Uni-Assist is a platform for submitting documents to educational institutions in Germany, which is most frequently used for the admission of foreigners to German universities. The website is available in German and English. Besides the possibility to submit documents, Uni-Assist also offers a lot of useful information and advice for applicants.
First you have to create an account, i.e. register in the online portal "My assist". As a registered user, you can start the submission process. Please note: Each subject area of a certain educational institution must be applied for separately, i.e. two subject areas at the same university are already two applications. There are costs for each individual application, more on this below. Then you send the required documents to Uni-Assist (or if you live in Berlin, come and drop your documents in its post box). Find out more about the admission procedure on the Uni-Assist website.
Additional inforrmation for prospective refugee students can be found here.
Access to the website is free of charge, i.e. a list of the required documents is freely available. There is a charge for the application:
The first application costs 75 euros, each additional application costs 30 euros. This means that if you apply to one university for three different subjects or to three different educational institutions, but for one subject each, you will have to pay 135 euros.
Please note: The processing of your documents will not begin until payment has been received!
The payment is only valid for one semester. If you already submitted your documents six months ago but are doing so again, you will have to pay for the application again: the first subject 75 euros, all further subjects 30 euros.
Hochschulstart is a free platform for submitting documents to German educational institutions with admission-restricted study places in the subjects human medicine, veterinary medicine, dentistry and pharmacy. However, many universities also use the platform for their other degree programs.
The website is only available in German. One advantage of the platform is that you can submit your application and complete the missing documents within the submission deadline. Another advantage is the prioritisation of applications, i.e. you can choose which faculty and university is most interesting for you and which is more of a backup option. However, you have to choose the prioritization consciously, because in case of a successful admission all applications with a lower prioritization will automatically be withdrawn irrevocably.
Find out more about registering and using the platform on the Hochschulstart website here.
Be sure to check with the educational institution to which you want to apply. This is because the institution decides which degree programs and applicant groups uni-assist will examine. For foreign first-year students, uni-assist is also the most common point of contact. There are also universities with their own application procedures. Note that some universities require an application via two platforms, e.g. via uni-assist and their own.
You can find out which universities use uni-assist here.
You can find out which universities use Hochschulstart here.
Please note: There are often universities that use different procedures for different applicant groups, which is why many universities appear in both lists.
If the application via uni-assist or Hochschulstart was not successful because there are special features in your case that are not recorded there, contact the student advisory service (Studienberatung) of the respective university. In individual cases, subsequent admissions are possible.