Application for the Master's Program

To the question "have you received a letter of admission from another application process", you should answer "yes" only if you have received a letter of admission for the desired degree programme from the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Bonn in a previous semester. Admission letters from other universities or for other degree programs do not count.

When completing the online application form in the application portal, please always use the grade and credit point system from the transcript of records issued to you by your university. Do not convert your foreign grades and credit points into German grades and credit points!

Please enter the date of the last examination as the (expected) completion date of your bachelor's degree program. Do not enter the date on which your degree certificate is awarded (which is often much later). So usually, you should enter the date on which you submit(ted) your bachelor's thesis or the date on which you give or gave the final presentation.

Please upload your thesis in the original language.

If the thesis is not yet finished by the application deadline, and you are the sole author, you may still apply. However, you must then:

• upload a summary instead of the finished thesis (see below); 
• upload a transcription of records that shows steady progress in your studies;
• upload proof of how many credits you need to obtain in your Bachelor's program in total and how many credits you will obtain for your thesis;
• send us the completed thesis later, as soon it is finished.

Students with a bachelor's degree from the University of Bonn do not have to upload their theses.

If your thesis is not yet finished, or if it is not written in English, French, or German, you must upload a summary in English, written by yourself (no official translation). The summary should include at least the title page, define the scientific questions you answer in your thesis and discuss relevant scientific literature. In other words, your summary should contain most of the introduction, the related-work section and the bibliography of your thesis.

Students of the University of Bonn do not have to upload a summary.

Your transcript of records should include an explanation of the grading and credit point system.

If you have already started or even completed a Master's degree program, please also enclose the transcript of records for the master's program, even if you did not complete any courses in that program yet.

The transcript(s) of records should show that you have enough credit points in the various areas of the admission requirements. If in doubt, please upload a module handbook of your study program so that we can determine, for example, which modules belong to Theoretical Computer Science.

We know that theses in Iran get fewer credit points than they are worth, and we try to take this into account.

We accept as proof:

• TOEFL iBT, at most two years old, with at least 18 points in all four test areas;
• TOEFL iBT with at least 95 points, regardless of the test date;
• Academic IELTS, at most two years old, with at least 5.5 in all four test areas;
• Academic IELTS at least 7.0, regardless of the test date;
• a certificate from a secondary school in the European Union that is recognised as an unrestricted university entrance qualification ("allgemeine Hochschulzulassungsberechtigung") in Germany and mentions English as a subject in the final examination with at least a sufficient result;
• a certificate confirming that you have attended a secondary school or university in one of the following countries for at least three years: Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada (except Quebec), Gambia, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, Ireland, Jamaica, Kiribati, St Kitts-Nevis, Liberia, St Lucia, Mauritius, Micronesia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, the Solomon Islands, Trinidad & Tobago, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, St Vincent, Zambia, or Zimbabwe.

In all cases, please simply upload a scan of the certificate.

If proof of your English language proficiency is not yet available at the time of application, you can add it to your application later. In that case, please indicate in the form when you will take the test and when you expect to receive the certificate.

Proof of the language of instruction in your previous degree programme will not be accepted as proof of English language proficiency. Even if your entire bachelor's degree program in, for example, Bangladesh, India, or Pakistan was in English, you must submit a TOEFL or IELTS certificate.

Duolingo is not accepted.

Please enter your letter of motivation in the corresponding text field in the online form (at most 4000 characters). Please answer these questions in your letter:

• Why are you applying for our research-focused program instead of an application-oriented programme?
• Which special interests, skills and talents qualify you for our research-based Master's programme?
• Considering our research areas and working groups, please name one or two of our researchers (professors, post-docs, etc.) whom you would eventually like to be your supervisors, and explain why. Try to find a recent research paper by one of these researchers and explain what insights you gained from it.

Upload your CV as a PDF. Your CV should list your educational and professional activities in reverse chronological order (from the present back to the end of high school).

You are also welcome to upload letters of recommendation from academics (professors, lecturers, researchers).

Due to the high number of applications, we usually do not have time for further enquiries. Therefore, if your application raises questions, then your CV, your letter of motivation and your letters of recommendation are the places where we will look for answers.

If you are a student of the Institute of Computer Science or the Mathematical Institute of the University of Bonn already, you do not need to submit a letter of motivation.

We generally accept documents in English, French and German.

You can currently also submit transcripts of records and certificates in Afrikaans, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish or Swedish with your application. However, if you are admitted, you would still need a translation into English, French or German for enrollment.

If you submit a translated document, you must also submit the document in the original language.

You should submit the thesis in the original language. If that is not English, French or German, you should also submit a summary (see above).

The following documents are not required and not helpful:

• Proof of the language of instruction in your previous degree program. It will not be accepted as a proof of English language proficiency!
• Letters of recommendation from employers outside academia. We do not read them.

We will first check whether you have applied within the deadline. Then we check whether you are likely to fulfil the admission requirements for the chosen degree programme by the start of the semester, possibly subject to a positive result of the language test or final examination. When evaluating your application, we only look at the documents that you have submitted. This evaluation is carried out under the responsibility of the examination board and, for foreign applicants, a commission of four professors from the Institute of Computer Science.

If you do not fulfil the admission requirements, if your application is incomplete or if documents that should have been available at the time of application are missing, your application will be rejected. In the application portal, the status of your application will then be changed to: Excluded because not all requirements are met. Much to our regret, due to the high number of applications we receive, we are generally unable to correspond with you about the reasons for rejection.

There is currently no further selection procedure for the Master's degree program in Computer Science: Those who fulfil the admission requirements are admitted (however, experience shows that only around 10 percent of applicants fulfil the admission requirements).

However, on average, there are only ten places available per semester in the Cyber Security Master's degree program. Therefore, a selection procedure takes place here. Even if your application is given the status Valid, you will not automatically be admitted. Applicants who fulfil the admission requirements are ranked according to their qualifications, and the first in the order are offered a place. There are separate selection procedures for nationals of EU member states (including Germany) and for nationals of other countries.

If you are likely to fulfil the admission requirements at the start of the semester and could be offered a place, but still need to submit your completed thesis, examination results or certificates, you will initially only receive an email, to inform you that we can admit you as soon as the required documents have been submitted. This offer is only valid for a limited period of time. The required documents include the final transcript of records for your bachelor's degree program, the bachelor's degree certificate and your proof of English language proficiency. Instead of the degree certificate, we also accept a provisional certificate from your university that states clearly that you fulfil all the requirements to receive your degree.

If you complete your bachelor's degree at the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Bonn and are still waiting for your final certificates, you do not need to submit these, because we have direct access to your records.

As soon as the requirements have been met, all documents have been submitted and, in the case of Cyber Security, a place is available for you, you will receive a letter of admission with further information on how to enrol.

The letter of admission is only valid for the semester for which you have applied. If you are unable to arrive in time to start your studies in this semester, you will have to defer to the next semester.

Deferring to the next semester in the Computer Science program: Please let us know that you intend to take up your studies in a later semester, so that we can keep in touch. In the first month of the semester to which you were admitted, please apply for the next semester through our application portal. Instead of filling out the whole application form again, you can just upload your previous admission letter. In theory, it is possible that, due to a change in regulations, we must re-evaluate your application, but this is very unlikely. Typically, within a year after your original admission, we can always give you an admission letter for the next semester before your admission letter for the current semester expires. 

Deferring to the next semester in the Cyber Security program is not possible. Of course, you could apply for the next semester again, but you would be ranked against the other applicants for the next semester then. Therefore, we have no idea whether you would be admitted again, and we can only tell you approximately two months before the start of the next semester.