Overview of the Masters of Medical Life Sciences at the University of Kiel, Germany – Introduction

Last Updated on: 24th March 2026, 12:44 pm

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From 2021 to the end of 2022, I lived in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein in Germany to study the Masters of Medical Life Sciences at the Christian Albrechts Universität (CAU), also known in English as the University of Kiel.

I posted a short campus tour on youtube, and since then I’ve been getting direct messages and comments from people asking me about this course and life in Kiel.

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Disclaimer:

All the information, views and reviews are based on my personal experiences and situation at the time (2021-2022). The course may have been updated, and not everyone’s experience and views are the same. Different people have different situations and preferences, so there can be very different reviews if you ask around. Yours might be different, so I will try my best to explain why I felt a certain way, and you can decide whether you share the same views as I do. For the most up to date information, you should ask the university or current students, but also keep in mind their situation and yours.

Real names have not been included, and some staff roles have been made vague on purpose.

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In this article:

What is the Masters of Medical Life Sciences at the University of Kiel, Germany?

The Masters of Medical Life Sciences is a 2-year masters-level university degree in medical sciences at the Christian Albrechts Universität/the University of Kiel, in in the state of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany. It is theory based and taught in English, which is taught as a second language and thus has become a convenient lingua franca in many countries. It has no German language requirements. Because public university is free even for international students, it attracts students from around the world.

There is a limited number of students, around 15, so the cohort is small. My cohort had people of a variety of ethnic and nationality backgrounds including but not limited to Indonesia, India, Pakistan, America, Russia, Australia, Canada, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil, and domestic Germany. I also made friends studying other things, from China, Vietnam, and America.

About the Masters of Medical Life Sciences at the University of Kiel, my experience

The Masters of Medical Life Sciences is not a hands-on course.

The Masters of Medical Life Sciences is a theory-based course. It is not a practical, hands-on course. The first year consisted of subjects (called ‘modules’) that everyone had to do, it was theory and paper based, and had no practical, hands-on laboratory components.

Only in the second semester of the second year, did we get close to doing anything in the laboratory, and that was only because I specifically chose a subject that had a laboratory element (MolOcular).

This means most of the things we learnt were theory based, including the technologies used in research (an industry that is highly practical), such as next generation sequencing and MALDI-TOF (Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization – Time-of-Flight, a type of mass spectrometry technique used to identify molecules).

Subjects taught:

The subjects taught were the following:

Subjects without exams:

• Immunology
• Studies and Career

Subjects I got credited:

• Clinical Cell Biology
• Anatomy
• English Scientific Writing

All other subjects:

• IntroMed
• Systems Biology
• Statistics
• MolBio (Molecular Biology)
• MolPatho (Molecular Pathology)
• Pharmacology
• Bioinformatics

Electives I picked:

• Oncology, for interest
• MolOcular, for interest and the practical aspect

Subjects I liked:

One of the modules I enjoyed was Pharmacology, which was more like a general introduction than anything detailed, but it was very interesting to learn the mechanisms of action of certain drugs and their differences.

Another we did was MolPatho, (molecular pathology), where we looked at pictures of pathology slides of things such as blood and bone marrow, and described in plain words what we saw. This was one of my favourite modules. It is important in science to be able to describe and report things simply and objectively, and that is what pathology is about – describing and reporting what you see without bias without guessing or making a diagnosis, so as not to influence diagnoses in any direction.

This was a fun subject and I thoroughly enjoyed it because it has practical implementations, even if the subject itself is not practical. We learnt the pathophysiology of these diseases and where appropriate, the treatment method. For example, we discussed real world things like the Whipple Procedure for pancreatic cancer, and autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes.

The teacher was very nice, very approachable, and clearly knowledgeable. I thoroughly enjoyed this subject and remember thinking that all university teachers should be like the one that taught this. It was also one of the only subjects I enjoyed, and I thoroughly love biology and medical science.

Intromed was also interesting, this subject had each student research a given disease topic in detail and present it to the entire class, plus the teacher.

