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If you are like most of our clients, university application, job or internship search is something you do a few times in your lifetime. However, we conduct these activities every day.
We handle several hundred applicants each year. To manage such client volume, we have developed tools and gathered data that you don’t have access to.
Leveraging these artefacts, we have helped several hundreds of clients develop best-practices and helped them avoid making the same costly mistakes that deny them admits or job offers.
You don’t need a career advisor or admissions consultant to land a job or get an admit at a university.
Nonetheless, having a support system, an experienced team, and a trusted partner by your side helps you reach your goals much faster, avoid frustrations and eliminate mistakes along the way.
Universities don’t have to give you a reason, but if the rejection has left you wondering you could contact the university to ask for feedback. Try not to take it too personally. Admissions tutors will be sifting through hundreds of applications and it might not always be obvious why it’s not good news for you. If a university doesn’t offer you a place:
- Accept another university offer
- Apply to a new course
- Apply to the next intake (spring / fall)
- Take a gap year and reapply
- Consider alternative routes to a degree
- Consider applying to a different country
A first general answer is: Usually not. Your language certificate is part of your application and must, therefore, be handed in before the application deadline.
However, some universities grant applicants the option to apply with a placeholder, for example, a language certificate on a lower level, and hand in the actually required language certificate later. The applicant can be admitted under the condition that they will provide a language certificate at a high enough level when they enroll.
Keep in mind that if you have to apply for a visa, you will also have to hand in a proof of language proficiency or of your intention to take a language course to show that you are an eligible and serious candidate and can obtain the visa. Time management is therefore crucial.
Which certificate is the best one for you depends on your own circumstances and situation. If you are preparing for your studies in Germany from abroad and looking to obtain your language certificate from anywhere in the world, the TestDaF, Goethe-Zertifikat C2 or telc Deutsch C1 Hochschule may be your best options.
If you are looking to get your language certificate in Germany, the DSH is a great option. This test is offered at German universities and has got a non-standardized test format, meaning that the university’s teachers create and conduct the test. We find the DSH to be the best option. Not only is it affordable, but due to its non-standardized form, we find it to be a bit easier to pass, as well.
The German law clearly defines which German language certificates a student may hand in. However, the universities and each program can make independent decisions when it comes to setting the requirements for the German language level. That is why it is important that you check with the program of your choice to learn precisely which proficiency level they expect from you.
As a rule of thumb, German universities require you to present a proof of upper intermediate to advanced German language skills (level B2/C1) to study in German.
To let applicants know how well they should speak German, many German universities use the terms defined by the Council of Europe in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). On this scale, there are 6 levels (A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2):
- A1 is the lowest level and designates that the student is a beginner
- C2 is the highest level one can gain
Upper intermediate language skills correspond with level B2, and advanced language skills correspond to level C1.
The following five German language tests and certificates must be recognized by all German universities:
- TestDaF (TDN 3, 4 or 5) (Test Deutsch als Fremdsprache)
- DSH II or III (Deutsche Sprachprüfung für den Hochschulzugang)
- Goethe-Zertifikat C2
- telc Deutsch C1 Hochschule (The European Language Certificate)
- DSD II (Deutsches Sprachdiplom Stufe II)
In a Resolution of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK) in Germany, all five of them were defined as equally valid when it comes to applying to German universities. So as long as you hold one of these certificates, you are good. The university of your choice will accept your certificate as valid proof of your language skills.
Each program can decide on a level of German skills independently. Therefore, the minimum results in each language test required from you vary from university to university.
To study in Germany, you need to prove that you speak English or German well enough to study in that language. This proof needs to be delivered by handing in an official language certificate unless you are a native speaker or have graduated from an English or German-speaking program.
More than 245,000 international students are currently enrolled at German universities, most of them come from non-English and non-German speaking countries. Therefore, universities are prepared to have second-language speakers in the classroom.
As a rule of thumb, German universities require you to present a proof of upper intermediate to advanced German language skills (level B2/C1) to study in German. You can prove your German level with TestDaF, Goethe or alternative certificates to get admitted to a degree program in Germany.
Unfortunately, some students with low GPA or percentage are filtered out initially because lots of public universities in Germany get applications from highly qualified students, and universities are just convinced to admit those students with high grade, unlike some of the top universities in USA.
Approximately one to two months.
However, we recommend submitting your applications at least six weeks before the deadline to ensure time for corrections or additions if any information is missing.
You should expect to receive a formal acceptance or rejection approximately one to two months after the deadline has passed.
