FAQs (for prospective students)

To study for an undergraduate degree (e.g. a Bachelor’s degree or a teacher training degree) at Saarland University, you will need to have a general higher education entrance qualification (Allgemeine Hochschulreife, Abitur) or a subject-specific university entrance qualification (Fachabitur). An entrance qualification for a university of applied sciences (Fachhochschulreife) is not sufficient for admission to study at a university. Please use the following link for more detailed information on the academic requirements for undergraduate study.

No, you can only apply once you have received your certificate. Your higher education entry qualification (HEEQ) only becomes effective on the date on which you receive the certificate, after which you will be able to state your average Abitur grade. You will not be disadvantaged by submitting your application at a later date, as places are not allocated on the basis of when applications are received. However, please note that the application deadline still applies and applications received after the deadline will not be processed!

If you wish to start preparing your application before you have received all the relevant documents, you can set up an account in the SIM application portal where you can select and store your intended programmes of study. All missing documents must be uploaded and your completed application submitted within the specified application period. 

Before you apply for admission or enrol at the university, you must contact the Saarland Ministry of Education and Culture to obtain a certificate that formally recognizes your foreign school leaving certificate. More information is available here.

For applicants who gained their higher education entrance qualification in the previous year, special deadlines apply only in the case of the three degree programmes 'Medicine', 'Dentistry' and 'Pharmaceutical Science', for which admissions are coordinated nationally. The current admission application deadline is published on the hochschulstart.de website.

No. In accordance with the provisions of the Saarland Higher Education Institutions Act (SHSG), anyone who has obtained an appropriate higher education entrance qualification can apply for admission to or enrol at Saarland University, undertake academic examinations and assessments, and has the same rights as all other students.

If you are currently doing voluntary community, social, environmental or military service or you will be doing so in future, we still advise you to apply anyway. If you receive a letter of admission (please keep the letter for later reference), you will still need to apply again at the appropriate time, but according to current admission regulations, your application will be given preference over all other applications.

Yes, in most cases you can. As the enrolment deadline for non-restricted entry programmes is the end of September (for the winter semester) or the end of March (for the summer semester), you can still enrol for a degree programme that is not subject to entry restrictions after receiving a rejection letter.

To access the applications that you have already submitted, please log in to the SIM application portal and select the menu item 'My applications'. You can now withdraw one or more of your applications and can submit new applications (before the relevant deadline).

If you are unable to submit your application for admission or enrolment yourself, you may authorize another person to act on your behalf. In this case you will need to upload a letter of authorization (as a pdf file) in the SIM portal.

Documents submitted with a previous application will not be considered in subsequent applications. Please submit all of the required documents with your new application.

However, please do not re-register with the SIM portal when you begin the new application process. Please continue to use the user name (format: B0012345) that was assigned to you when you first registered. If you have forgotten your user name, please check whether you still have the email that was sent out automatically when you first registered, as it contains your user name.
If you can't find your user name, please send an email to: sim-support@hiz-saarland.de.
Please make sure that you include your full name and date of birth in the email. It is essential that you send your email from the same email account that you used when you first registered with the SIM portal.

If you have already graduated from a German higher education institution and you have all of the relevant graduation documents, your application will be treated as an application to study for a second undergraduate degree.