Physics GRE Discussion Forums

anyone of you know anything about Universities in germany. do they accept gre scores. and any one of you know how to apply? . i tried some of their websites like Max planck institute, frankfurt uni, heidelberg. etc.. but half of the things are written in german and also they have learning german an obligation.

i believe some universities of germany are very famous for their theoretical physics studies.

Since when did the Germans know anything about physics?

butsurigakusha wrote:Since when did the Germans know anything about physics?

hahahaha you are surely joking.. aren't you..

really hillarious..

1)gauss 2)einstein 3)planck 4)bohm 5)weinberg 6) riemann 7) heisenberg ketterle to name a few... and the list goes on....

i think he was looking for a specific year as the answer..like Germans have known something about physics since June 1749..

A lot of people from the Max Plank institute showed up for the Pacific Coast Gravity Conference.

But you should remember how U.S.-centric this site tends to be. @ least it seems that way. Very few people in the admissions thread have applied outside of the U.S. as far as I can tell.

May the wind be always at your back,
-Wonton Burrito Meals

Hey blackcat007,
I think I can help you. I'm German and I'm currently studying at a German university.
So, if you need help just write a PM and tell me what you want to know.
By the way I'm pretty sure you will need no GRE because almost nobody here knows what it is.

By the way I'm pretty sure you will need no GRE because almost nobody here knows what it is.

That's the spirit! Cheers!

I too would like to know about phyics in germany. I am a north american but the possibility of going to grad school in germany interests me. I am doing a minor in german and I understand that phyiscs PhD programs are in english anyway.

http://www.mpi-stuttgart.mpg.de/

That is a top research institute in Germany. They have kick ass research going on esp in cond matter and I am pretty sure they have a whole lot of research in other areas too. Check it out

blackcat007 wrote:

butsurigakusha wrote:Since when did the Germans know anything about physics?

hahahaha you are surely joking.. aren't you..

really hillarious..

1)gauss 2)einstein 3)planck 4)bohm 5)weinberg 6) riemann 7) heisenberg ketterle to name a few... and the list goes on....

He was very obviously being sarcastic, but thanks

I'd love to go to Germany for graduate school but since I have a terrible memory, I'm not very good at languages. Good luck to you if you can, the country is amazing.

But English is the lingua franca of science. You really only need to know the language for other low-brow endeavors, such as purchasing beer (das bier), etc.

will wrote:But English is the lingua franca of science. You really only need to know the language for other low-brow endeavors, such as purchasing beer (das bier), etc.

I've heard that in many smaller countries (like Finland) upper level science classes are conducted in English for that reason (not to mention that it wouldn't be economical to make native language text books for such a small market). I don't know if that's the case in Germany -- it's a big enough place with enough science going on that they could do everything in German if they wanted to (not to mention that German was the former lingua franca of science). That said, Germans (especially younger ones) are generally pretty handy with English anyway, so maybe they do use English in the classrooms. There is at least one German on the board, maybe s/he say how things are done.

It is not that easy to give a general answer to your question.
Usually all basic courses (so all the undergrad stuff) are taught in German and there are, of course, German books. But for very special topics there are no German books and even no German words for the terms used. So the longer you study the more English you'll need and there might even be courses taught in English but that's (still) very seldom. I think when studying physics here everyone notices after quite a few semesters that German is pretty useless for a scientific career in an international environment...

That said, Germans (especially younger ones) are generally pretty handy with English anyway,

<= that's because everyone has to learn it in school for several years (in case of university students I think 5 years and more are the standard; I had English lessons for 11 years in school starting at age 8. Wow, I'm shocked myself what a long time... )

I know it's not the point, but as far as German books for high level topics go, I know there's a bunch by Walter Greiner. He's like the German Landau.

http://th.physik.uni-frankfurt.de/~greiner/books.html

i've had my share of looking up physics grad programs at german universities, and i'm still contemplating applying to either a dutch, german or a swiss university.
i can surely tell you that apart from a few universities (U Bonn in germany, and a several in netherlands (amsterdam, utrecht etc), none in swiss), all others have their science courses in their native language. Although i've observed that the programs are mostly partly taught in english, probably due to the professors that teach some of the subjects.
anyway, i really doubt it'll be a pain in the ass to study physics in german (the technical vocab seemingly isnt that entirely different than english). they ask for a standardized german test. if you have some months, you can take a shot at it. go to a Goethe near you, and weigh your chances.

will wrote:I know it's not the point, but as far as German books for high level topics go, I know there's a bunch by Walter Greiner. He's like the German Landau.

http://th.physik.uni-frankfurt.de/~greiner/books.html

Hey Will, one of the professors I've done research for is on that link, and I've had 2 classes with him (and got As in both). Greiner was his mentor.

You think this is worth putting in my CV/personal statement? I know Greiner is well known, but I'm not sure if it's significant or not. Though I did a project for relativistic quantum mechanics and I used Greiner's books, I'm applying for Applied Physics I think. Not sure if having a legendary theorist (a mentee of Greiner's from back in the day) writing me a rec letter for an Applied Physics program would be good or not :/

-Maxwell's Demon