In short, funding. In Germany, the state really pays the biggest part of the bill. This means that universities have comparable amounts of funding that makes ranking based on this factor incorrect.
Universities use this money to pay for professors, campus facilities, equipment, etc.
The minimum grade requirements in German universities may vary depending on the courses, universities etc. However, the minimum grade required for a middle profile course is GPA 2.5, GPA 1.5 for high profile study programs and there are no specific requirements for low profile courses.
Students are allowed to work part-time for 90 full days or 180 days in a year. A graduate is allowed to stay in Germany for 18-24 months depending on his / her course to look for a job after graduation.
Once they find a job they can convert their student permit to a residence permit for taking gainful employment.
Students have two options to submit their applications. They can either apply directly on the university’s application portal or go through UNI ASSIST.
UNI ASSIST assists students with its partner universities only.
UNI ASSIST charges Euro 55 for their service of applying to 2-3 universities.
It charges an additional €15 per university for further applications.
Once the University receives the application, it may take about 3-4 months to inform students of the outcome. Not all universities intimate whether the application is incomplete or lacks any documents.
Hence, we recommended submitting all the requested documents in one go to avoid any last-minute issues or rejections.
There are two intakes in a year for admissions in Sep/Oct and in March/April. The application and visa process in total takes about 9 months, so students should plan accordingly.
The deadline for Sep/Oct intake is 15 Jan and for March /April intake is 15 July.
Hence, we recommend an early application to maximise your chances and have enough time to process your visas.
Education in Germany is tuition-free at most Universities. The Universities charge about €140 – 500 per semester for development, lab and facilities. As of January 1, 2022, keeping the rate of inflation in mind, the mandatory amount required in the Blocked Account for studying in Germany is €10,332 for an entire year or €861 for a month. This amount includes your accommodation, living expenses, and travel costs.
The courses meant for international students are called International study programmes and are taught in English. Hence, students looking for courses exclusively in English must look for such courses on the university websites.
Unless a student has sound knowledge of the German language, choosing International programs is a prudent choice.
Some courses also have the option of doing a dissertation in German; students need to prove their efficiency in German beforehand if they choose this option.
Admission requirements are set very high by the German public universities, both for undergraduate (median 90%) and graduate (median 75%). In addition, students need to appear for IELTS or TOEFL to prove their efficiency in the language. Most of these universities only charge nominal tuition fees, hence are very popular among international students. Hence, German public universities are competitive to secure admits at.
Yes, there are many universities across Germany that process international student applications without uni-assist.
To apply for a degree program without uni-assist, just choose a study program that doesn’t use uni-assist to process its applications.
However, your preferred universities may use uni-assist and should this be the case, the application process may involve a bit more of work as an applicant.
Ultimately, this method is used to ease the processing of international student applications for universities and if you follow their simple steps here, you will be fine!
As an international student, you need to make sure you familiarize yourself with uni-assist as you may be applying to a university that handles their admissions for students abroad through uni-assist.
Having a general idea of how uni-assist functions and how it can help you can be to your advantage when searching for appropriate study programs.
While many specialized study programs such as executive master’s programs use uni-assist, many regular degree programs also employ this tool to facilitate their admissions process for international students.
uni-assist is a tool which is used by universities to help them process international student applications. They also support international students who are interested in applying to German universities. Though universities evaluate student applications and ultimately decide on which students are admitted, uni-assist processes the application materials and facilitates the admission process. uni-assist does this by:
- Evaluating official certificates to determine whether they fulfill the criteria for studying in Germany
- Converting grades (GPA) to the German grading system
- Checking all admission requirements of your universities of choice
- Registering all data and documents required for the university of your choice’s admissions procedure
- Informing students about the evaluation results
Though we have helped a few candidates with their applications to Bachelors programs in Europe, our forte lies in graduate and post-graduate courses. Please get in touch with us to for a discussion regarding your motivation to pursue a Bachelors degree in Europe.
In short, we leverage data and technology more than other consultancies to gather deep market insights and eliminate low-value activities. We leverage data to provide authoritative and objective feedback. Many consultancies lack the tools, data and insights that we have developed over the years to closely monitor market developments, such as emerging skills needs, staff capabilities, etc.
We use these insights during the engagement process to give our clients the competitive advantage they deserve. These differentiators, holistic service portfolio from admissions to careers and our technology portfolio singularly set us apart from other consultancies in the market.
