About Stanford in Berlin

Stanford in Berlin was established in the mid-1970s when Stanford moved its German Overseas Studies campus from Beutelsbach, a small town on the outskirts of Stuttgart, to Berlin-West, as the first American university to establish a study abroad program in the divided city. Up to 100 undergraduates from Stanford University study at Stanford in Berlin each year.

We are one of over ten global destinations of the Bing Overseas Studies Program of Stanford University. Stanford in Berlin hosts Stanford students of all majors. Students come to Berlin for periods of 3-9 months of study and optional, subsequent internships (see section on Krupp Internships). Coursework spans a broad array of disciplines: from Berlin’s avant garde theater scene to the political economy of Germany in the new Europe, from film studies to Berlin’s rich art collections and architecture of transformation, from theory and culture of sport to German language instruction at all levels.  New technologies and local tutoring allow students of engineering to stay in sequence with required major coursework while studying in Berlin.

All courses at Stanford in Berlin are an integral part of the Stanford University curriculum in Palo Alto, but the innovative modes and venues of learning developed here—the use of the metropolis and its stellar institutions as the classroom—make for a concrete and intensely interactive learning experience. Cost-free transportation passes, frequent extracurricular activities — H.G. Will Trips to new and prospective member states of the European Union, encounters with students of local universities, concert and opera visits, festive meals — as well as subsidy of cultural events provide students the entire spectrum of opportunities of this legendary metropolis, the largest in the EU. 

After their studies at Stanford in Berlin, many of our students enter internships throughout Germany under the auspices of the Krupp Internship Program for Stanford Students in Germany, a program designed exclusively for students of Stanford in Berlin. The generous support of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung has since 1982 made it possible for the program to place over 1350 Stanford students in full-time, paid internships, giving them both practical experience in their fields and close contact with Germans in the workplace. Over 300 host institutions have provided Stanford students a full spectrum of opportunities in an unlimited variety of fields: from artificial intelligence to medical research, from banking to forestry, from theater to engineering. During their studies at Stanford in Berlin, Internship Coordinator Dr. Wolf-Dietrich Junghanns works closely with the students to help them focus their interests, to finalize an appropriate placement, and to prepare them for entering the German workplace. Interns receive a stipend sufficient to cover all of their local costs. Students who intern spend between six and nine months in Germany in a combination of study and work.

Stanford in Berlin has a rich history. After Stanford moved to Berlin in the mid-seventies as the first American university in the divided city, Stanford students have shared in the dramatic changes that marked 20thcentury Berlin: during the years of the cold war, each cohort of Berlin students took extended field trips to one of the cities of the GDR where they were often the first Americans local people had ever met; they danced on the Wall on November 9, 1989; and they have witnessed and experienced how the re-united Berlin has become the mecca of culture, innovation, and European integration that it is today.