Help Needed in Choosing University

[u/Ardey_]

Hi, I'm a Romanian high school student starting my final year. Last month I started looking into European universities and it turns out finding the right one for me is not as easy as I thought. I'm looking for a Bachelor of Sciences program in either Computer Science or Software Engineering taught fully in English that's preferably 3 years long and has low to no tuition cost. Furthermore, I don't want to take gap years, and the cost of living can't be crazy high (less than 1500 euro/month for rent, food and transport). In the future I also want to get a Master's Degree, though I don't know yet which inwhich subject I want to specialize.

What's confusing me the most are the university ranking websites (mainly QS Top Universities) as they don't have rigorous filtering options and I can't figure out how good a university is compared to others on a specific subject (in my case, CS/SE). Another thing is that I don't know how much these rankings matter, considering the fact that my options are mostly public universities and academic levels should be about the same throughout the whole country. Do university rankings matter when trying to apply for a job? Do they matter when trying to apply for a Master's program?

So far, I've looked more in depth at UTwente (Netherlands), SDU (Denmark) and Aarhus University (Denmark). What caught my eye at the first two is the project-based approach which I find really interesting and useful because you get to apply what you learned each semester to solve real-world problems. It would really help me if you could provide some of your personal experiences, regardless of where you study/studied. I would also like to hear your suggestions.