Martin & Marseille - Life at the Grande École

Showdown: Ecole Centrale v. University of Karlsruhe

nospam@example.com (Martin Braun) — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 15:53:05 +0100

Cryptic title? Well, it's not correct, anyway. I will write a comparison, that's true, but it's extremely subjective.
First of all, I can't really compare the universities as such. I can only compare my personal experience in both of them. Which is, of course, heavily biased towards Karlsruhe because I spent more time there. In other words, this will be completely unreliable as a objective comparison.

First of all, let's have a look at the systems in general. In Germany, in order to study at a university, you need Abitur (what you get when you graduate from High School, usually at the age of 18-19). For an engineer, the formalities are simply. You can basically choose you university, fill in a form or two and you're in. A Master's equivalent degree (which used to be the Diplom, now we do a Master too) typically takes around 5 years to complete. Well, that's what the universities say. The guidelines for exams are really quite loose, and most students take longer to complete their degree. EE students at my uni finish on average after 11.5 semesters, while the official number of semesters you should need (We call it Regelstudienzeit) is 10. As I said, the rules are simple: You have to do a required number of exams, a diploma thesis and other stuff like 6 months of internship. You rarely have to turn up to lectures - if you can pass the exam without lectures, that's fine.
The first two years are pretty much the same for everyone (who decides to stick to the suggested curriculum) and consist of basics in mathematics, physics, logic, electronics and such lark. You may take up to 6 semesters to do all these exams, but you can also start taking other exams before you've finished. One important reason for this period is to reduce the number of students to a level which can be more easily coped with (not officially, of course). The number of students usually drops around 30-50% in my degree. Plus, if you've managed this phase you know you're clever enough to manage the rest. After that, you can start to diversify. The longer you study, the more freedom you get in choosing your subjects. Then, when you've done enough exams and you feel like it, you can do your diploma thesis which concludes your degree.

In France, the system is quite different. First of all, the universities as we have them here are not exactly the top of the educational system. The top notch comes from the Grandes Ecoles, and the Ecoles Centrales have quite good reputation. Getting into one of these is not that easy (except for Erasmus students). First of all, after you've done your bac (which is the equivalent to the Abitur, but French students are usually a year younger when they graduate), you can either go to uni or apply for the Classe Preparatoire (well, there are other options, but let's stick to these. Besides, I don't really know the system that well). If you want to go to a Ecole Centrale or likewise, you need Classe Prepa.
According to the people I asked, this must be the most horrible time in a students life. It usually goes on for 2 years and, like our Vordiplom (the first phase I talked about), teaches basics in maths, physics or whatever you need for your university (It depends on what you want to do after Classe Prepa, if you want to do economics you get other courses). I have no reason not to believe all the people who told me they had practically no free time, got bad marks no matter how good they were and so on.
Plus, it costs. You can't just sign up, you need to pay up, too. Obviously, you can't work the same time... so poor guys without scholarships will have a hard time here. But the thing is, if you pass, you really know some stuff. I had class with 12 other Prepa graduates, and most of them could do Fourier Transforms in their heads. Now, I personally believe that this is not exactly a skill worth having, but it does speed up lectures if basic mathematics can be considered understood.

The degree at Ecole Centrale takes three years. Practically everything is planned out for you, more like school than a German university - including sports and languages. The education is way more broad than that of a German engineer: There are courses for economics and even human resource management. Everything is taught, including programming. Most of these things are considered non-scientific in Germany, which means: students can teach themselves. So, this is a big difference: At Ecole Centrale, students are a lot more in classes, but they have less stuff to do at home than in Germany.
Before getting to year three, there are very little choices to be made: which languages you want to learn, which type of sport you'll do, little things like this.

Another reason this comparison is pretty subjective is the huge difference between degrees. In Germany, I am an EE student, with very little non-engineer subjects. After graduating, I'm supposed to know a little of all EE subjects and a great deal about one specific EE topic. Graduates from ECM (Ecole Centrale Marseille) are called Ingenieurs Generaliste - generalist engineer. The idea is, you know the basics of everything: computer science, chemistry, physics, mechanical engineering, programming, electronics, signal processing... and so on. In 3rd year, you can specialise and get 6 months of subject-specific courses - but also courses everyone has to take, management stuff and that lark. You are educating future leaders, not specialists. It probably compares better to our Wirtschaftsingenieur, a mix between economics and engineering.

What I miss in Germany's universities (and possibly had too much of in France's) is loyalty towards the Alma Mater. When the University of Karlsruhe was declared 'Elite', everyone took the mick out of it. When ECM went 'Centrale', everyone was proud like someone very proud. In France, the effect is that the university creates a huge network: former students of this (or other) Ecoles Centrales bond. If your degree says 'Ecole Centrale' on the top, people won't start having a look at your grades.

