HAW HAMBURG (HAMBURG UNIVERSITY FOR APPLIED SCIENCES)
Experience Report
Semester abroad at
Virginia Tech
Fall 2013 Mechanical Engineering
Oehms, Devon
09.02.2014
International Office HAW Hamburg
Introduction
My Name is Devon Oehms and I am studying mechanical engineering at the Hamburg
University of Applied Sciences (Hochschule für angewandte Wissenschaften - HAW). I went
to study abroad at the Virginia Tech in my fifth study semester. I had finished every required
course from the previous four semesters. I am studying in cooperation with a company. So I
am a co-op work and study student. This means that I study as every other student during
the semester, but I am in the company during semester breaks. I get an apprenticeship pay
and I can take holidays. The company I have my cooperation with is TrelleborgVibracoustic,
a company dealing in the automotive sector providing among others chassis parts, bumpers
and air springs. The company has approximately 8300 employees all around the world and
has an annual turnover of about 1.3 billion euro.
Description of the Virginia Tech
General:
The Virginia Polytechnic and State University or Virginia Tech in short version is located in a
small college town named Blacksburg. There are about 42000 inhabitants in Blacksburg.
Virginia Tech has about 30000 students. So when the students are out, it is pretty quiet in
Blacksburg. Blacksburg has not that very much to offer. There are quite a few restaurants
and bars, where you can meet people. But it is a really good city to study in and the fact that
it is not that big, gives it a character that everyone is more connected to each other.
Campus:
The campus is beautiful. Almost every building is built with the hokie stone, a limestone,
which makes it more difficult to orientate at the beginning but makes the campus beautiful to
look at. Almost every building is located on a big campus which is directly connected to the
downtown of Blacksburg.
Other things at Virginia Tech:
In general Virginia Tech has a lot of activities to offer, by far more than my university in
Germany. You can join clubs, make sports every day, play bowling, FIFA or pool on campus
and do so much more than that. There is a weekly mail which contains weekly activities, so
that it doesn’t get boring. Due to that you want to have time to do some of the activities when
you study at Virginia Tech, so you should not take too many classes otherwise you will miss
all of this. I had “only” 4 classes and a lab, but was overall too busy to experience as much
as I wanted at Virginia Tech. I will write two more exams in Germany to be pretty sure to stay
in regular study time. I would recommend not to take more classes as I did, when you come
in the fifth semester.
Housing:
I chose to live on campus and would probably make the same decision again. I lived in
Cochrane, the hall which is directly connected to one of the best dining halls and where a lot
of athletes live in. The reason why I would choose to live on campus again is because of the
people I lived with. I think I was really lucky with the people in my suite. I lived with 8 people,
every room containing 2 people with a common room for everyone. 6 of these 8 people
became my best friends during the semester and I did most of the things together with them.
When you live on campus you are also in walking distance to every university building, which
means that it takes you normally not more than 15 minutes’ walk to any building. The only
main negative point about on campus living is that you have to live with a roommate. We are
all adults and more or less out of the age where we share a room with someone else. One
problem with me and my roommate was that I had only 8am classes every day in the week
and so I went to sleep pretty early, my roommate instead didn’t have 8am classes all the
time, which means that he normally stayed awake longer than me. As I am quite sensitive
when it comes to sleeping conditions, this was a real problem for me. However, due to the
fact that you are directly connected with other people when you live on campus made the
decision worth it. Furthermore you don’t need to find a room, get furniture and organize
everything else. However, on campus housing is mostly more expensive, as you can pay off
campus about 300-400$ per month for rent, while I paid about 800$ per month.
Dining:
As an on campus resident, you were supposed to buy a meal-plan with which you can eat in
the dining halls. There are several different dining halls offering something for every taste.
Virginia Tech is known for their good dining facilities and this is definitely true. In the dining
halls West End and Turners, you get high quality food for more money than in the other
dining halls, but it just tastes better. I had the smallest dining plan, because it was the
default. As I did not really save money on food, I ran out of money on my dining plan and had
to pop up quite a lot of money.