Studienkolleg is compulsory only in the Bachelor’s degree to bridge the gap of 1 year that arises due to the difference in schooling, e.g. 12 years in India and 13 years in Germany.
However, one can skip the course of Studienkolleg by studying at a university for a year.
No, we don’t offer translation services in-house. However, we collaborate with authorized translation partners that offer translation services of high quality. Please get in touch to explore your translation requirements.
In broad strokes, your career prospects depend on several factors, such as your area of study, additional qualifications, technical and soft skills, labor market sentiments, immigration policies, business cycles, etc.
As admissions and career consultants, we have deep industry and labor market insights. We leverage these insights during the engagement and help select courses, programs and universities with promising career prospects post-graduation.
We specialize in European admissions and job search services. We don’t currently support applications to non-European universities.
Since 2015, we have been helped students secure admits in Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, France, Netherlands, Finland, and Belgium. If you are interested in studying at an institution in a specific country, please get in touch.
We offer visa review and application services before you file your visa at the Embassy or Consulate in your vicinity. We advise and help you prepare your visa application, supporting documents, etc. But, we do not submit your visa application on your behalf.
Since our incorporation in 2015, we have been delivering our services remotely through online tools. We use a range of collaboration and video conferencing technologies to deliver our admissions and career services. Consequently, we can deliver a very high quality of service without the geographical and time-zone constraints. Furthermore, the virtual apprach allows us to avoid costs and pass on those savings to our clients.
Our clients’ privacy and future career prospects, especially in the context of admissions and career services, is a very serious business to us. So, we do not disclose our previous clients or the services we rendered to protect and respect their privacy, before, during or after your purchase. Similarly, we also won’t share your information with our future clients to respect your privacy.
We do not currently support the pay later model. However, we accept payments in two installments at specific stage gates – 50% before the engagement start and 50% before we release the final application documents. We charge a 10% surcharge for this option. Please get in touch with us to discuss the installment option. Please note that your are required to bear the additional bank charges and exchange rates that are applicable when choosing the installment option.
We are aware that several admissions consultancies offer this service. We help prepare your application documents and support your queries during your application submission process. But, we do not submit your application documents on your behalf.
The duration of our client engagements range between one to six weeks. We have optimized our processes and automated several manual steps using home-grown tools to avoid losing valuable time. Due to this flexibility, we plan the engagement roadmap considering your availability. As your coaches and advisors, we accommodate your personal situation, rather than drag you through a process. This means, we adapt our engagement process to meet your constraints. In exchange, we also expect your commitment in the process.
In short, yes. Grades contribute to 67% of the overall admission decision. Though this is an important selection criteria, admissions committee also considers the other aspects of your profile and application essays before making the final decision.
Approximately 2/3rd of our clients have weak academic grades, but otherwise strong candidate profile. During the engagement, we will uncover your profile strengths and highlight them in a compelling manner through your application documents.
We also match your profile data with our historical admissions data to shortlist universities with reasonable admissions chances.
Finally, we also advise you on additional activities you could undertake to further strengthen your profile.
Yes. Due to synergies that we can leverage across clients with similar profiles, we offer discounts on packages purchased as a group. We require a group size of at least 5 to offer this discount. Please contact us for the discount that we can offer to your group.
Yes. Our services are high touch. In other words, our Advisors will personally work with and guide you through the entire application process, start-to-end. We do not want to let the financials disrupt the flow of our engagements. Instead, we resolve all financial matters upfront, so we can focus and dedicate our energies on deliver the superior outcomes that our clients expect us to deliver. Hence, an upfront purchase is mandatory before commencing an engagement.
Due to our location in Germany, we have deep insights into the European admissions and job market that we leverage during the engagement process. Our advisory process is rooted in your career prospects after you graduate. We use the job market data and insights to help you choose the right course or university to study at.
Furthermore, your relationship with your local admissions consultants ends after you secure an admit. They usually lack the insights and resources to support you later on during your internship and job search as we could.
No, we do not promise our clients that we will secure an admit for them. Universities independently make the admission decisions. Private admissions consultancies cannot influence these decisions. Moreover, almost all public universities are funded by the tax payers and do not enter into partnerships with admissions consultants as some claim.
However, we do leverage our experience, software tools and data, market insights, and network to help clients maximize their admissions chances. We have a moral and ethical responsibility to our clients as they place a lot of weight on our recommendations. Our advise also has long-term career impact.
Hence, we do not promise that we will secure an admit. We do, however, promise an excellent quality of service, application documents and individual attention that you deserve.
