Preliminary Review in Detail

uni-assist's core duty is the administrative preliminary processing and evaluation of university applications from abroad. The preliminary review procedure closes with a certificate informing each applicant, whether he or she fulfils the formal requirements for application, as well as with information forwarded to the respective universities.

The preliminary review includes the following tasks: Electronic recording, authentication, statistical analysis and evaluation of data as regards content in correspondence with the universities' own admission criteria for the respective course of study including the subsequent requesting of missing documents, if necessary.

The admission procedure at member universities only begins after conclusion of this preliminary review.

Confirmations of Receipt

Applicants will receive a confirmation of receipt via e-mail for everything they send to uni-assist.
In the event that applications, documents or the fee are received on several days, they will receive several confirmations.
The official date of receipt is the day on which all application documents have been received by uni-assist and the application could be matched with a payment received.
Applicants will also receive a notification, when the processing fee has been booked to our account.
If no e-mail address has been provided, all these confirmations of receipt will be sent by mail.
With the confirmation of receipt the applicant will receive an application reference number. With this number, they can track the processing status of their application and submit further applications.

Commencement of Review

As soon as the application documents and the payment have been registered, uni-assist will begin with processing the application.
The processing usually takes at least four weeks.
During the peak months of January and June/July and at the beginning of the current application semester in particular, it can happen that applicants will have to wait for a final answer from uni-assist for several weeks, especially, if the universities have not yet submitted their current criteria to uni-assist.
uni-assist can only finalise the processing of applications for the current application semester.
Changes in the submitted applications can be made via e-mail, fax or through the online account and will be confirmed by us.
Applications for later semesters will undergo preliminary assessment so that applicants already can amend potential fundamental deficiencies at an early stage.
Applicants will receive a final result only after uni-assist has available the universities' application criteria for the current semester.

Review Result

We inform applicants about the review result by e-mail and by letter.
The formal processing produces two decisive results:

A) The applications were forwarded

If the application documents basically correspond with the university's requirements, the application is forwarded.

The university decides, whether the applicants are admitted and informs them about their decision and the further steps.

In the event of multiple applications for several universities, we forward those applications satisfying the requirements.

After forwarding, the applications participate in the admission procedure of the respective university.
If an applicant is admitted to several universities, he or she can freely decide which university to choose.
The applicant is not obliged to study at the university he or she first applied for.

Using uni-assist's confirmation, that the application was forwarded to the university, applicants can apply for a university applicant visa at the German consular representation in their home country. However, this confirmation does not constitute a legal claim to being granted a visa.

B) The applications were not forwarded

If the documents are incomplete or do not meet the university's requirements, the application is not forwarded to the university.
Applicants can submit missing documents before the application deadline.
If applicants are not able to submit the required missing documents in time, they can re-apply at a later time.

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