Description of the Department
The Mechanical Engineering Study program is part of the engineering department, which is
by far the biggest department at Virginia Tech. It is also one of the best or the best
department of the Virginia Tech and hast reached good rankings compared to other
universities in the US. For further information visit the website www.eng.vt.edu.
Description of the Classes
Course Registration
As I said I am studying mechanical engineering, so I wanted to have courses out of this
study. But approximately 7 weeks before I wanted to leave I received an e-mail from the
person who is responsible for the mechanical engineering course registration. In this e-mail
he told me that I would just be able to register for three courses out of the mechanical
engineering range. These courses were “Intro Thermal Fluid”, “Sustainable energy solutions”
and “Nuclear engineering”. None of these courses fit into my normal curriculum. This was a
complete nightmare for me because I wanted to study abroad choosing suitable courses as
my normal study in Germany because I wanted to remain in my regular study. Of course my
employer wanted this too. So immediately after this e-mail I called the guy who wrote me the
e-mail and he said that he understands my situation and is really sorry and so on. I said that
it is quite late that I get this information and then he even said that they inform the students
so early that they can maybe quit to come to the Virginia Tech. After this I really thought
about canceling everything. But then I spoke with several different people like friends, family
members and university staff and the majority of them said that I should not quit and do it
anyway. My international coordinator even said if it would stay at these three courses I
should go anyway. So I said ok, I will see what I can do and will go anyway.
Fortunately after several e-mails the online course registration opened and I was able to
register for four different courses with just one course out of the mechanical engineering
study and the other three out of the engineering science and mechanics study. So I was
quite happy about that but I wanted to register for more than just four courses. I could only
register for four courses because the online system said that I am just able to register for 12
credit hours, so four courses with three credits each. As I got to know that I needed to
contact the engineering dean’s office, I just gave them a call and they switched my maximum
credit hours to 19. So I was able to register for six courses which were enough for me. So
with this constellation I was really happy and everything took a happy end.
Final courses
As said before, I had registered for 6 classes and was happy with that. During the orientation
week, though, we were told that every one of us has to see the academic advisor because of
the course registration. So I went to my advisor and she said I can not stay in the classes I
chose, so I negotiated with her about other classes to which I could not register before and it
was actually pretty easy to get into other classes. The advisor just checked if there is space
in the class and if I have more or less the prerequisites for the class and if both requirements
were fulfilled she just put me into the class. Due to that all my worries because of the classes
were exaggerated, I just had to speak with the advisor and I could get almost in every class I
wanted. So for everyone who reads this and had bad news about the classes, I highly
recommend just going there and speaking with the advisor and everything will be fine. I
registered for 6 classes then and I went to all of them in the first week. Due to
recommendations from the advisor, my future plans about classes and the required classes
for Germany, I dropped two of the classes but got into a lab. So I ended up with 4 classes
and 1 Lab accompanying one of the classes. I also didn’t want to study the whole during the
semester abroad because you have to do and see things when you study abroad.
In specific my classes were the following:
ESM-MSE 3054 Mechanical Behavior of Materials:
I took this class because it fits to a required class back in Germany.
This class was taught by Dr. Dowling. People say that there are two kinds of professors, the
researchers and the teachers, and he is being considered to the teachers. This class uses
the book of Dr. Dowling with the same name as the class. The original version of this book
costs about 200$ but I just got the international version and it has exactly the same content
with maybe some numbers changed in the problems. This was not a problem, though, as he
copied the whole text of the problem in the assigned homework’s. In this class almost the
whole book is covered and we got homework every single week, which I just had in this
class. In general the homework uses the presented content of the week and is mostly not too
difficult to solve. It always takes time but it is not very difficult. We used a lot of times the
excel solver, which I have never used before, but I realized that this function can be very
helpful and is easy to use. In the class we wrote two midterm exams and a final exam. In
general this class is a lot of work but it was also my easiest class. All three tests were open
book with specified chapters from which the problems will come from. The tests are basically
homework problems with different numbers. We were also allowed to have one formula page
(front and back) for the first test, two pages for the second and three for the final. I just did
the formula page for the first test and just used the book with bookmarks for the other two
tests. The final exam was in my opinion a bit too easy, because I finished in way less time
than available and the problems were also not very difficult. I received an A for this class with
a final score of 99 from 100 points.
