Step-by-Step Relocation Guide

Your CV: build it on Europass

German universities read hundreds of these. Use the format they already recognise rather than a design template, and put the effort into the content instead.

How to build it

1. Go to the Europass CV builder and fill in your profile: education and training, work experience, language skills, digital skills.
2. Register rather than working as a guest. Registering means creating an EU Login — the Commission's own account service — with an email address and password. A guest session keeps your information for only 48 hours after your last visit, and you will be editing this CV across a whole application season, not one afternoon.
3. Pick a design, choose which sections to include, and download it as a PDF. Registered users keep versions in the Europass Library and can edit them any time; as a guest you would have to re-import the downloaded PDF into the editor each time you wanted to change something.
4. The tools run in 31 languages. Write yours in English for an English-taught programme unless the course explicitly asks for German.

What a German university CV has to contain

uni-assist — which processes applications for a large share of German universities — describes a CV as a chronological list of everything you have done, normally laid out as a table. It expects:

• Personal data: name, address, date of birth, place of birth, citizenship
• Education, university studies and professional development
• Practical and on-the-job experience
• Additional qualifications — languages and IT skills

That is the baseline. Individual programmes ask for more: publications, thesis title and supervisor, projects. Check each course's page, and check the forms from the previous step.

If you are working from a Pakistani CV

Local CV conventions and German ones differ in both directions, and this is the section that actually changes what you submit.

Remove these

• Father's or husband's name. Standard on a Pakistani CV, and not asked for in Germany.
• Religion, caste, and marital status. These are protected characteristics under German anti-discrimination law; including them looks out of place rather than helpful.
• CNIC number. Never put a national ID number on a document you email or upload to a portal.
• Referee names and phone numbers, unless the programme asks. “References available on request” is unnecessary too — drop the line.
• An “Objective” or “Career Goal” paragraph. Your motivation belongs in the letter of motivation, not the CV.

Keep these — even though US and UK advice says to delete them

• Date of birth, place of birth, and citizenship. American CV guidance tells you to remove all three. In Germany they are expected, and uni-assist lists them explicitly.
• Your full postal address.
• A photo, if the programme asks for one. Some do and some do not; where one is wanted, a plain portrait is enough and it does not need to be a passport photo. Never add one to a course that has not asked.

Details that decide how it reads

• Reverse-chronological within each section. Most recent first, so the reader sees your Bachelor's before your matriculation.
• Month and year for every entry, e.g. 09/2020 – 06/2024. A CV showing only years hides gaps, and a reader who suspects that will assume the worst.
• Give the grade in both scales. Write your CGPA and the German equivalent — for example “CGPA 3.45/4.00 (German equivalent 1.9)”. Use the same converted figure the matcher gives you, and keep it consistent across the CV, the forms and the application.
• Name your institutions in full, exactly as they appear on your transcript and as they are spelled in anabin. An abbreviation the reader cannot match to your degree certificate slows the whole file down.
• State English proficiency as a test result, not as “fluent” — IELTS Academic 7.0, with the date. If you have German at any level, give the CEFR level (A1, B2) rather than a description.
• Keep it to one or two pages. Two is normal for someone with a Bachelor's plus work experience. Six is not.
• Sign and date it. German applications conventionally end with the place, the date, and a handwritten signature — print the last page, sign it, scan it back to PDF. Some universities will not accept an unsigned CV at all.