But:

The problem was, this was not a hands-on module, and we didn’t prepare our own blood smears or paraffin sections of real tissue, and didn’t see real ones in a lab environment, which I think, for a master’s level, is disappointing. The other disappointment was, any time we came across something interesting and just as I was looking forward to learning deeply about something, we were told we won’t be examined on it, we won’t be going into detail about it, and we don’t need to know it.

For example, I thought the idea of the Whipple’s procedure was very clever. In short, the procedure involves the removal of the diseased head of the pancreas and then connecting it to the small intestine, so that pancreatic enzymes and hormones can still enter the digestive tract. This avoids the total pancreatectomy that is otherwise required in the treatment of pancreatic cancer, which gives the patient a life-long sentence of medical management. Even though we weren’t required to remember this, it was interesting enough for me to remember it, and my question is then, what are we even doing if we were learning interesting things that we don’t need to know?

What I didn’t like

For the rest of the modules: I didn’t particularly hate the other subjects, but there were definitely aspects I disliked, for several different reasons.

Statistics:

I don’t particularly like statistics in general, but it is a highly important skill to have as a scientist, and even though I already completed a statistics subject in my bachelor’s, I was quite looking forward the statistics module in the masters, so I could study this subject at a more advanced level.

Unfortunately, what made the statistics module difficult in this course was that the teacher was not very prepared and not very good at teaching.

The teacher seemed very confused, unprepared, and either did not know the content that they were supposed to be teaching, or they did not know how to explain it. I am certain it is not a language issue, since the teacher said they lived in an English speaking country for some time, and there was no language problem with any of the teachers. I remember specifically, after the first lesson, all the students were very worried/upset/annoyed because it seemed like we were not going to be able to learn anything from the teacher and that we would have to teach the content to ourselves.

One student was even annoyed that the teacher told us to come prepared next time, because the teacher themselves seemed unprepared. We had to come up with our own way of passing it – some students said they will have to look it all up in their native language. We ended up spending tutorial classes, where we were supposed to do calculation exercises, asking questions and essentially repeating what was supposed to be taught to us in the lectures, to the PhD student who led the tutorial class,. The PhD student seemed to know more about the topic and can actually explain things better than the teacher. I certainly had to do a lot of self-learning with resources outside of the class. I relied on youtube tutorials and online resources, and material from my bachelor’s.

Systems Biology:

Another class sounded interesting in theory, Systems Biology, which was the study of how individual aspects in a whole system affects the outcome. For example, the process by which certain bacteria can produce certain outputs depending on the input, such as whether their environment was aerobic or anaerobic, or whether their nutrient was glucose or something else. This is actually very straightforward and makes sense, since some organisms can switch their metabolic processes in order to survive, based on availability of different nutrient sources. As an example, humans can use fat if glucose is not available, but the outcome is different, since the brain cannot use fat long term. However, the content was very abstract and taught in a confusing way. What I found was ironic was that a friend from an English speaking background, said the only reason they passed the subject was because they did a free Coursera course on this topic.

MolBio:

This was the academic subject/module I disliked the most. The contents of the subject/module were mostly highly theoretical topics, like time of flight mass spectrometry and next generation sequencing with oilgos. It wasn’t particularly explained in a good or engaging way either. Finally, when it came to the exam, the exam questions did not reflect the concepts we learnt, but were worded in an overly complex way about specifics, so I did not pass it on the first go. While I don’t remember the exact questions, from memory, the questions were more like “Of which of the following materials would you find in a heating box commonly used to make food warm or to cook it, and what are some characteristics of this material that make it ideal for this application?” when you could have just asked “Which of the following material are found in ovens and why is it used?”. It’s as if the exam questions were written as conceptual exercises aimed at PhD students with practical experience without actually providing us the training.

I do know other people also did not pass it, and I heard that it is a subject many people don’t pass, and obviously not everyone failed it, but I strongly feel it is a subject issue, and not a student issue. I haven’t failed a single other subject in my bachelors (or the master’s for that sake). To make matters more frustrating, this was the only module that had no practise questions available for us to review or study with.

What this means for you: You may have to do a lot of self- studying. I don’t mean people study by themselves anyway – I mean there may be some aspects of the topics that you will have to teach yourself. For statistics, we also had to learn R Studio in the computer lab – unfortunately, students were only allowed there when a teaching staff is available, this means there were hardly any opportunity to learn it outside of classes (as far as I am aware, the main library computers did not have R Studio).

