FAQs – Frequently Asked Questions

Unfortunately, due to the great amount of inquiries we receive, we cannot initiate contact with a supervisor on your behalf. Please note that there is no central office which matches doctoral candidates and supervisors; every doctoral candidate who wishes to receive a professor’s acceptance letter must find a supervisor through their own initiative. However, you will find important information and tips on our website.

Depending on your research field, it might be possible to complete a PhD in Heidelberg in English; however, this aspect of the degree must be clarified directly with the prospective faculty and doctoral supervisor. You can obtain further information as to the various faculties at the University of Heidelberg and their doctoral requirements here.

If required, the expected German proficiency level for doctoral candidates is C1.

Acceptance at one of the faculties is the basic requirement in order to receive your doctoral degree. Enrolment is an administrative procedure that must be carried out after you have been admitted to your faculty. All doctoral candidates must enroll at the university.

If you have an employment contract of 50% or more with the university or the university hospital (Universitätsklinikum), you can apply for exemption from obligatory enrollment.

There is no general deadline for applications for admission as a doctoral student at the University of Heidelberg. If you are planning to carry out your doctoral training individually, you can apply any time throughout the year. However, if you are planning to apply for a structured doctoral program, you should find out about deadlines for this particular program on its website beforehand.

Doctoral candidates can enroll throughout the semester until shortly before the semester break (15 July for the summer semester; 15 February for the winter semester). However, we recommend that you enroll as soon as possible after receiving your acceptance from the faculty.  

As a doctoral candidate you are not required to pay tuition fees. Registration at the University of Heidelberg, however, obligates every doctoral candidate to pay a student service fee of 152,30 Euro per semester (as of September 2018).

Although the University of Heidelberg itself does not award any grants or scholarships, the Graduate Academy offers a limited number of Doctoral fellowships limited number of Doctoral fellowships via the “Landesgraduiertenförderung” of Baden Württemberg (LGFG). Please note, however, that you must already have been accepted at one of our faculties in order to apply.

Some of the University’s structured doctoral programs may also offer fellowships to doctoral Students. More information can be found here.

Your will find more information on scholarships from our website.

Some professors and departments can provide their doctoral students with stipends, paid research positions or part-time jobs in order for them to finance their studies. Whether this is possible in your case depends on your supervisor and the specific department or research institute you will be working at.

It is possible to find out about the disciplines offered at the University through the websites of the various University faculties.

If you are not able to find any subject that suits your interests you can visit the website of the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Office) where you can find a complete list of German universities sorted by subject.

Please note that it is not possible to study Management or Business Administration at the University of Heidelberg. Due to historical reasons, the University of Heidelberg specializes in the field of Economics and Development Economics. The fields of Business, Management and Finance are covered by the nearby University of Mannheim: CDSB, University of Mannheim

The LGF fellowship serves to provide financial support to talented doctoral candidates of all academic disciplines at Heidelberg University and to enable them to concentrate as best as possible on their academic research.

The LGF fellowship does not constitute income in the sense of §§ 18, 19 EStG.

The LGF fellowship does not establish an employment relationship between Heidelberg University and the fellowship recipient. The fellowship payments are therefore not remuneration for work in the sense of § 14 SGB IV and are not subject to social security contributions. The fellowship recipient cannot be obligated to provide any specific academic services or any other form of labor based on the award of the fellowship.

No applicant has a legal claim to receive a fellowship.

The individual doctoral fellowship of the Landesgraduiertenförderung is 1,468 Euro per month. This includes a monthly allowance of 103 Euro for travel and materials.

Fellowship recipients who do not have mandatory public health insurance through an employment contract can apply for a health insurance allowance of 50% of the actual costs of their health insurance up to a maximum of 100 Euro per month.

Fellowship recipients with children can apply for a child allowance of 400 Euro per month for the first child and an additional 100 Euro per month for every additional child.

Applications can be submitted using the online application process by the application deadline (see: Individual fellowships through the Landesgraduiertenförderung (LGF)) at midnight. This deadline applies to the submission of the online registration form, your application documents and the evaluation report(s). Please make sure to request the reports from your evaluators in plenty of time.

