AMD2: Engineering Education in German

For AMD2, I decided to research how German Universities rank compared to other Universities in the world and how the application of this education in the worldwide Formula Student series compares. For more information on the Formula Student series, visit "formulastudent.de". But, in a nutshell, Formula Student is a student design competition where you need to build a small "formula-style" race car that you could sell to the public so the competition includes events in the following: accleration, endurance, autocross, skidpad, business, cost, and engineering design. Besides engineering knowledge, another factor to how good each team's car is also the team's resources: money and faculty support.

As a control, the team at Michigan is always a top team out of over 500 worldwide universities. We have a lot of money compared to most American teams and have great university facilities to use. The biggest competitors for everybody is the German Universities. They have a lot of support from industry and therefore a ton of money. This is usually about three times our budget. They also have lots of team members. The Michigan team is about 30 people. Most top German teams have upwards of 75 people.

One of the top competitors each year is Technische Universität München. According to "Times Higher Education", TU München is the 28th best technical university in the world. RWTH Aachen University is a university that is just now starting to make a name for themselves. They are ranked the 39th best technical university. Another team with one of the strongest teams is Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). KIT is one of my favorite teams as they are extremely friendly and even have their own beer!

The one thing I am startled about is that Universität Stuttgart does not make the list! They have had the best team in Formula Student history. I'm not sure if that stems from all of their support from Porsche (since Porsche is based in Stuttgart) or their education.

I started to look into these German engineering programs and how they work and realized that most engineering programs are 6 semesters of coursework. But, most schools require you to work prior to studying engineering and also require an internship during study at some point. So, perhaps due to the fact that all students on these teams have practical experience in a professional environment, that helps the teams a lot because they can pool all of that experience. This is something I will now talk to some of my friends from other teams about in the future.