University's own documents to fill in and submit
Pick your course and get the forms that university publishes for it.
The university's own forms
Most German universities publish their own paperwork on top of the standard documents — an application form, a subject questionnaire, sometimes a template you must use rather than your own layout. Pick your course to see what it asks for.
A missing form is a rejected application
These are graded as completeness, not merit. An application missing one signed form is normally set aside without anyone reading the rest of it, and by the time you find out the deadline has usually passed. This is the cheapest step in the whole guide to get right, and one of the most common to get wrong.
Find your course's forms
What these forms usually are
- The university's own application form. Separate from the uni-assist form, and required in addition to it at many universities.
- A subject-specific questionnaire. Often a table where you map your Bachelor's modules onto the course's prerequisites, with ECTS and grades. This is usually the longest one to fill in, and the one departments actually read.
- A letter of motivation on their template. Where a template exists, using your own layout can get the letter disregarded.
- A declaration or affidavit — that your statements are true, that the work is your own, that you have not been deregistered elsewhere. These normally need a handwritten signature.
- Referee or supervisor forms, which someone else fills in and often sends directly. Those need the longest lead time and are the usual cause of a late application.
How to fill them in without losing marks
- Download every form fresh, per intake. Universities reissue them with new dates and fields. A form from last year's page may be rejected outright.
- Check the German page as well as the English one. It frequently lists forms the English version omits.
- Match the module names to your transcript exactly. On any form asking you to map your Bachelor's modules, use the titles as they appear on the official transcript — not a tidied-up translation. A grader who cannot find the module you named will score it as not taken.
- Fill PDFs digitally where the form allows it, then print, sign and scan only if a handwritten signature is demanded. Handwriting an entire form invites transcription errors.
- Scan to PDF, not to photo. Phone pictures of a signed page are refused by many portals, and colour scans over the size limit are a common upload failure at the deadline.
- Name files the way they ask. Where a naming convention is specified, it is usually because the file is processed automatically.
- Check where each form goes. Some are uploaded to uni-assist, some to the university's own portal, and some are emailed straight to the department — occasionally all three for one application. The Submit to column above records this per form as the data arrives.
✅ Quick action plan
- Run each shortlisted course through the lookup above.
- For anything not recorded, open the course page yourself and check its downloads section — in German as well as English.
- List every form, and note which need someone else's signature. Start those first.
- Fill them digitally, matching module names to your transcript exactly.
- Print, sign and scan to PDF only what genuinely needs a wet signature.
- Confirm where each one goes — uni-assist, the university portal, or the department — before you submit anything.
Important links
Universities publish their own forms on their own departmental pages, and there is no central register of them. The lookup links to each course's documents individually rather than to one site.
This phase
- IELTS
- GRE
- GMAT
- Online test
- University's own documents to fill in and submit
- CV
- Letter of Motivation