ESM-MSE 3054 Mechanical Behavior of Materials Laboratory:
This laboratory is the lab which directly accompanies the 3054 class. I was force added into
the class, which means that the normal registration time was already over, but I was still
added after the deadline. In this class 14 experiments are made. It accompanies directly with
the class, as the content which is discussed in class, is directly applied in the lab in the same
week or at most with 1 week delay. It is required to write a lab report for every lab. The lab
reports are due the next week, so one week of time. The majority of the required reports are
abbreviated ones, which means we had to summarize the experiment and evaluate the
results by calculating or visualizing some results. Three of the lab reports are full lab reports,
which mean that we had to write an abstract, introduction, procedure, results, discussion,
summary and so on. These full lab reports contain 15-20 pages and the abbreviated reports
contain about 3-5 pages. I always didn’t really like to write the lab reports, but it still helped
me with my writing skills, I think. If you bring the required documents of the lab report, it is
pretty easy to get good credit on the lab reports. To Germany I could just transfer this lab to
be passed or failed, but in America I got a grade for the lab. This lab is a hands-on
laboratory; most of the machines are controlled by the students, with the help of the
instructors though. I learned new things in the lab and the studying environment in the lab
was very positive. I received an A for the laboratory.
ESM/ME 4194 Sustainable energy solutions for a global society:
I took this class because I am very interested in green energy and a sustainable
development. This class was taught by Dr. Dillard. The class covers basically all main energy
sources including nuclear energy and fossil fuels. It discusses basic things about all the
technologies including some calculations and statistics. I really liked the content of this class
because I learned a lot of new things and all information was presented very well. This class
required a lot of work again. It has no final exam but a research project instead of the final,
which can be done alone or in a group of two people. Each person was required to write
about 3000 words in the final report. On the way to the final report, we had to submit a
project description, project proposal and an oral update. I did all of this more or less in the
last minute, but it still worked pretty well. During the semester we also wrote one in class test
and one take home test. The take home test was a 4hrs take home test, which means you
have 4hrs to work on it as soon as you started it. I did not expect this take home test to be
that hard, but it actually was pretty difficult. It covered parts of the homework and things from
the class. So for every problem on the test, I had to think about or find the right information,
understand it and apply it to the test problem. We also had to do homework in the class. In
most of the homework’s we were supposed to think about a problem by ourselves and solve
this problem afterwards. I really didn’t like this format, but I think it made me learn something
from it. I normally did way too much work compared to what he required, but as I was always
not sure what he requires, I am the kind of person who prefers to do too much rather than too
less for a problem. After everyone had submitted there homework’s, everyone from the class
could anonymously comment on the problems from other student and collect bonus points, if
an error is found. I did this two times and received 13 points because of very easy mistakes
in the homework’s of other students. As it is not enough to do in the class, we also had to do
two outside events, where everyone was supposed to go to a small seminar or presentation
on campus or elsewhere, which is connected to energy. An outside event could also be an
energy-related movie or several TED talks out of the energy topic. After attending such an
event we were supposed to write about one page, which summarizes, comments and
criticizes the event. I went to one presentation and watched the movie “GasLand” and also
later “GasLand 2”. I really recommend watching these movies if you are interested in energy
and where it comes from, these movies were the most shocking movies I have ever seen.
To summarize, this class is a lot of work, but again not too difficult and very interesting. At
the end I got an A with 94 points out of 100.
