From India to the Land of Ideas

Annamalai Palaniappan, Mechanical Engineering (2008-2012) talks about his experience on studying in one of the best universities in the world.

An Introduction about you to our readers

Hi all, I am Annamalai Palaniappan. I was born and brought up in Pondicherry. I did my bachelors in Mechanical Engineering at GCT and graduated in 2012. Although I had a trainee job in the field of steering design, I decided to quit and join Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt (THI) to pursue my masters in International Automotive Engineering. I completed my masters at the THI in 2014 and now I am working as  a Research Assistant in the field of Vehicle Safety at the same university.

Factual description about your journey from GCT to Hochschule Ingolstadt

The cost of education in Germany is affordable compared to other countries. I had two job offers after my bachelors one in IT Industry and another in Core Engineering. Obviously I opted for the job in Core Engineering. But two  weeks into the work and I found that the environment was not as I expected. Work from Monday to Saturday, timings from 8:30 to 5:30 and the salary paid for that job looked like too much of exploitation. On the other hand, I always wanted to do Masters in my field of interest. The opportunity came and I grabbed it immediately. Thus started my journey to the Land of Ideas.

What made you to chose Hochschule Ingolstadt when you had plethora of other universities to chose across Germany ? How do you rate Hochschule Ingolstadt when compared other top universities across the world and IIT’s in India ?

I will not be able to rate the THI against other world class universities or IIT’s since I haven’t been personally to any other university. The course here was a perfect blend of what is required in the Automotive industry. Moreover, the other universities in Germany had more restrictions for applications such as language constraints, GRE, semester fees to name a few. I had met most of the criteria set by the university so I opted for the THI.

What about the funding opportunities one can avail during their course of study in the university?

The course as such now is without any semester fee. This means you pay nothing to the university, except the regular student registration fee of around 40 € per semester. There are DAAD scholarships which can be applied after the end of first semester or second semester. Students with good semester marks can get a one time scholarship of up to 3000€.

Describe your typical day at the university ?

I vividly remember my student days at the THI. I get up late because of the cold weather here. My breakfasts are usually coffee and bread with jam. Each lecture is 1:30 hours long and in a day we would have around 3 or 4 lectures at different times. There is no attendance and everything in the class will be uploaded online as well. So it doesn’t matter to skip a lecture or two. I make sure that I am punctual to a lecture or else I skip it. And if I find it boring, I leave the lecture hall and go to library or cafeteria. The library facilities offered are very good and has almost everything to make sure that students spend their time productively. I mostly lunch at the university canteen or go out to some ‘ Doner shops.’ Post lunch, I attend the afternoon lectures and head back to room. Later I join my friends and we cook our dinner together. You don’t have to really worry if you don’t have the so called ‘cooking skills’, you can master it as the days go.

What are the different kind of opportunities that one can get after graduating from Hochschule Ingolstadt in particular and getting a MS degree from a reputed institution (In Germany) in general ?

There are a lot of opportunities here given that one can speak and understand german, at least with mistakes. One can do a PhD or get a job. But there are no campus recruitments as in India. One has to go to the website of each company you wish to work for and apply online for specific jobs and wait for interview calls.

Your plans after graduating from Hochschule Ingolstadt?

As I said earlier, I graduated in 2014 and now I am working at the THI as a research assistant. In future, i would like to work with the coding and designing brains of GCT.

How is the research scenario in your university ?

Most Professors teaching in the THI, do collaborative research projects with various automotive companies and these projects are more oriented towards the future of the Automotive industry. This also enable the graduate students to join the particular project he/she is interested. Projects are done as like in industry and the industrial partners support the students wholeheartedly. Labs are also equally equipped to carry out research.

How has the experience of studying in GCT helped you in getting accustomed to the life in Germany ? Please share your experience

I had seen students from different colleges of Tamilnadu and India here at the THI. Personally, I feel GCT had given a lot more freedom to the students explore out when compared to other colleges. I can make some quick decisions because of the independent hostel life I experienced in GCT.

If given a chance to go back to your stay at GCT , would you have done anything different?

Yes, I would have studied Computer Science Engineering or Information Technology rather.

If you are given a chance to go back to your placement time, would you still choose to go for higher studies?

No, I would have worked for sometime where I would be able to learn something professionally before doing Masters.

Your message and advice to MS aspirants across GCT.

Don’t do MS just for the sake of having a PG degree. Think whether the stress, the pain, the time and the efforts that you have to put before arriving at a decision. Obviously for someone who doesn’t understand Thermodynamics in his/her Bachelor’s should think twice before applying for MS in core Mechanical Engineering.

A general tip from my side would be do something productive. Learn what the industry is in need of,  in addition to your curriculum. Your curriculum gives you the basics. Build upon it and learn the other nuances. For example. a Mechanical Engineering student who loves design should be able to work freely in Catia’s latest version and a CS or IT student who loves web and scripting should know to develops some apps in PHP, Python, Ruby on Rails. If you love your smartphones very much and if you can code, then you should learn android programming or ios native programming. If you are someone who loves sketching, then you can very well be a UI/UX designer. If you are someone who is good in writing, then you can be a content writer, more specifically a strategic content writer who can sell any product with a short and crisp content. If your brain is more into electronics, buy an arduino or raspberry pi board and make some challenging projects like object detection using sensors. If you are more into system designing and controlling, learn Matlab – the most used software for system modeling.

Learn something besides your curriculum where you are interest lies in. Invest some money into it. It is fun. Its not wrong to spend for something you are interested in. It will definitely pay you back !