FAQ:Admission

Questions about the admission process

Since there are many questions about the matriculation form, there is a own page answering those.

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 curriculum, question about the IAS programme, and counselling regarding study plans or exams amongst others. The department runs the IAS programme and also contains the admission board (a group of two professors and one post-doctoral member of staff) who select candidates and provide a ranking of all eligible applicants to the Team for Admission and Application ("Team Zulassung und Bewerbung") at the Campus Center. All questions regarding the content of the programme should be asked to the IAS team. Once the ranking is done, the admission process is happening at the central administration 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!
• 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, responsibility is partly handed back to the academic office at the department who is the contact for all study issues (e.g. module and exam registrations, credit points, etc.). They are only aware of you and can help you once you start your studies.
• The Academic Office at the department ("Studienbüro"): This team will deal with all administrative tasks at the department (module registration, exams, etc) while you are here. They are not involved before you actually start studying!

The questions here are categorised by the type of response you have received. Please first select the appropriate section.

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

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

If you have sent originals or certified copies for application, we are informing the Team for Application and Admission that we are in possession of those documents. In the last years that was enough and students did not have to submit the documents again. Please be aware that this can change in which case we will look for a different solution.

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 Team for Application and Admission is aware of this chicken and egg problem and you can provide the confirmation once you are in Germany and have accommodation. You can provide a travel insurance which covers your stay in Germany from arrival to the time you found accommodation.

Where do I have to send the admission documents?

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

Service für Studierende
Team Bewerbung und Zulassung
Alsterterrasse 1
20354 Hamburg
Germany

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 this offer because they have already taken another offer or are not able to take the offered space for various reasons. 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 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.

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 fulfil 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. You application has therefore not been ranked and had to be rejected on formal grounds.

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

The admission board carefully reviews each application. If you think the reason is not valid and might be due to a mistake, you can make a formal appeal. We recommend to first contact the IAS team to explain the nature of the mistake and ask for a more detailed reason or a second review of your documents. If you still think there was a mistake afterwards, you can file a formal appeal with the TBZ as stated in the rejection notification.

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

The admission board carefully checks all submitted evidence for credits in computer science. This also includes external courses or relevant experience from professional work and projects. Please be aware that only credits from the core of computer sciences (CS) are counted (e.g. programming, algorithms, concepts from computer science). Modules that are usually also taught in CS degrees like mathematics or soft skills (presentation skills, scientific methods, etc) are not counted. Therefore a standard CS degree also does not reach 100% computer science content but somewhere between 50% and 70% (which for example for a 3-year programme usually means around 90 to 120 ECTS credits).

If there are many more applications than available spaces, the admission board will be very strict for this requirement. The relatedness of your degree to the standard BSc Informatik here in Hamburg is part of the selection criteria, so a degree very close to the boundary of 60 ECTS would also receive a less favourable ranking and therefore just delay the time until you have to accept that we could not offer you a space. We hope this is understandable since we do not want to spread false hope. Even with this strict evaluation, we usually have a chance of 1/5th or 1/6th of being offered a space if you fulfil the requirements.

My application was rejected due to language proficiency?

People who have handed in a certificate close to the required marks or have tried to fulfil 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. The admission board tries to judge the ability to perform well at our University. Although you might think that you can speak and understand English well, the ability to write and read on a scientific level are very important and many students struggle because of language issues. Once you start your studies, there will be little time to learn those skills next to the effort for lectures and tutorials and life in a foreign country in general. If you do not have the required language skills at the time of application, the admission board can not grant grace periods to redo certificates or improve those skills since a second failure would just mean that you slow down the waiting list process and temporarily take a space away from another student. From experience of the last years, we know that in most cases exceptions either lead to a delay until another student had to be enrolled or enrolled student who struggle to achieve pass marks due to language problems.