ME 4524 / ECE 4704 Robotics and Automation:
This class was taught by Mr. Kurdila, a highly educated professor. I really like the way he
teaches because, he writes everything down by hand and so you can understand the content
pretty well. For further visualization he uses the computer or printed slides, which are shown
with a projector. In this class we were supposed to write a mid-term or have a mid-term
project as well as a final exam. Dr. Kurdila provides a textbook with this class. With the
lecture and the textbook, it was possible to work out all the homework assignments. For
bigger Assignments Dr. Kurdila showed us the important things about the problems or
sometimes worked through the whole problem in class. This is something that we all really
liked. At one point of time Dr. Kurdila provided us massive MATLAB and Simulink functions.
From that point on more or less the whole did not understand everything anymore, because
the buildup of the Simulink model which represents a whole robot became very complex. If
we students were supposed to build this in Simulink or write the whole code to generate the
model, this would have taken us a whole semester I think. I had never before worked that
much with Simulink, so this was a new experience for me. In the class I learned a lot,
although I didn’t understand everything anymore towards the end. Dr. Kurdila is a very good
professor and also very nice in his office hours. Overall was this class very interesting with a
very good professor and it was not too hard to get a good grade, of course the assignments
need time, but they are doable.
ME 5514 Vibration of Mechanical Systems:
This is a graduate class taught by Dr. Tarazaga. I took this class because I needed a
vibrations class and there was no undergraduate class available. As there are people in the
class which took a vibrations class already and people who did not, the class reviews the
whole undergraduate vibrations class in the first half of the semester in a faster way than in
the undergraduate class and moves then on to other topics. We wrote two midterm exams
and a project over the semester is required. Both of the mid-terms are fair but you have to be
good prepared for everything, also derivations. The topic of the project could have been
chosen by the students as long as there is a connection to vibrations. This kind of project has
been done for the first time in this constellation. It was possible to do the project alone or in a
group with not more than three people. For the project was also a project description, project
proposal, oral presentation and finally a final report required. This class is very interesting
and the professor is really a cool guy. You can see that Dr. Tarazaga is happy with what he
is doing. For the project, we had to test our object, model it and compare the model with the
experiment. I haven’t done both of it before. That means that I haven’t recorded the emitted
vibrations from an object before. This was very interesting and a good learning experience.
We also had to model and evaluate the object from the project. So we measured our object
and modeled it in CATIA and did a FEM-Analysis in CATIA from the model. The FEMAnalysis was also something, which I haven’t done before. It was very difficult to figure out
how to do the FEM properly, also because there was no help from the professor how to do it.
Finally we compared our model with the experiment with the goal to match the natural
frequencies of the model with the experiment. Overall was this the most difficult class I had,
because the tempo was very fast and for the mid-terms and homeweork you had to know a
lot. I received an A- with 90.2 points for the class
Summary classes:
I had almost the minimum amount of classes, if I wouldn’t have had the lab. During the week,
there were times where I was busier than in Germany where I normally take about 6 classes.
This comes from all the deadlines and the big amount of work to do for every class. In
general, I would say, is it more to do in the US, but it is also a bit easier to get good grades,
because you have not only one final exam which counts, so you can also have a few not so
good assignments and still get a good grade. I went out with straight A’s, but had to work a
lot for this. All people in my group of friends said that I did the most from us all. Overall is the
Virginia Tech a good university to study engineering. Most of the class rooms were better
equipped with technique than the classrooms in Germany. All professors are very nice,
highly educated and help you with any question about the class. The classes I took were
similar in size as in Germany with 15-35 people. I was able to transfer all my classes to
Germany with the according marks. So I got 2x0.7, one 1.0 and one 1.3. The marks were
calculated from my overall reached points in the classes. With this result I am very happy
and with this I gained everything I wanted to.
Information about support
Pre-Arrival
Application
As I started to study I had in my head that I would like to study abroad for one semester. It
was my goal to study abroad in the fifth semester because in this semester you have more
courses to choose from and all the basic courses are finished. So I checked the possibilities
to do so quite early. Already after the second semester I started to collect information about
it. I saw that you can either go to Europe to study in the ERASMUS program or you can
study in the USA if you want to study at a partner university from the HAW. As of the
registration deadlines I applied for the ERASMUS program first and got a place to study at
the Institute of Technology Dublin (ITT).
