American pursuing a Masters in Germany?

I think this is going to be very difficult to pull off. You likely will not able to work in Germany because of your student visa restrictions (you may be able to get a job on campus, if available). If you got hired in just as an immigrant worker with a work visa / blue card status worker, you likely wouldn't be able to go to school on that work visa, but considering the EU rules for immigration, that's not really an option. So not only is there no market for you, but you have absolutely 0 access to that market.

With that in mind, you face two major hurdles here. The first is that you will need to prove to the german government that you have people who will be supporting you financially through the duration of the process of finishing your degree. Even if you are paying for this with loans, you likely will need to either give proof of personal financial assets (many thousands of dollars in the bank) or someone who will sign off with their financial information such as a relative saying "Yes, I'm paying for mplsla to go to school and will be supporting them the entire time". The second hurdle is that you often have about a month from the time after the school in Germany accepts you that classes start. This makes it extremely difficult to plan where you'll be going as well as arranging logistics to get there. Having such a short timeframe makes it expensive and stressful on it's own. That's < 4 weeks to get your visa paperwork handled, figure out your living situation, handle transportation, get needed information and supplies to start the year, etc. It's not like in the US where you apply to grad school in December and then you know around March/April if you got in and things start in September. You won't have nearly as much time, even with friends out there who can help you figure things out.

What I think is a more realistic and beneficial option here is to find grad schools that have strong study abroad programs, look at linguistics degrees, german degrees (although most of these are german lit based), SLA degrees, language / cultures degrees, etc. that offer the ability to do a year of your masters degree in Germany. You won't be subject to the same level of financial scrutiny, the university will handle all the tricky questions and the paperwork setup, and you will have ample time to plan and figure things out. The downside here is that it's one year instead of two, but I think it's the best option to shoot for. If you do your homework, you also may be able to find schools that have money for graduate research fellowships; there's people who have been given grants by their schools for research that involves living expenses for them to stay in Berlin / München / etc. for a certain time.

Long story short, a full graduate degree in Germany will be hard. But getting there through a degree program stateside is very much within your reach.

/r/IWantOut Thread