Johannes Kepler University Linz

Johannes Kepler University Linz is a public university in Linz, the capital of Upper Austria. It sits on a park campus in the northeast of the city, in the Auhof area of the St. Magdalena district, with buildings set in a 36 hectare park around a pond. Trams run to the city centre in about 16 minutes on weekdays, and the campus is close to the A7 motorway.

The university began in 1966 as the College of Social Sciences, Economics and Business. A Faculty of Sciences and Engineering followed three years later, and in 1975 the college became a university and the Faculty of Law joined the campus. It takes its name from the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who wrote Harmonices Mundi in Linz in the early 17th century. The university reports about 27,000 students, with one in nine from abroad, and it added the JKU Science Park for science and engineering institutes. It was the first university in Austria to introduce an electronic student ID.

Teaching runs through four faculties with 127 institutes in total. Social Sciences, Economics and Business is the oldest and largest by students and graduates, covering economics, business administration, business informatics, sociology and statistics. Engineering and Natural Sciences, set up in 1969, started with technical mathematics, computer science and technical physics and later added technical chemistry, mechatronics and information electronics. Law offers diploma and doctoral degrees plus a Bachelor's in Business Law run with the economics faculty, and law is also taught by distance learning. Medicine is the newest faculty. The Johann Radon Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematics of the Austrian Academy of Sciences is based here, and the Research Institute for Symbolic Computation sits in Hagenberg near Linz.

The Austrian register lists 81 programmes of all kinds and languages at the university, 31 of them taught in English: 4 Bachelor's, 23 Master's and 4 PhD or doctorate. Subjects include business and management, international business, economics, data science and data analytics, artificial intelligence, computer science, chemistry, physics, mathematics, biomedical science, engineering and sustainable development.

For an international student, the practical points are straightforward. You apply directly to the university, which sets its own application period and entrance procedure, so check its website for the dates that apply to your programme. Students from outside the EU and EEA need a Residence Permit for Students. At public universities, EU, EEA and Swiss students pay no tuition within the standard duration of study plus two semesters, while most other students pay a per semester fee. Every student also pays the student union fee.

Dormitories such as the Julius Raab Heim, WIST Haus, Kepler Heim, ESH and KHG Heim are within walking distance of campus, and Linz has places for more than 3,100 students in all.