Recently admitted to Visual Computing Master programme - Need advice
Hi :) Thanks for opening my post.
I've recently been admitted to the Visual Computing Master program, and this is something I didn't even expect. I would love to pursue this as I live and breathe computer graphics, and want to pursue rendering research in the future. However, I'm in a bit of a dilemma financially.
As a student from North Macedonia, I'm a non-EU student. So I would need to provide proof of sufficient funding for each year for the residence permit in Austria, so I can study there. This makes sense, but the amount is a bit outside of what I have saved up. I have enough saved up for a year, but not for more.
Seeing many posts in this subreddit, I'm very discouraged as I see it's very difficult to find a job as a non-EU student (paricularly if you don't speak German enough to be useful at said job, like me). I was wondering, what are the prospects of working at TU Wien itself? I am fairly open to the possibility to work part-time as TUW, as part of a paid assistant, in a paid student project, and generally anything related to the master. Is this more feasible than just applying to jobs unrelated to TUW?
I know that the grants for non-EU students are basically non-existent, and if they exist they will probably be taken by students with near-perfect grades and achievements. So I'm not counting on that.
I'm prepared to sacrifice a lot of time for this, but I just need a realistic answer for this. If you have any advice I would be very grateful if you could comment, even if it's a tiny piece of information.
I have been admitted to german universities, and I have been granted a DAAD scholarship for there. These programs have similar if slightly worse curricula (Uni Bonn, Uni Saarland). It seems ridiculous that I'm even entertaining the fact to go to TUW, but I really think the research groups are filled with amazing people that I would want to meet, learn from and eventually even contribute to. Having been part of a conference I always see papers originating form TUW, and that gives me a solid feeling that the research being done there is what I want to do.
Should I start searching for jobs right now? Should I defer to the next semester? Will that be enough?
I'm sorry if this doesn't make any sense, I just thank you for reading until the end. Hope you have a wonderful day.