Admission Process

On this page, you can read about the general application/admission process and receive information about the type of response you have received acceptance, rejection, rejection with waiting list option.

The admission process

For the application process and later admission process, it is important that applicants understand that there are two completely different points of contact at the Universität Hamburg which you have to interact with at different stages of your application/enrolment/studies.

To avoid confusion we like to point out that there are two distinct points of contact 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, Universität Hamburg. The IAS Team is responsible for the application process, selection process, program coordination, curriculum, questions about the IAS program, and counseling of students and applicants regarding study plans, and exams amongst others. The IAS Team runs the IAS program and also contains the admission board (a group of professors, post-doctoral researchers, lecturers, academic advisors) who select the candidates. All questions regarding the content of the program, your curriculum, application, website, wiki, and 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 and should be contacted regarding the above. IAS Team is managed by the academic advisor.

• CampusCenter Team: central administration of the entire university. The Team for Application and Admission ("Team Bewerbung und Zulassung TBZ") is located at the Campus Center - Main Campus and part of the central administration (Do not confuse this with the IAS Team and Admission Board). They are running the online application system STiNE, are centrally responsible for all admissions at the University, are processing admissions and all legal issues. The CampusCenter provides central student documents (student ID card, confirmation documents) and has 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 (ias-team@informatik.uni-hamburg.de). The CampusCenter is responsible for sending your letter of acceptance/rejection. You send your enrolment documents to the CampusCenter. 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 coordinator who you should contact when you have questions regarding e.g. module and exam registrations, recognition of credit points, recognition of german lectures or other lectures, transcript, etc.). They are not involved before you actually start studying Contact academic office

Description of application/admission/enrolment/study process. What happens after I send my application?

You send your application to the IAS Team at the Department of Informatics before the 31 of March. The IAS Team evaluates (only complete) applications. End of April each year, the IAS Team sends a list of ranking of all eligible applicants to the CampusCenter Team (the general administration). Once the ranking is done, the admission process is happening at the 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 informational emails regarding the start of your study.

The academic advisor (+IAS Team) stays in contact with the accepted students after application to ease the transition into your new study program in October. In order to do so please tell your academic advisor (ias-team@informatik.uni-hamburg.de) that you have received a letter of acceptance. 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

Admission: The CampusCenter Team decides how many of the top-ranked students receive a letter of acceptance (around 20) and instruction on how to enroll. Usually, this happens around 15 of May.

Enrolment: For enrolment, the accepted applicants have to send certified documents and their enrolment form to the CampusCenter within two weeks (29 May). After sending the enrolment documents and certified copies of your certificates, the accepted applicants are enrolled. The CampusCenter does not send any acknowledgment for receiving your documents. If you need one, you need to request it. At that point, you are for sure a student of the Universität Hamburg. In September the CampusCenter sends an email with your new student STiNE login, preliminary semester documents, demand for payment of your semester contribution. After you have paid you will receive your full semester documents (at that point you will have arrived in Germany and Universität Hamburg).

Arriving in Hamburg: The first two weeks in October are welcome/orientation weeks, please attend.

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 attach a note to your enrolment/matriculation form, saying that you are an international student from outside Europe.

Please check the official information here: Info of Universität Hamburg and Info of the city of Hamburg.

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

Please see FAQ section on health insurance

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.