Uni-assist - An access to 180 German universities

What is uni-assist?

Located at Geneststraße 5, 10829 Berlin, uni-assist e.V. is an association that provides a document processing and evaluation service for international students applying to member universities of the association.

It was founded in 2003 through the cooperation of 41 German universities and was initially funded by the DAAD - Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (German Academic Exchange Service). Today, there are nearly 180 member universities. You can find the member universities by checking the website uni-assist.de directly. Otherwise, your university's website would indicate whether it's a uni-assist member or not.

Generally, uni-assist works as a central point of contact between students and their university members. Therefore, instead of contacting universities directly, you would deal with uni-assist to obtain admission to member universities.

uni-assist's main responsibility is to evaluate foreign school-leaving certificates and determine their equivalence to German education standards. Its services also include processing individual admission requirements specific to target universities. To clarify, uni-assist performs the following:

• Determine whether your academic certificates meet the general requirements for university studies in Germany.
• Convert the applicant's transcript of records to the German grading system
• Verify additional admission criteria defined by member universities
• Enable university selection for students, depending on the procedure
• Provide all data and documents needed for university admission procedures.
• Inform the applicant of the evaluation result.

The advantage of using uni-assist is that applicants only need to submit their documents once, even if they wish to apply to multiple universities.

What is the deadline for applying via uni-assist?

Deadlines vary by universities, which can easily be checked on their websites. Normally, they fall within the following two periods:

• Courses starting in the winter semester: deadline on July 15.
• Courses starting in the summer semester: deadline on January 15. Some universities set shorter deadlines for specific courses, such as Master's courses or the Studienkolleg (preparatory college).

You can submit your application once the university has activated its application on the uni-assist online portal. It is strongly recommended to send your documents to uni-assist and pay the processing fee at least 8 weeks before the deadline so they can inform you in case of missing documents.

uni-assist Processing Fees

The processing fee at uni-assist is 75 euros for the first course and 30 euros for each additional course. These fees cover registration, processing, and evaluation of your documents and academic certificates, regardless of the outcome of this procedure. If you renew your application for a new semester, it will be calculated as your first application (75€ for the first course and 30€ for each additional course).

uni-assist offers 2 payment methods: credit card or bank transfer. The processing fee must be paid at the time you submit your documents so that your application can be processed.

You may also receive a refund or credit from uni-assist in the following cases:

• You pay more than the required amount
• You pay for processing an application that is free for you
• You withdraw your application before uni-assist processes it
• uni-assist determined during processing that it is not responsible for the application

What Happens After Sending Your Application?

If you send your application by mail, uni-assist will send you a confirmation email upon receipt. After that, the processing time varies depending on your country of origin:

• Central and Eastern Europe: approximately 5 weeks
• Asia, North America, and Oceania: approximately 5 weeks
• Western Europe, Turkey, and Latin America: approximately 7 weeks
• Africa, the Middle East, and Iran: approximately 5 weeks

This processing time may be longer for certain individual cases. If you're interested in the uni-assist application process, don't miss this article.