Modules I had credited:

The list of subjects in general did not sound particularly exciting, and I found myself picking the ones that sounded least boring when it came to the second year, whereas in my bachelor’s I was struggling to pick ones I wanted to do, because we were only allowed a limited number of subjects, and I wanted to do them all.

I was surprised at the lack of detail or depth the subjects/modules went into. I had at least 3 subjects credited to my master’s course:

Anatomy:

I had already done a full anatomy subject/module in my bachelor’s program, it was even a hands-on one with trip(s, though I believe it was one trip) to the cadaver lab, which the master’s program did not include, so I got this credited.

One subject, English Scientific Writing, trained us in writing in English for the scientific community. This actually made sense so I have no complaints over it, since bachelor degrees in Germany are in German, and this masters degree is taught in English and attracts students from all over the world, whose native language might not be English, and in the scientific world, reports and journals are published in English. I was able to get this credited, since my native language is English and I completed my bachelor’s degree in English in an English-speaking country.

I also had Human Genetics credited.

I was very surprised, because the genetics subject I did in my bachelor’s degree was only half a subject – “haematology and cytogenetics” combined. In order to get a subject credited, you had to submit evidence that you did it, your results, and what that subject/module covered, which is done by sending them a copy of the subject description. Since my bachelor’s subject on cytogenetics was only half a subject, and I got it credited, it meant that what I did in my bachelor’s was already equivalent to the contents that the master’s module would cover. Indeed it was – I attended one or two classes before my request for recognition of prior learning was processed, and we did a karyotyping exercise with paper cutouts, just like in my bachelor’s.

You can only get a subject credited if your previous subject covers at least all of the things the master’s subject covers. When I applied for credit, at first, I left out a small detail, specifically that we covered karyotyping, and was initially denied. Then I submitted it again and included evidence that I did karyotyping, and the entire human genetics module was credited.

I had these credited because as much as I like these topics, I felt that it was unnecessary to repeat anything that I didn’t have to repeat, especially at the cost of my free time, increased workload, and health problems.

Course content format

Not all modules had exams, some had assignments, others had both assignments and exams. The assignments were mostly student presentations and occasionally, a worksheet of some sort. Exams were done on paper, and very few subjects had any practise papers to revise with.

What attracted me to do this course? Why did I do this course?

My bachelor’s science degree was in biology. It was a flexible degree that allowed me to choose mostly medical science subjects, as well as other subjects in the realm of biology, like ecology, marine biology, and parasitology. I really enjoyed my bachelor’s degree, the subjects I chose gave me a well rounded overall understanding of biology, from a large ecosystem, to tiny microbes, humans, and every organism’s interactions. I liked it all, but mostly I am interested in human biology.

Obviously I didn’t know what the course is like until I did it. There was no detailed review, and based on the name of the degree program, it sounded like the perfect masters program for my interest. Even if I had a detailed review like this to help me decide at the time, you really can’t truly know whether you like something until you experience it yourself. I did also get an offer from the University of Düsseldorf, which I studied at (online for a while, because of COVID) but that was a plant and bacteria based course which did not interest me, and the classes seemed less well-made than even the Kiel one. For example, the students were given an assignment and basically told to figure it out and do it ourselves with no real instructions before we were even taught the theory behind the topic.

Although I disliked the course, I absolutely enjoyed living in Germany, the opportunity to experience living independently in another country, to experience another culture, to make new friends from a range of countries, and to travel around Europe.

There are several reasons why I chose to do this course and Kiel specifically.

Why I chose to move to Germany

The very first reason was that I have a tumultuous family situation. Because of my disabilities and chronic illnesses, I have been unable to get meaningful and long term work, so I live with my parents. My father however, is physically and verbally abusive towards me, and plays extreme favourites in favour of my sister. Anything she did, either a blind eye was turned, or it was blamed on me. Over the several decades, through his influence, he has created an environment and attitude among the family members that is aggressive towards me. If I then fight back, I am the one causing trouble. As an analogy, any African American protester in the 1900s to 1930’s during segregation, who protested against injustice, were the ones causing trouble, when in fact it was the government/people running the house, that were creating an unfair environment that required the people to fight back in the first place.

