For international applicants planning to enroll at a German university, a pre-university college may be a mandatory requirement.
As Deutsche Welle notes, attending a Studienkolleg is necessary if the school leaving certificate does not formally correspond to the German Abitur.
Who can be admitted to the college
For enrollment at a German university, international applicants who received their secondary (complete) general education certificate before 2014 inclusive need two years of study at a university (in their home country) or one year at a university and study at a German pre-university college. This requirement also applies to those who graduated from a vocational school, technical school, or college. School certificates issued from 2015 onwards entitle the holder to directly enter a pre-university college or a German university after one year of study at a home university.
This rule also applies to Belarusian certificates: 2015 is the decisive year here. Ukrainian applicants can enter the college directly if they received their certificate in 2012 or later. You can check what your school leaving certificate is equivalent to in Germany in the Anabin database.
If you have studied at a university in your home country for several years, or even obtained a degree, you should apply directly to a German university. You will not be allowed to attend a college voluntarily.
How to find a college
Pre-university colleges exist in almost all federal states of Germany, but not in every city and certainly not at every university. Currently, there are only about three dozen. In 2020, there will be one less: the college in Greifswald is closing. If you do not find the city where you would like to study in the list, do not be upset – several universities are attached to one college. The full list of colleges can be found at http://www.studienkollegs.de/Kontaktdaten.html.
There are colleges both at universities and at universities of applied sciences. Before submitting documents, you should decide where you want to study. After a college at a university of applied sciences, you can only enroll at universities of applied sciences. Graduating from a college at a university removes this restriction. You cannot apply to a Berlin university and enroll in a college in Heidelberg. However, after completing courses at a college, you are not required to enroll specifically at the university attached to it.
How much does tuition cost
Most colleges are public, but there are also private ones. In North Rhine-Westphalia, for example, both colleges are run by church organizations but operate with a state license. Tuition is mostly free: students only pay a semester fee of 100-150 euros; even in Baden-Württemberg, where universities charge non-EU international students 1,500 euros per semester.
However, there are exceptions: for example, two semesters of preparatory courses at the college of the Dresden University of Technology cost about five thousand euros. The student bears the costs of accommodation and food in any case.
Preparatory courses with a profile
Study at the college lasts two semesters. Applicants are assigned to courses depending on their chosen specialty and what they studied at home. The program of all courses includes the study of German and English. In-depth study of other subjects depends on the profile.
"T-courses" are for future students of technical specialties, mathematicians, chemists, and physicists. "W-courses" are general economic preparation. "M-courses" prepare applicants for medical, biological, and pharmaceutical specialties – students study mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and computer science at the college. The letters "S" and "G" denote courses for those studying languages and humanities – students attend courses in German and English, literature, history, and sociology.
Instruction is in German, even if you later plan to study your specialty in English. The requirement is knowledge of German at least at level B1.
How to apply to a Studienkolleg
First, the applicant must choose a university where they would like to study in Germany. Documents must be submitted directly to the university or to the application service for international applicants Uni-Assist – if the university itself asks to apply there on its website.
Depending on how long the student studied in their home country, they are either admitted directly to the university or sent to a specific college. After one or two years of study at a home university, the field of study at the German university and, accordingly, at the college will depend on what you studied before.
If the applicant is required to study at a college, they will have to take entrance tests – in German and one of the core subjects (e.g., mathematics). To be confident, it is better to take practice tests that colleges post on their websites.
But the main test awaits at the end of the academic year – final exams in German and core subjects (Feststellungsprüfung or FSP). After passing them, the applicant is enrolled at the university. Theoretically, the final exams can be taken externally without attending the college. In practice, this is a task of increased difficulty.
Admission to most pre-university colleges takes place twice a year – for the winter and summer semesters. The deadlines for submitting documents to the college differ somewhat from university deadlines – universities indicate them on their websites. Roughly, this is April-May for the winter semester and October-November for the summer semester.