[CBarkleyU]

Re: oral exams in Germany

Not sure when this was supposed to be the case, but for actual universities (not meant in a deragotary way, Germany has two types of higher eduction) in hard sciences, most classes are graded on a single written exam. Both in undergrad/bachelors and masters.

Unless things have drastically changed in the last five years...

[oersted]

This was in Freiburg University, which is among the top in Germany and top 250 globally. Computer Science bachelors and masters, around 8 years ago, most courses had a final oral exam unless many students (roughly >25) signed up to the class. Some classes like Information Retrieval or Machine Learning had >100 students so they had a written exam, but most others were smaller and oral: Data Engineering and Databases, Cryptography, Physics Simulations for Graphics, Formal Verification Methods, Bioinformatics, Planning AI, P2P Networking... I had a couple oral exams in VU Amsterdam (masters) too but fewer and not the final exam.

I know that an oral exam might seem less serious and rigorous, but I do think the professor can get a better grasp of how much the student actually understands the subject through an interactive interview.