Higher education helps students choose the right course: Which university is hip?

How do students choose their study location?

What do German students value when choosing their study location? According to SMAVA, most do not look for their clusters of excellence, famous ones Professoren, the well-equipped library or the quality of teaching, but for much more profane things:

The reputation of the university, which can be very subjective, the quality of life of the city, as a leisure offer and pubs culture and the cost of living, which must not be too high. However, as SMAVA restricts, different things are important to every student!

Beer instead of career goal

The beer in the university pub, the cool party and a cheap, but centrally located shack are more important to students than their supposed career opportunities - that does not have to be bad, because how many good relationships already have with a beer in the corner pub started?

This should not only give German HR professionals who are looking for high potentials to think about. Most of the classic university rankings also paint a very one-sided picture from this point of view.

Set your own criteria

This is what Smava wants to do with his ranking. For this purpose the 50 German top universities were rated according to the three factors.

In addition, the interactive graphic presented above allows students to set their own criteria and preferences themselves. As a result, you will receive an assessment of which of the 50 universities best suits your own selection criteria.

How did the “Good reputation” ranking come about?

And this is how the ranking came about: For the “University reputation” category, SMAVA then relied on normal university rankings. The mean was taken from the results of three renowned rankings to ensure that no valuation method was overrepresented.

The score in this category is made up of:

• 1/3 rating from QS World University Rankings
• 1/3 rating from University Ranking by Academic Performance
• 1/3 ranking of Webometrics Ranking Web of Universities

The top universities according to this category:

1. Ruprecht-Karl University of Heidelberg
2. Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich
3. Technical University of Munich
4. Humboldt University of Berlin
5. Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen
6. Free University of Berlin
7. Georg-August-University Goettingen
8. Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg
9. University of Hamburg
10. RWTH Aachen University of Technology

How did the “Quality of Life” ranking come about?

In the category “quality of life” indicators were summarized, which stand especially for the quality of life of students, for example the number of students in the city or the number of bars and clubs (in relation to the population).

With many like-minded people around it is much more comfortable. In addition, we have added the number of bicycle thefts, since a good quality of life also means that one feels safe.

The top universities according to this category:

1. Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen
2. Philipps-University of Marburg
3. Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen
4. Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich
5. Technical University of Munich
6. Ruprecht-Karl University of Heidelberg
7. Darmstadt University of Technology
8. University of Regensburg
9. Goethe University Frankfurt am Main
10. Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg

How did the “Quality of Life” ranking come about?

The costs for food and the study fees are at a similar level throughout Germany.

Therefore, the cost of living and the cost of going out in the different university cities were compared, because these two factors are obviously particularly important for students.

The ranking is composed equally of these two factors:

• 50% Average costs for a shared room 2014 from the index of WG-Suche.de - https://www.wg-suche.de/wg-zimmer-kosten
• 50% Number of cheap bars per 100.000 resident - http://www.yelp.de/ Bars (cheap)

The top universities according to this category:

1. Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen
2. Philipps-University of Marburg
3. Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen
4. University of Leipzig
5. Humboldt University of Berlin
6. University of Saarland
7. Free University of Berlin
8. University of Bayreuth
9. Georg-August-University Goettingen
10. Technical University Dresden