My home city, Sydney, Australia, is one of the most expensive cities to live in, in the world, and financially, I was not able to move out. After having lived in Kiel, I know that tenants are better protected in Germany than my home country (for example, there are rental caps, and rules for evicting tenants. While not perfect, they are better than my home country). Costs were surprisingly cheaper in Germany than my home country, even if it was because I was a student. For example, in Germany, students, even international ones, have access to free public transport, whereas international students in Australia do not have this privilege, and are charged adult prices, which can be expensive.

People like to stay in their comfort zone, even if it is not ideal. The inertia of moving out of an non-ideal but familiar situation is strong. The idea of moving to a new country is a much stronger motivation than simply moving to another suburb or even state in one’s home country. This is probably something you will not understand until you experience it. In fact, I am not the only one to have moved to Germany for this reason, at the time of writing, I recently found a post on an online forum posted by another person who moved to Germany for the same reason. Germany seems to be a safe and comfortable choice because of its affordability, relative familiarity for people in Western countries, and high quality quality of life.

I also feel that, in my experience, anti-discrimination rules were much more strict in Germany than in my home country and it definitely made a difference in my ability to get a job in Germany, I managed to do this as soon as I arrived in Germany, whereas in my home country, I’ve been directly told to go home when I turned up for an interview, and even physically grabbed at work and being accused of being there as an unauthorised person.

I also already knew some German language, and knew that university in Germany is free, even for international students, so it made perfect sense for me to choose Germany over another European country that also has free university.

So, I felt it was the perfect opportunity to get away from the domestic situation, and if I can get a free degree out of it, even better.

Why Kiel?

When I was researching places to study in Germany, I had to consider several things. I used DAAD to look for relevant courses.

Read this article for an overview of Kiel as a city and things you should know as an international student or expat moving there for the first time.

Finding a suitable university: First, I narrowed it down to only public universities, since private universities are not free like public universities.

Finding a course taught in English: Next, I looked only for master’s programs taught entirely in English. Most masters degrees are taught in English, some are in a mix of English and German.

Finding a relevant course: Then, the degree had to be in an area of my study and interesting. Since I already had a bachelor’s of science, I wasn’t about to go a masters of say literature or history, something I had no interest nor knowledge in. Looking for too specific topics gave no results, so I looked in general for biology. This really narrowed down the available courses, of which Kiel was one, Düsseldorf was another.

Not all of the courses I applied to were 100% ideal. For example, the one in Düsseldorf was related to biology, but biology is a vast topic, and this program was about bacteria, plants, and algae, and I was more interested in human biology. But, if you remember my initial and number 1 motivation, it was still better than nothing. I actually started the Düsseldorf course first since their classes started first. It didn’t take long for me to dislike it. One particular assignment had us students go off and do the assignment ourselves without actually being taught anything. I even asked one of the students in my group at the time, whether classes in Germany were always like this.

So then when the opportunity for the medical life sciences course came up, I selected this, because on paper it sounded like something I am interested in and was exactly a mirror of my medical sciences bachelor’s degree.

Cost of living: While I was looking for a suitable course, I also kept in mind cost of living in Germany. Coming from a country with a weaker currency to the Euro, I wanted to make sure that it wouldn’t be too high. As far as I knew, I would be relying on my savings, and before you arrive, it was impossible to know your exact expenses in a new country, and I wanted to make sure costs weren’t unbearable. I already knew that living in Germany is cheaper overall than my home country. The biggest part of my expenses would be housing, and I don’t eat a lot, and I don’t like to go shopping, but I do like to travel. I knew that the rental prices in major cities like München seemed on par (high) with my home city, so I wanted to avoid that if possible.

So Kiel seemed like a reasonable choice. It was a comparatively small town, where rental prices is lower than the nearby major city of Hamburg. It was large enough to have a reasonable amount of facilities and essential services, while also being close enough to Hamburg, so I can go there if I ever felt stuffy in the relatively small city of Kiel, and with the semester ticket, travel would be free.

Next: Learn more about this program and the university, the challenges I incurred during the program, and what I learnt from others.

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