The application process for the USA started a bit later. It started, to apply for the fall
semester 2013, in November 2012 with the announcement of the available places at the
different universities. The reason for that is that if you want to go to the USA there has to be
someone from the USA who comes to Germany to study here. It is an exchange program,
because of that you don’t have to pay the huge US tuition fees. This means that the US
exchange student still pays these US fees and you as a German student must pay the
German tuition fees.
So if you want to apply for a place to study in the USA, you must choose only one place to
apply at. You can not apply at more than one place. In my view this is not a good rule,
because if you really would like to go to the USA and you can just apply for one place your
chance is obviously lower than it would be with more places to apply for.
I decided to apply at the Virginia Tech because it has the best engineering college among all
available universities at my time. So the decision was for me as a mechanical engineer
student quite easy.
For the application you need to collect the following documents:
 A computer written Curriculum Vitae
 A motivation letter consisting of 1-2 A4 pages
 A course list with 6-8 courses you would like to choose at the US university
 A recommendation letter from a professor

A print out of your study achievements including those exams you are going to write
in your current semester
 A certificate about sufficient knowledge of the English language
It took me some time to collect these documents but if you start working on it as early as
possible it should not be a problem to get everything. I had to bring these documents (the
originals) to the international office until the beginning of January 2013. I would suggest that
you collect some feedback to your motivation letter from different people like former teachers
or friends who have done something like that before. You can also ask Mrs. Weatherall from
the international office once.
The International office will then review your documents and if you pass their requirements
they will invite you to a selective conversation. After this conversation you will get an
assurance or a refusal. You should be well prepared for this conversation. You should be
certain about questions like: Why would you like to go this university in particular?, What kind
of courses do you want to choose, what are the contents of them and why would you like to
take part in these courses?, What will be the most interesting thing you are excited about at
your chosen university?, Why would you like to study abroad in general? In which way would
you say will the semester abroad influence you as a person?
The conversation will last approximately 20 min and there will be three people in front of you.
There will be Mrs. Weatherall, one professor from your department and one professor from a
different department.
If you will get the assurance from the HAW you have to apply officially at your university in
the US. For that you will need a TOEFL Test. You must get a specific score depending on
your university. For the Virginia Tech you will have to have 90 points out of 120. So you have
to be not so bad in English and well prepared. But there are several ways to prepare in a
very specific way for this test. Because the structure of the test is always the same and the
tasks you will get are very similar from one test to another. So if you have time you can
prepare yourself really well. I have bought the official preparation pack and watched video
tutorials on YouTube. It worked really well because I could get some general information and
example tasks in the preparation pack and learned techniques from the YouTube Tutorials
how to manage these tasks. I can really recommend the TOEFL Tutorials on YouTube from
“notefulldotcom”. There you can learn easy techniques to manage your time and the things
you want to say. With this preparation I was able to prepare in about two weeks to be good
enough to pass the requirement from the Virginia tech.
Furthermore you need for your application at the Virginia tech a confirmation that you have
6000$ available. It doesn’t matter if you owe this money or a relative from you, but if it is not
you who owe the money you will need an affidavit of support from your relative.
Then you have to write some personal information about you in an application form, where
you also have to write some courses you would like to take and if you would like to live on
campus or off campus. The Virginia Tech has a big engineering college, so there are a lot of
different interesting engineering courses.
I chose to live on campus because then you don’t have to organize a flat for yourself or
something else from abroad and you are a bit more connected to the campus and will get to
know new people very quickly.
When you have sent your full application documents to Virginia Tech, you will get an official
assurance from the Virginia Tech. Then you will have a Student number and, if you have
chosen to live on campus, you will get a housing contract, which you need to sign and send
back to the Virginia tech. When you have your student number you can start to create a PID
(Personal Identification) and fill in some other online things like pre-arrival orientation or
some emergency information.
