University of Giessen - JLU (reviews)

Although my college life started during the pandemic and almost everything is online, the uni is doing its best to make its students feel included. Orientation week was helpful, online events are held by the student council every now and then. My study program is quite flexible, you can manage your own schedule and choose your modules.

I like it that it is very easy to come in contact with other students. I don’t like the infrastructure of the university as the facilities because nearly nothing is renewed or modern. What I like about the university is that it’s kind of familiar.

The study program offered by the Justus Liebig University of Giessen generally includes a high degree of variety in terms of study content. In addition to a wide offer of courses ranging from natural sciences to law and economics, social sciences and education, to linguistics and cultural sciences, the University of Giessen offers also a broad and life science-oriented spectrum of disciplines and subjects: human and veterinary medicine, agricultural, environmental and nutritional sciences and food chemistry.

Interdisciplinarity is to be found in several study courses, but often at the expense of depth, which implies that it is not always perfectly implemented. For isntance, the study program ‘Modern languages, culture and economy’ offers a great interdisciplinarity through 3 independent subjects. Although you get many different insights into different disciplines, these insights are usually quite superficial and are only deepened by a single seminar, which of course is not enough. As a result, most graduated students felt that even though they had learned a lot, they still did not seem to be qualified for a professional career. The problem hereby lies in the lacking of interdependency as the individual components are not combined well and thus felt like studying three individual courses at the same time. The approach is good, but the implementation still needs to be improved!

All in all, the University of Giessen is quite small and there is clearly a potential for improvement in the premises – more space for larger seminar rooms, for example. Nevertheless, the university offers a lot of extracurricular activities and also the catering service in the cafeteria is quite good. Even after 4 pm there is warm food for the small appetite. Apart from that, there are many small restaurants like ‘Paprika’ at the train station or other various places with student-friendly prices. Giessen itself is not a particularly beautiful city, but the connection to Frankfurt is quite good – which can also provide a change of scenery every now and then.

I studied Modern Languages, Cultures and Business as a Bachelor program (major: English studies, minors: French studies and business administration). I particularly liked the variety of classes and the high level of education offered relating to the English studies. However, I think it was a pity that many of the seminars relating to French studies were partly held in German, which hindered me from improving my language skills. In terms of business administration, many lectures were very crowded and the exams in some of the obligatory courses like accounting were rather difficult. Overall, I think there should have been a closer interrelation between the different fields of studies in this program. Also, due to the many students in seminars and lectures, instructors seldom know their students by name. But in general, I think the different fields of study were interesting and provided a good basis for the future.
Also, the campus is quite large and consists of historic as well as modern buildings like the campus of business administration. There are many cafeterias which offer a variety of dishes for an affordable price. Furthermore, different libraries and extracurricular activities are provided for students, e.g. language classes, campus sport and IT classes. The learning atmosphere among students is pleasant.