and many events have fewer participants than a school class.

Many support offers

Especially in the first semesters, there are many offers that make it easier to get started with your studies. For example, there is a helpdesk for the maths courses, where you can get help from students of higher semesters on all exercises in order to solve the problems. There is also such an offer in Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering, and there is also a presentation that explains some lecture content additionally from a student's point of view. So you don't have to worry about being completely alone at the university.

Clearly organised study programme

Maybe you've heard from friends who study something else that one of the biggest challenges of studying is making a timetable before the semester starts. With us it's different. Here, there is a study plan that is easy to follow and is also structured coherently. Of course, you are not forced to take the subjects in this order, but it is definitely recommended. Nevertheless, there are a few ways to organise your week according to your wishes, especially through the many exercise groups offered. By the way, you don't have to worry about not getting a seat in a lecture in compulsory modules - there are always enough of them.

Two examination dates per examination period

There is always an exam at the end of a module. These take place during the lecture-free period. There are two dates per subject in such an examination phase, usually one at the beginning and one at the end of the lecture-free period. This has the advantage that you can schedule the exams to fit in with your learning progress. Even if you do not pass an exam on the first date offered, this gives you the opportunity to take another exam a few weeks later.

School knowledge in mathematics

In the first three semesters, a large share of the programme consists of higher mathematics. Therefore, you can certainly imagine that you should have a basic understanding of mathematics. An advanced maths course in your A-levels is of course helpful, but you will soon realise that mathematics is handled differently at university than at school. A basic course is not automatically a big disadvantage, as the content you need for the start of your studies is also repeated in the maths pre-course.

Regardless of whether you took maths in the basic or advanced course, the most important thing is that you can motivate yourself to sit at a problem for longer and work out the solution yourself. You can't do it without maths - and that's the case in all engineering degree programmes. If the mere thought of an integral causes you panic, you should probably look for something else.

School knowledge in physics

At school, you probably learned about currents and voltages in physics classes. If you already know roughly what a capacitor or a transformer is, that is of course an advantage. However, it is by no means necessary to have attended a physics class: The approach to problems in the natural sciences such as physics is very different from that in engineering sciences such as electrical engineering. In addition, the subject content is all explained from the ground up.

School knowledge in coding

In the first semester of the degree programme, one of the subjects is Introduction to Programming. Here you learn programming in C++. Of course, you have a certain head start if, for example, you had to code in computer science classes. If you haven't done that, it's no problem at all - no previous knowledge is required and everything is covered from the beginning. Later in your studies, you can get to know the interfaces between electrical engineering and computer science and dive deep into the world of hardware and software if you want to - but that is only one of many possibilities.