Going to the USA
If you want to go to the USA you need to get a visa. Fortunately you get the DS-2019 form
from the Virginia Tech, if you cross this box on the Virginia Tech application form. This form
is the most important one. Additionally you have to pay some fees and provide some
personal information on the internet. You can get detailed information from the international
office at the HAW.
As it is described in some sources you should book your flight after you have received your
visa. But in my opinion this is too late. Because I received my visa just 4 weeks before I am
supposed to arrive at the Virginia Tech, so this is quite late to book a flight. So I suggest that
you book your flight after you received the official assurance from the Virginia tech.
First time at Virginia Tech
The international office and other institutions of Virginia Tech offer a lot of cool activities for
people who are new at Virginia Tech. There are calendars available showing all the
orientation events. I took part at most of these events and there I always met more or less
the same people. Due to that I got to know new people all the time and made new friends.
Housing, people, living, etc.
People:
The best part of my whole semester in the USA was definitely the people. As I am an
international student, I went to a lot of orientation events especially for international students.
At these events it was possible to get to know a lot of new people. Pretty quick a group of a
bit more than 20 people was built, which I spent most of the time with since the orientation
week. We went to events or parties together or ate together. I have never developed so
strong relationships to people I didn’t know before than in this semester. The thing we all had
in common was that everything was new for everybody, which is a good base to find other
people. We also met some American people and made friends with them very fast. Firstly
every American likes when you have an accent, which was an advantage for us
internationals as we all have accents. Every American I met was so nice and hospital to me
and the others, which I really didn’t expect. At game days or pregame we were always invited
to their houses or I traveled with Americans, one time to Nashville and one time to
Philadelphia. Both times the American guy took us internationals in their car and even let us
drive their cars. I don’t know if people in Germany would do the same, but I was absolutely
overwhelmed form this hospitality. Now I made friends with people from all over the world
and I can visit them and hope that they visit me, this is so nice.
Blacksburg:
Blacksburg is a small town, where not a lot happens as soon as the students are gone I
think. Blacksburg offers a small downtown with several restaurants and small shops. It is not
the best place in the world to go out, but you can definitely have a lot of fun. When you are
over 21 years old, the main destination is TOTS-Top of the stairs. TOTS is normally packed
on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Also when you are not 21, it is easy to get
into TOTS with someone else’s ID. Every Bar, Club or Restaurant has to close at 2am in the
morning. If people don’t want to go to TOTS, there is normally every day on the weekend a
house party in the surrounded area of Blacksburg downtown. Some house parties can be
pretty wild, but a lot of them are also getting shut down by the police or run out of drinks.
Blacksburg is located in the mountains. Due to that there are a lot of possibilities for outdoor
activities as hiking, rafting, caving, climbing, mountain biking or similar things to do. There is
a special office, called the venture out office, which organizes outdoor activities.
Overview about the costs
In general I would say that the education system in the US is too expensive. You just have to
pay for everything. I spent really a lot of money and did not even pay the normal tuition,
which would have been about 14000$ additionally. I had to study a lot in the week, but I
didn’t hesitate to do as many activities I could do, so I didn’t look that much on money as I do
in Germany. I can also say that I didn’t try to save money on food, because this is not the
right thing to save money at in my opinion. I also did some travelling, which I can really
recommend. Anyway there were other people who spend much more money than me on
travelling for example.
