• An interest in both the natural sciences and the social sciences.
• Active and passive English skills allowing you to read texts and attend courses in English are required.
• For field trips abroad, proficiency in the local language would be an advantage.
• During the course, students are required to attend numerous field courses and will be expected to bear a portion of the associated travel costs.

Program structure

1st and 2nd semester:

• Attendance of lectures and participation in exercises
  • Basic knowledge
  • Contextual knowledge
  • Geographical thinking
  • Theoretical knowledge
  • Technical skills: techniques/methods of academic work and presentation
• Foundations of human geography (settlement, social and economic geography)
• Foundations of physical geography (geomorphology and climate geography)
• Cartography
• Geoinformatics
• Statistics for geographers

3rd and 4th semester:

• Attending lectures, practice classes, seminars and field internships
• Consolidation of skills acquired for identifying problems, structuring problem areas, developing solutions, and applying theories and concepts to individual cases
• Area planning
• Soil geography
• Geosciences
• Geographical information systems (including geosimulation)
• Regional geography with a 14-day excursion abroad

5th and 6th semester:

• Exercises, seminars, and field projects
• Extending acquired methodical and technical skills through independent case-related problem analyses and problem-solving as well as empirical data collection and evaluation
• Attending courses and the career-oriented eight-week compulsory internship will prepare you for writing your bachelor’s thesis

Specializations

The option to select which area of geography you wish to focus on, particularly through elective modules in the 3rd academic year, allows you to create your own individual focus or choose to continue to pursue a wide spectrum of geographical issues.

You will also have the opportunity to take part in modules from more than 10 neighboring disciplines at JGU, including geology, meteorology, botany, zoology, physics, chemistry, ethnology, history, sociology, archaeology, computer science, economics.

As you must earn a total of 35 from 180 total credit points in these elective modules, you will be able to choose your individual focus for almost 20% of your studies.

Your eight-week compulsory internship with subject-related authorities or companies outside the university is very important and often paves the way for your subsequent professional career. Your internship might even help you determine the topic for your final thesis; external supervision of the thesis in cooperation with your internship provider is also possible.

You will thus be able to already prepare and undertake your transition to professional life directly after your studies. All you need is commitment, interest in the topic, and motivation! The focus you choose thanks to your academic curiosity and interest in a specific geography-related focus also play a role in your choice of topic for your bachelor’s thesis at the end of your studies. The authorized examiners in the geography department also reflect the variety of research topics within the subject of geography.

Stays abroad

Would you like to live abroad for a semester or a year? Do you want to learn another language and get to know a new culture? Or gain a different perspective on your particular subject? A stay abroad provides you with the perfect opportunity to achieve this and is possible with every degree program – either self-organized or by taking advantage of one of the popular exchange programs. This is made possible by various cooperation agreements and partnerships with foreign universities.

For more information on this topic, please visit our websites on studying abroad. Visit our student exchange platform for an overview of cooperating universities in your field.

This program of study does not require you to spend time abroad, but you nevertheless have the opportunity to do so.

Internships

During your bachelor’s degree program, you will complete an eight-week, career-focused, full-time internship outside of the university. This internship can be undertaken with authorities or companies that have a “meaningful connection” to your Geography studies. We recommend that you undertake the internship in the 3rd academic year but it is also possible in the 2nd academic year.

Voluntary internships are another good opportunity to obtain more in-depth insight into a professional field.

An internship allows you to discover whether everyday life in a particular occupation suits your career expectations and interests. You can gain qualifications for a professional field and acquire important professional and personal skills to start a career. An internship helps you both shape your career path, and mold the remainder of your course sequence – in particular by selecting specializations that suit your practical experience.

You can find further information and relevant internships on the Career Service website.

The professional areas open to geographers in the private and public sector are just as broad as the range of content and methods deployed in the geographic field itself:

• Education sector
• Environmental protection and conservation, sustainable development strategies
• Climate protection and climate adaptation, weather service, disaster management
• Regenerative energy sector and engineering firms
• Urban and regional planning, land use planning
• Urban and regional marketing/development
• Administration (district administrations, regional authorities, ministries, federal authorities)
• Tourism and public relations
• International organizations
• Management and political consulting
• Migration and integration at city, state and federal level
• Research (university, non-university research and development institutions)
• Market research
• Business development and consultancy
• Media industry and film production
• International development cooperation
• You will acquire the following professional skills during your Geography studies and will be able to apply them in your subsequent professional career:
• Solving complex problems independently
• Executing projects independently
• Communicating and presenting results
• Creating and handling geographic information systems (GIS, geosimulations)
• Evaluating data with qualitative and quantitative methods such as content analyses and multivariate statistics

Not sure what to do after graduation? Don’t worry!

A university degree generally does not prepare you for a single profession but qualifies you for a wide range of career paths – for example, in research, in a typical profession related to your field of study, or in one of many other academic fields.

This is why career orientation is also part of your studies. Gaining practical experience is key, and you can do so through internships, working student positions, part-time jobs or voluntary work, for example.

JGU’s Career Service will support you throughout the entire process with information, advice, workshops and numerous events – from career orientation and working on your profile and skills to finding your dream job and successfully applying for it.