Engagement is the term we use for our client projects. We chose the term Engagement to signify the long-term nature of relationships we nurture with our clients. As most of our clients aspire to study in Europe, we adopt a long-term posture to these relationships as a few of our clients avail our career services during their Internship and / or Job search as well.
We offer our Personality & Career Development workshops at academic institutions (universities, schools of applied sciences, business schools, private schools) that offer Bachelors, Masters, PhD, and vocational degrees, governmental agencies, non-profits, and companies in the private sector. If you have concerns whether your institution would qualify for our workshops, please get in touch.
Typically, we strive to complete each client engagement within 6 weeks, so that you can focus on applying to opportunities, instead of waiting for our deliverables. However, this duration also depends on your timelines, goals, financial situation, and the package you purchased. We coach you as a person, not drag you through a process. This means, we adapt our engagement process to meet your constraints. Likewise, we also expect your time and commitment in the process.
If you wish to organize this workshop at your institution, please drop us an email at support@intrvu.org or fill the contact form. Please make sure that your institution is willing to fund the workshop and the logistics, such as registrations, our fees, travel & accommodation (if required), course materials, etc. For smooth planning and organisation, we recommend getting in touch with us at least 60 days prior to the workshop.
Our presence workshops are usually conducted at the institutions that engage us to deliver our workshops. Correspondingly, we align with the institution’s registration approach. If our client wants to organise the workshop as an open event, we will plan our workshop accordingly. On the other hand, if the client wants us to deliver our workshop to select audience, we can do that as well. Each advisor delivering the workshop can handle 30-50 participants. Correspondingly, our prices and workshop structures differ depending on the number of participants, workshop focus, and focus areas. Please get in touch with us to discuss the workshop you have in mind.
We offer these workshops all year round. Please check out our events page for the next workshop. If you’d like to organise a workshop at your institution, please get in touch with us at least 3 months before the planned workshop date.
The admissions and job market is competitive on a global scale and we leverage the best practices from our engagements with a global clientele. Correspondingly, our workshops are delivered only in English.
Our workshop prices depend on the number of participants and the duration of the workshops. Get in touch with us to discuss your workshop needs, envisioned structure, topic, number of participants, etc. After understanding these details, we shall quote our rates for your consideration. Please note that travel and other overhead expenses are not included in the quote price.
Generally, anywhere between 30 and 90 students participate in our workshops. Each advisor can handle 30 – 50 participants in a workshop. For class sizes exceeding 30 participants, we bring in another advisor to manage the workload during workshop. To deliver more personalised attention to the participants and to deliver the most impact to your participants, we recommend that a class size does not exceed 30.
Our advisors from INTRVU will run these workshops with the course organisers from your institution. Depending on the class size and topics covered, the number of advisors from INTRVU will grow / shrink to deliver the best learning experience for your participants.
Our one day workshops last anywhere between 4 and 8 hours. We have also conducted 2 day workshops. Depending on the expected outcomes, we customize the coursework, content and curriculum. Workshops spread over several days are possible.
We understand the budgetary constraints of students. In response, we offer a 15% discount to offset some of your costs. Please get in touch with us to avail the coupon that you can apply during your purchase.
Unfortunately, we cannot deliver services before you pay for them. Our services entail significant investment in terms of time, resources and expertise. Like all organisations, we can only render our services to candidates that value our expertise and are willing to pay for our services.
We do not offer any guarantee or promise that you will secure a job without appraising your candidature and the overall job market. However, we can assure you a high quality of service, process and artefacts. The job application process is complex and deterministic process that depends on macro- and micro-economic aspects, such as labor market sensitivity, trending skills, business cycle, personnel demand, a company’s hiring plans, immigration policies, etc. Many of these aspects are beyond our sphere of influence. Hence, we commit only to the engagement aspects that we can confidently and reliably deliver.
You can purchase our services via Paypal, Credit Card or direct bank transfer. You can choose the option during your purchase. Please note that you may incur additional charges for International payments. These charges are not included in our prices and have to be borne by you.
Both. We primarily coach virtually via Skype / Google Hangouts. We also offer in person coaching and advisory sessions in certain locations where our advisors and coaches reside. Please get in touch with us to explore whether an in-person session is feasible. Please note that both virtual and in-person sessions contain the same content and quality.
Our process is a hybrid of coaching and mentorship. As advisors we give you advice using a tried and tested process. We also provide you with tools and insights that help you achieve your goals. Learn more about our approach here.
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