Admission Process

On this page, the questions are categorized by the type of response you have received acceptance, rejection, rejection with waiting list option.

The admission process

End of April each year, the IAS Team sends a list of ranking of all eligible applicants to the general University's Team for Admission and Application ("Team Zulassung und Bewerbung") at the Campus Center (Service Center). Once the ranking is done, the admission process is happening at the central administration (Campus Center) until you are fully enrolled. This also means that we at the department have no access to the admission process in detail and only receive the final list of enrolled students shortly before the start of the semester! Please tell us as soon as you have enrolled yourself that you did (end of May) in order for you to receive all emails regarding the start of your study. In general, you should always contact the IAS Team and your academic advisor first or in cc. IAS Team's contact: ias-team@informatik.uni-hamburg.de

To avoid confusion we like to point out that there are two distinct contact points of the University of Hamburg you have to deal with for application and admission:

• The IAS Team: The IAS Team is part of the Department of Informatics and is responsible for the application process, curriculum, questions about the IAS program, and counseling regarding study plans or exams amongst others. The IAS Team runs the IAS program and also contains the admission board (a group of professors and post-doctoral researchers) who select the candidates. All questions regarding the content of the program, your curriculum, application, difficulties while studying, should be asked to the IAS Team. The IAS program has a special appointed academic advisor, who can be reached via ias-team@informatik.uni-hamburg.de. IAS Team is managed by the academic advisor.

• Team for Application and Admission ("Team Bewerbung und Zulassung TBZ"): This team is located at the Campus Center and part of the central administration. They are running the online application system, are centrally responsible for all admissions at the University, are processing admissions and all legal issues, provides central student documents (student ID card, confirmation documents) and have full control over all formal issues leading to your enrolment. Once you are fully enrolled (paid semester contribution), responsibility is partly handed back to the academic office at the department and to your academic advisor who is the contact for all study issues. Please contact the Campus Center for all questions regarding the official enrolment or confirmation of enrolment for visa. Contact them via the CampusCenter

• The academic office at the department of informatics: There is also an academic advisor who you should contact when you have questions regarding e.g. module and exam registrations, credit points, recognition of german lectures or other lectures etc.). They are not involved before you actually start studying Contact academic office

I have received a letter of acceptance ("Zulassungsbescheid")

For information on the enrollment form, see the matriculation form page.

Am I required to send all documents as certified copies again?

Yes, you have to sent originals or certified/attested copies for admission (to the Campus Center Team for Application and Admission ("Team Bewerbung und Zulassung (TBZ)").

I do not have German health insurance! What do I have to do?

You can only get German health insurance once you have a valid address in Germany. The Campus Center Team for Application and Admission is aware of this problem and you can provide the confirmation once you are in Germany and have accommodation.

Please check the official information here and here.

Travel health insurance does not provide sufficient coverage for the duration of studies in Germany.

Where do I have to send the admission (enrollment) documents?

The address is given on the top-right hand side of the first page of the letter of acceptance.

I have received a rejection notification and have been put on the waiting list ("Ablehnungsbescheid")

If you have received a German-only letter, you can find a translation here.

What does this letter mean?

You have fulfilled the application requirements and your application was ranked by the admission board. Unfortunately your rank was outside the range of available spaces and you have been put on the waiting list for this year. The Team for Application and Admission will send out offers until the available spaces have been filled. If people first accept the offer and later retract their admission, it can happen that you even receive an offer letter shortly before the start of the semester (in which case we usually can find special arrangements to allow for enough time). Since we have many people each year that do not accept our offers, the first wave of letters already includes a considerable amount of overbooking to shorten the time until all spaces could be filled.

How does the waiting list work?

At the beginning of the admission process, a number of applicants receive a letter of acceptance. This number is calculated by the number of available spaces (so far 20 each year) plus a percentage for overbooking. Many students who receive an offer reject it because they have already taken another offer. If less students reply than there are available spaces, offer letters are sent out to the next applicants of the waiting list until all spaces are filled. This means that if you are high up on the waiting list, you may receive a letter of acceptance a few weeks after the official publication date of the results. Please check your online account on a regular basis for a new letter in "Documents"!

Is the waiting list carried over to next year?

No, the waiting list is not carried over to the next application period. Once the admission process has finished (i.e. all spaces are successfully filled), the waiting list is reset. If you would like to reapply please ask the admission board for advice and please check the requirements close to the application period (February-March).

I have received a rejection notification on formal grounds ("Ablehnungsbescheid")

If you have received a German-only letter, you can find a translation here.

What does this letter mean?

You receive this letter if the admission board has decided that you don't fulfill one or more of the requirements. This usually is due to missing credits from the field of computer science, insufficient language proficiency, or incomplete applications due to missing documents. Your application has therefore not been ranked and had to be rejected on formal grounds.

My application was rejected due to missing credits from computer science but I surely have enough?

As mentioned in the formal requirements the admission board carefully checks all submitted evidence for credits in computer science. Check the formal requirement page's specifics on which courses will be and will not be counted as computer science core courses. Since there are many more applications than available spaces, the admission board is very strict with this requirement. The relatedness of your degree to the standard BSc Informatik here in Hamburg is part of the selection criteria, so even a degree close to the boundary of 60 ECTS will receive a less favorable ranking since the 60 ECTS are the minimum.

My application was rejected due to language proficiency?

People who have handed in a certificate which is below the required mark will be rejected. People who tried to fulfill the requirement through alternative means will often be rejected on these grounds if the admission board does not see enough evidence for language proficiency on the required level. Please consult the formal requirements page on language proficiency for detailed information.

My application was rejected due to missing documents

As mentioned on the required documents page, you have sent all required documents in due time. The deadline is the 31st of March. Faxes and e-mails are not accepted. The IAS admission board does not inform you of missing documents or late applications. Your application is considered incomplete if one or more of the required documents are not received before the deadline (via postal mail) and/or if your online application form is not submitted online. As a result, your application will not take part in the selection process. You can not submit missing documents after the expiration of the application deadline, there will be no reconsideration.

What can I do if I think the given reason has to be wrong?

The admission board carefully reviews each application. Applications close to the required mark in the language certificate or close to 60 ECTS have been triple checked by the admission board by the time you received the rejection. This is also true for rejections on the ground of missing documents - there is really nothing the admission board or anybody can do for you. You can ask the IAS Team/Admission Board for explanation and/or look in your case again and/or for statistics - please do so friendly - stating your full name, the application number, and your question: ias-team@informatik.uni-hamburg.de (Please be patient, it is not the IAS Teams main task answering emails of rejected students, but you will get an answer eventually). Please do not get your hopes up - usually, the decision has been made. You may reapply next year (Please ask the admission board whether they would advise that.)

Short statistics: Usually, there are more than 400 applications and only 20 open spaces to be filled therefore the requirements for applying are strict with no exception.