Extra-curricular activities are tightly integrated into the Ecole-life, too. Of course these are not compulsory, but the main principle is to create a tight group anyway, so most people show up to at least some of the clubs, parties, concerts, theatre performances and whatever else there is. German students usually do a lot of extra-curricular things too, but all the organisations are a lot more independent; many people often do things in clubs which have nothing to do with the university at all. Again, it's more individual here and less a sense of community. I could not decide which is better...

Tour of the Centrale

nospam@example.com (Martin Braun) — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 11:49:06 +0100

I'll show you the inside of my École today. You've already seen it from on side and from top, so
here it is from the front:

However, if you go in the back entrance, you can see this:

This shows the confusion with the constant changing of name. At the top, it's got the current
name. But you can also see references to EGIM (which it was before, doesn't exist anymore), the
ESIM and the ISPA (2 of 4 schools which were put together to form the EGIM), the I.M.T. (I'm not
quite sure where this comes in, but apparently that's what the building used to be called), and
then there's LATP, INRIA, Polytech and L3M where I don't even know what they are.

But let's go inside.

This is what most class rooms look like. Reminds you of school? Trust me, everything here reminds
you of school.

This certainly reminds you of school - the timetable. It's even got time blocked for sports.

The students have a fair amount of own facilities. This is the foyer, where most of the school parties take place. There's rules, though, e.g. the no-alcohol-but-beer rule.

The outside is not too special, I admit. But you can play volleyball and - even more important - petanque.

But then, you can always meet with others to form a group. They've got a backline and most of stuff you need, a couple of pianos too.

The amount of computers per student is quite impressive, but as the computer rooms also double as classrooms for practical classes there are times when you can't get a computer at all - but then you'd usually be having class yourself. All machines are state-of-the-art dell computers, without double-boot, so there's always a Linux box available. Printing's for free.

Work hard, Play hard

nospam@example.com (Martin Braun) — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 15:36:09 +0200

So I see this poster hanging up: Week-end d'Integration. Everone here calls it WEI (rhymes with hawaii). I thought it would be a nice opportunity to do nice stuff and meet new people.

It taught me something about french culture.

This is what I figured out: We'd be going to a place near Toulon, a camp site like thing with caravan-bungalows and there'd be loads of activities. Everyone from the EGIM was invited, about 200-300 students were expected. Well, that was the official description. The real one is a bit different:

First of all, the main objective of the WEI is to drink as much as possible. Drinks are included in the fee, so you can just get wasted. I just didn't realise how crazy my fellow students could actually be.
It all started on the bus. There was loads of alcohol and french chants (of which I didn't understand anything) and I felt like I was on the wrong bus. Everyone just got a lot louder once we got there, and the main group (who had the left in the morning and had been there all day) already had shrunken by 3 or 4 people who'd had too much to drink. No worries - the Croix Rouge had patrols all the time for us and kept carrying people away. The medics and the camp site staff seemed used to this kind of trip, so consider that normal.

Having food was not what I expected, either. I enjoy a nice meal without lots of racket and a little chat with the rest sitting at my table. I recorded 90 secs of dinner for you, but I didn't get any really wild bits (e.g. when some of the students got naked and jumped around on the table). This video was taken during the main course, it got a lot louder when noone had anything to eat. Imagine sitting in a football stadium, that gets close to the noise level.

The days were quite relaxing, I talked to loads of people, played Petanque and the French version of Mafia, called Loup-Garou (a word I'd learned reading Harry Potter in French). The BDE (bureau des élèves), who had organised everything, had really done lots of work and had organised a foam party, we had a disco for ourselves every night, loads of games...

By the way, being German can be an advantage, because you can sing along to Rammstein songs without an accent, which is considered quite cool by some.

What did I learn?
French students like to party really hard, they don't miss an opportunity to get naked, most activities are organised mainly for the official programme and I also learned a couple of French words I don't want to repeat here.
And I never enjoyed a peaceful meal as much as I did after the WEI.

So if you ever get the opportunity... don't miss it out!

Werft die Gläser an die Wand

nospam@example.com (Martin Braun) — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 13:48:09 +0200

Time to write something about my school.

One thing I didn't know about my school was it's official name. Now the official name is EGIM / Ecole Centrale Marseille.
France-experts will be going 'Ooooohhhh....' now. Here's what I found out:

If you want to be an engineer in France, you can get the best possible education at all at the Polytechnique near Paris - students from Karlsruhe might now that one from the 'Tripartite' Program. However, it's pretty impossible to get there, unless you're brilliant and lucky (or you go via ERASMUS). Right after the Polytechnique come the Ecoles Centrales. Get it? Ecole Centrale Marseille! I'm at a top notch elite french engineering school. While that might look good on my CV if I ever apply somewhere in France, it also means more work than I had anticipated.

