VUT student shares his thoughts about Czech IT education

Dmitry Sarana came to GoStudy courses from Slavyansk. Dmitry graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems from a university in Ukraine. He chose to study for his Master’s degree at the faculty of Information Technology at the Technical University in Brno (VUT), the most popular choice in the Czech Republic for IT professionals.

Dmitry told GoStudy blog readers about the difference between Ukrainian and Czech IT education, how easy it was for him to get offered a place at VUT and about the prospects of working in Brno.

I didn’t have half of the subjects from the Czech program

I decided to continue my higher education in Europe. I chose the Czech Republic for obvious reasons: education is free and accommodation plus other expenses are much cheaper compared to other European countries. I considered America and UK to begin with, but studying there is expensive, around 15,000 USD per semester so these were not a real option for me.

A friend of mine came to GoStudy summer program before so I decided to give it a go too.

Ukrainian education is not very competitive. I was a good student, I did everything well. When I looked at the entrance exam at a Czech university for the Master’s program, I realised that I did not study have half of the subjects from their program.

I already have a specialisation after completing my Bachelor’s degree, but in the Czech Republic the Bachelor’s degree is not taught as such. Here I took the General Computer Science exam. The subjects that the Czechs study for three years, I studied in Ukraine for one year, and the other two subjects were already in my specialisation. We had only two faculties: Information Technology and Information Systems. I studied at the faculty of Information Systems. In the Czech Republic you can choose of of 8 specialisations for your Master’s degree program. I have chosen to study Information Systems Security.

How to get into VUT

I decided on the university at home. I opened the ranking of TOP 500 universities in the world, looked for the Czech Republic and found VUT. And then I went to VUT.

I got through the nostrification process without any problems. I didn’t have to do anything myself. I gave all the required documents to GoStudy and they handled it all on my behalf.

At VUT, there was one exam in General Computer Science – a combined test for everything that we studied in the undergraduate degree program. In the Czech Republic there is a social network for IT professionals: www.itnetwork.cz. There I found online textbooks on programming which I found to be very useful.

In general, the exam was not simple. I admit that there were many words I didn’t know. I met a Czech guy who was sitting next to me and we helped each other. It was fun.

The test consisted of 20 questions, with a maximum of 1000 points. I can’t say that it was difficult to get in. The minimum score was 200 out of 1000 and not many people came.

Masaryk University was my second choice. In total, I got 7 invitations from VUT, and Masaryk, Olomouc, and Plzen. I was offered a place in Plzen without any exams at all because of my excellent undergraduate studies. I got offered a place at Masaryk University as well, where there were two exams – in computer science and maths. But I chose VUT, of course as it was my first choice.

Brno is a promising city for programmers

It is thought that Brno is a more promising city for programmers. All major companies are located there. I definitely want to live there, at least in the near future. Good salary, cheap accommodation, affordable taxes and a beautiful city.

I will spend a couple of months studying among the Czechs, I will become more confident using the language and will look for work. For an IT specialist, Czech language is not as important. But the programs will now need to be documented in Czech. Moreover, I note that in other languages, English terminology is usually used in programming. Not in the Czech Republic. The Czechs changed all the terminology to Czech.

There was nothing complicated about moving

Now that I have lived in Prague for a year, everything seems a bit different. I got used to Prague, and now it’s easy to go to Brno. It is also easy to go to university.

In fact, there was nothing complicated about moving. I arrived and was taken to my accommodation, then together with our students we went on a tour to see the place, we were shown how to use the subway, where the shops were etc.

At first, of course, it was difficult to communicate to other people. But the Czech language was easy to learn. Our teacher was called Svetlana, she was excellent. She explained everything very well. At GoStudy I was in a group with older students, which for me was a plus.

About life in Europe

The life is more vivid here. There are a lot of things to do, a lot of festivals to go to, like Oktoberfest! You can go on holidays, it’s good fun. The people are friendly and helpful. I plan to travel all around Europe. All you need is a car!