Question: Sir, I am currently studying in 12th grade (C.B.S.E) and I aspire to get into Carl Benz School of Engineering next year. Please guide me suitably.
Answer:
Thank you very much for getting in touch with me and writing to me. If you are substantially a good student in your studies and have had decent upbringing and have certain specific and unique skills other than your academic excellence such as communication skills in written and spoken English and other languages, essay writing, competing in debates, quizzes, sports, music, art, computer programming etc. you can be admitted easily. Please note that the knowledge of German language is not a pre-requisite since the medium of instructions is English and you are expected to have good standard in English. Now a days, CBS also insists that you should have cleared TOEFL or IELTS before arriving in Karlsruhe. You may also plan to take this exam when it is most feasible for you. Most students who have studied in English medium schools do not have problem in clearing this exam.
While there is no applicable yardstick of minimum / cut-off percentage of marks for admission as it is common here in India, you certainly are expected to have achieved high enough percentage (~80% and above in most science subjects) in your Class 12 and in recent years. It is almost essential that you should have sound knowledge of key concepts of Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics that you have studied till Class 12.
CBS Class is usually a small and compact class of around 35 or 40 students selected from all over the world from different nationalities. While processing your application for admission, your selectors, who would also be your faculty teaching you most technical subjects, would want to ensure that your grasp of key concepts and basic understanding is good on which basis they can successfully teach you more complex and complicated aspects of science, technology and engineering in next 3-4 years. Your selectors are also required to apply a criterion of maintaining inter-country as well as gender balance between fresh intake of students. Thus, it is not possible to define precisely the minimum essential parameters that you must fulfil to get selected. And even your best results may or may not be quite sufficient; however, your well-presented application with excellent credentials does maximize your chance of being selected.
When I know more about you, I shall guide you as to how you should present your case and what specific attributes of your personality could be highlighted. For now, however, you must focus on your Class 12 studies and do your best at it. If and when, you get selected in CBS, you would be inducted in a 2 months pre-semester. Your faculty would give you a crash course of all you have studied in your 10+2 years essentially to bring all students from different countries having studied differently at a level playing field and to make sure that you all have adequate academic standards. Irrespective of your academic achievement in your Class 12, if you do not satisfy your faculty about your academic brilliance in your pre-semester at CBS, your continuation for further studies can be abruptly terminated.
Thus, if you aspire to be a CBS student anyway, you must do a thorough introspection about yourself and determine that you are an above average talented and confident student and can really put in hard work to succeed in life. CBS would certainly be interest in taking you in if you have a promise of being successful in future in a leadership role in an internationally important engineering / manufacturing business.
Wishing you all the very best in your studies and career.
Sincerely yours,
Dr Rajendra Prasad