However, in France, before work - there's fun. At least at this school.

After summer, there's a Rentree. And a school with a budget like mine does a huge Rentree. In fact, I've spent most of the 10 days I was here just playing games, meeting people, going to loads of parties etc. Of course I cheated and joined all possible Rentrees, one for the foreigners, one for first-year students, one for third-year students (that's me). There's loads of booze, sometimes free food, music....
Even german music: One game was inventing a stupid dance to any song, one of the groups chose the German Schlager Moskau.
The school is massively well equipped with things to do: it even has it's own sailing boat. There's lots of clubs, music, sports... everything. The sad side of all of this is the french education system is not really fair towards the students who don't get to go to a Grande Ecole. The normal universities aren't really that good.

To put you into perspective: There are only 5 Ecoles Centrales in France, mine has about 600 students and is planning to expand to 900. There's a couple of other good schools (like the ones in Grenoble, I think), but it's only a lucky minority who gets to go there.

On the other hand, students at the EGIM get treated really well. The school is very concerned about every student and makes sure everyone has a broad education - in the first year, you are required to take a sport class. Because the EGIM is the result of a merge of 4 schools, there's way more staff than anywhere else, which means to teacher to student ratio is incredible. In fact, this has some absurd consequences: Because the classes are bigger after the merge (about 100 students max), they have to split them up because there aren't any lecture halls or class rooms big enough for everyone. So they do the exact same class at the same time - because they have too few rooms and too many teachers!
But the equipment at this school is amazing. Everyone really makes an effort.

French students do a lot more than german students. However, classes progress really slowly and even for me it's easy to get along. I've joined a class about computer tools I don't really need, but I like the slow speed it goes along and I can learn some technical language, too. Today, we did 4 hours of revising C (the programming language). It's bloody impossible to write code on an AZERTY keyboard if you're not french, but the exercises were so easy I managed to get along quite well. Remember: this is a class for the final year. In germany, someone tells us to learn C, that's it.
Other classes with other teachers and other subjects, they're difficult for me. Yesterday we had an introduction to signal processing classes, and all I understood that the Prof was telling us important stuff we needed to know during the year.

What's really annoying me though is the paperwork. In fact, I've got to do some.

Moving In

nospam@example.com (Martin Braun) — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 17:09:24 +0200

Salut!

Finally managed to post something. Here's the short version: Everything's going well, I moved into a pretty awful student accomodation and am making
myself at home.

Here's some detail:
My start in Marseille was a lot better than imagined. The day before I left to France I gave up ringing the CROUS (they're like the german Studentenwerk and they're the ones renting out my room) and called the EGIM. The secretary for foreign students was extremely helpful and sorted everything out and even organised a pick-up service for me at the station - imagine that! However, she's german - which meant I had yet to find a helpful french person, which seemed near impossible during August and even the beginning of September.
I did find him then, though - a french student from the same school as me picked me up at the station and drove me right to my place. As they were still renovating my room, he let me stay at his place that night and he helped me through all the paperwork, too. That made things so much easier, I hadn't slept that well on the train and my french isn't that good either, so without him I would have taken ages for all of that - So if you read this, Fred, thanks a lot again.

The accomodation really is in bad shape. The rooms are OK, but the kitchens are nearly useless (just 4 hotplates for 35 people, no plugs, no kettle, no microwave and no oven. You have to rent a fridge and it's tiny) and the loos and showers need some getting used to. But it's cheap, accomodation in general is extremely expensive at the south coast, and even more so in France's second largest city.
It's pretty hard creating a community on the corridors the way I'm used to, but we kind of managed. I met a couple of english guys (they live right next to me) and we will force some friendliness into the place if we have to

Living next to french people doing an ERASMUS year is nice for a lot of things, but of course it doesn't improve my french. However, I suppose it's entirely my problem to learn some french here.

The school seems OK, but everyone's telling me I won't see much daylight once the lectures start - 3rd year seems to be hard work even if you're french. The school is quite small, right now there's just a couple of hundred students around altogether. It's supposed to grow to have about 900 students, which is about the number of students at my old school - seems weird coming from a university with more than 15000 students.

Grub's pretty good at the university, the Resto U is a bit like a german Mensa, good food for cheap money, and it saves you having to eat in your bedroom (the kitchen in my student's home isn't big enough).

So far there hasn't been much going on, just some stuff for the foreign students doing 1st and 2nd year, but I just joined them.

Next week's the rentree for the 3rd year - let's see...