Surviving Erasmus MaMaSELF at LMU Munich 🇩🇪 | First-Semester Courses: Notes and Lessons Learned

Guten Tag! Ich heiße Owen. My first semester of surviving Munich ended a while ago, but I think a short guide, or call it a confession, is in order: partly so that anyone unlucky (or reckless) enough to pick Munich for any semester of Erasmus MaMaSELF has something to go on, and partly as a reminder to myself that I need to work harder.

To keep things organized, besides each course name I'll also note whether it was taught at LMU Munich (LMU) or the Technical University of Munich (TUM)!

Munich's course registration system, explained

First, the course system. What makes our program special is that our partner schools in Munich are LMU and TUM. They look like two separate universities, but you can actually take courses at both, which I find one of the program's most novel and valuable features. In the end, both universities' names go on your diploma, and with the other country you choose, you're effectively getting a master's degree from three universities.

That's also why we have more to think about when choosing courses. Since I originally chose LMU, all my core courses are at LMU, and I'm placed in its Geomaterials and Geoscience department, so mineral-related courses inevitably show up among my required courses. I can't say I'm passionate about minerals, but I have to admit it was a novel experience to see that my department has its own mineral museum, and that professors sometimes bring out actual minerals in class to explain things. After all, a lot of materials ultimately come back to minerals! My required courses at the time were Heterogeneous System, Polarization Microscopy, Fundamental of Materials Science I, Glass and Ceramics, and Structure Determination. If you're a younger student thinking of coming to LMU in your first or second year, there's really no need to worry: earth science courses don't make up a large share of the required courses.

Next, let's talk about TUM courses! If LMU is your main school, besides LMU's own electives, any graduate course from the physics or chemistry departments at either LMU or TUM can count as an elective.

There's one not-so-fair conversion rule to mention here, though. Because I'm tied to LMU, a 5 ECTS course at TUM only counts as 3 ECTS at LMU. To make up a fully recognized 6 ECTS, you need to pair it with a TUM lab course, the so-called FOPRA, and again, labs offered by either the physics or chemistry department are accepted. In addition, LMU's Fundamental of Materials Science I and next semester's Fundamental of Materials Science II each require another 2 ECTS of lab work before you get the course's full 6 ECTS. Under this course's rules, besides LMU's own labs, TUM's FOPRA also counts. FOPRA really is a versatile, great-value lab course! So if you're worried that studying in Germany means nothing but theory and no experiments, don't be: there are plenty of lab options, and in the end everyone takes quite a few lab courses, whether for credits or out of interest. Just remember that for each lab you need a team of 3 before you can do it!

Now for the dark side of studying in Germany. Every semester we have to complete 30 ECTS to unlock the next chapter and move on to the next country; otherwise Erasmus MaMaSELF kicks you out. If you choose LMU or TUM, you just need 60 ECTS across the two semesters, and it doesn't matter which semester you take more in. But anyone who has studied in Germany knows how heavy the graduate workload is here. Passing 30 ECTS in one semester takes a lot of effort, and on top of that we have no option to delay graduation, unlike regular German university programs, which allow you to finish in 2.5–3 years.

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For more, check out the article of the same name on my Medium!!! Feel free to follow my Medium too; there are 50-plus other posts on studying abroad, travel and more~

Erasmus MaMaSELF慕尼黑大學(LMU)求生記🇩🇪|第一學期修課心得與檢討

https://medium.com/p/ed99d85e582b