expenses before arrival
flight
Toefl test
Toefl Preparation
Toefl fees
Pin
Visa fee
Sevis fee
expenses during attendance
Cash brought from GER
health insurance
bank transfer fees GER
books
Cash for food, activities and so on
VT fees, housing, dining
Mobile Phone
bank transfer fees US
backpack
medicine
Iphone
Iphone cover
2nd suitcase
Travelling
Cali Flight
Cali cash
Cali suitcase
California open expenses
California parking
Philly, Atlantic City
Nashville
€
896,94 €
180,00 €
37,00 €
18,80 €
7,67 €
128,00 €
138,03 €
$
$1.210,87
$240,00
$49,00
$25,38
$10,35
$172,80
$186,34
735,73 €
270,00 €
82,50 €
73,20 €
723,37 €
3.472,63 €
121,19 €
52,97 €
52,97 €
21,84 €
580,27 €
30,22 €
70,63 €
$1.000,00
$364,50
$111,38
$98,82
$976,55
$4.720,00
$164,72
$72,00
$72,00
$29,68
$788,70
$41,07
$96,00
452,95 €
588,58 €
18,39 €
162,46 €
5,15 €
296,91 €
146,61 €
$611,48
$800,00
$25,00
219,32 €
$7,00
$400,00
$200,00
368,19 €
$500,00
€
$
1.406,44 €
$1.898,69
6.287,51 €
$8.488,14
2.039,24 €
$2.752,98
Things that were important for me/ Additional things
Traveling:
I did not travel as much as other people, but you have to travel as soon as you are in the US.
I went to Philadelphia & Atlantic City, Nashville & Lynchburg and California. As mentioned
before I went to Philadelphia and Nashville with Americans. It is just really cool, when you
can go with an American and meet his friends and see how the actual American people in
your age live. The Americans also know the country better than an international, which can
help a lot in some situations and interesting to talk about. I went to Virginia Tech in the fall
semester and there you get one week off from university because of thanksgiving. In this one
week nearly everyone travels somewhere. So I went to California and visited San Francisco,
Santa Barbara, San Diego and Los Angeles. We drove on the route number 1 and had so
much fun. California is just the place to be, I didn’t sleep a full night in this one week and
spent a lot of money, but it was definitely worth it, because it was still pretty warm there, we
have a lot of really nice pictures and unforgettable memories.
Game days:
Americans are absolutely crazy when it comes to football. I think the whole country is in kind
of a state of exception on a game day. Also at Virginia Tech are special rules for game days.
So is it allowed to drink on the street on game days and this is practiced a lot. People call it
tailgating before the game, they bring a little tent, a grill, some beers and other things and
come together and have a good time before every game. Everywhere in Blacksburg you can
see people tailgating. The football stadium contains about 70000 people and the atmosphere
right before the game starts is just amazing. As a student, it is very easy to get access to
tickets. You can either buy a season ticket or single ticket, or just do the lottery. The lottery is
for free and I won every single time a ticket for the game. Then you don’t have the best
seats, but you are still part of it and maybe you can manage it somehow, to get to the north
end zone or somewhere else closer to the actual field. The football games are just during the
fall semester and there are only 6-8 games at home. Due to that, I think it is a bit
exaggerated to have a 70000 people stadium, but therefore it is America. Anyway the
atmosphere before the games and in the games is amazing and a must do at Virginia Tech.
Summary:
Overall I had the best or one of the best times in my life at Virginia Tech. I would recommend
everyone I speak to, to do something like that, it is definitely worth it. However it is very
expensive to study abroad. With housing, dining, travelling, shopping and other activities the
money goes away very easily. Anyway if you do a semester abroad in the USA it is not the
right time to try to save money, you should experience as much as you can and don’t look
too much after the money. To study at the Virginia Tech requires a lot of time, but is not as
difficult as in Germany. The study environment is completely different than in Germany, as all
university buildings are located at one campus. It is a personal decision to live on or off
campus, but I made very good experience with on campus housing, as my suite mates were
very nice people. I am grateful that I was given the opportunity to experience this semester
abroad at Virginia Tech, I would definitely do it again. I would like to thank everybody, who
helped me to achieve this goal, especially the international office from the HAW Hamburg,
my professors at the HAW Hamburg and of course my family. If you have any more
questions about the study at Virginia Tech, I would be more than happy to help you as much
as I can. You can reach me under: devon.oehms@haw-hamburg.de or d.oehms@gmail.com
or by phone: +4915164427495
Thank you!
Sincerely
Devon Oehms