Exceptions:

Application periods for fellowships at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, München (ZI) and the Kunsthistorische Institut, Florenz (KHI) can deviate from these deadlines and are therefore announced separately on the corresponding websites.

As a rule, the Graduate Academy receives approximately 60-80 fellowship applications every year and can award about 10-12 new individual fellowships from the funds provided through the Landesgraduiertenförderung.

Your application is complete if you:

• filled out and submitted the online registration form,
• uploaded your application documents in a single PDF including all the necessary attachments (see call for applications),
• after the submission, received a notice in your browser confirming that your data was transmitted correctly,
• two evaluations reports (for a new fellowship application) or one evaluation report (for the extension of a fellowship) accompanying your application were/was submitted by the evaluator(s) to the Graduate Academy. Therefore, you should contact your evaluator(s) in plenty of time to request the necessary reports.

An automatic email will be sent to you as soon as

1. you have filled out and submitted the online registration form. This email will provide you with your LGFG identification number and the relevant additional information required for the fellowship application;
2. an evaluation report for your application has been uploaded. Please note that a new application for an individual fellowship requires two reports from two university professors. Therefore, you should receive two emails, each confirming the receipt of one evaluation report. Please also check your spam folder.

Please note that if your evaluation reports are not received by the application deadline, your application will not be considered, even if all other documents are complete. There is more information about the evaluation reports below.

Yes. You can submit the attachments (as one PDF file) until the end of the application period using the link that will be sent to you via email after you have filled out and submitted the online registration form. Simply follow the link and enter your LGFG identification number or your email address. Please note that if you upload your documents more than once, only the latest version of your application documents will be considered.

Applications with incomplete documents in the PDF will not be considered.

The reports can be written only by university professors as defined by § 44 (1) Nr. 1, LHG Baden-Württemberg. As a rule, these are professors, junior professors, junior group leaders, or lecturers with a Habilitation or equivalent qualification. The evaluator should know the applicant personally and should be familiar with his or her academic performance and abilities. In many cases, the doctoral supervisor submits one of the reports. It is not possible for the Graduate Academy to provide assistance in the search for evaluators.

• For a new application you will need two evaluation reports. These must be received by the Graduate Academy by the application deadline. Please contact your potential evaluators in plenty of time.
• For an application for a fellowship extension (first or second extension) you will need one evaluation report. The report must be received by the Graduate Academy by the application deadline. Please contact your evaluator in plenty of time.

Please only submit the number of evaluations indicated in the application instructions. Additional evaluations will not be considered.

Please make sure to forward your LGFG identification number or, if you do not yet have an LGFG identification number, your personal email address to your evaluator(s). You will be notified via automatic email when an evaluation has been submitted to the Graduate Academy for your application.  Please check with your evaluator(s) if you have not received two (for new applications) or one (for extensions) such notification(s) by email before the application deadline.

Yes. Both the evaluation form for new applications and the evaluation form for extensions will be available on the website of the Graduate Academy as soon as the call for applications is open. After the evaluation form has been filled out and saved, the evaluator can upload it on the Graduate Academy’s website.

Please make sure to forward your LGFG identification number or, if you do not yet have an LGFG identification number, your personal email address to your evaluator(s). You will be notified via automatic email when an evaluation has been submitted to the Graduate Academy for your application.  Please check with your evaluator(s) if you have not received two (for new applications) or one (for extensions) such notification(s) by email before the application deadline.

You will be notified via automatic email as soon as an evaluation has been submitted to the Graduate Academy for your application. Please make sure to forward your LGFG identification number or, if you do not yet have an LGFG identification number, your personal email address to your evaluator(s). Please check with your evaluator(s) if you have not received two (for new applications) or one (for extensions) such notification(s) by email before the application deadline.

Admission as a doctoral candidate to a faculty at Heidelberg University is one of the prerequisites for applying for a LGF fellowship. You must have completed the admission process in your faculty before the application deadline. In certain cases, it may be possible to submit a conditional admission letter from your faculty. Please contact the Graduate Academy (ga-lgf@uni-heidelberg.de) to determine whether a conditional admission as a doctoral candidate in your faculty would be sufficient for your application.
Please note that it is not sufficient to submit a letter of acceptance from your doctoral supervisor.

A university degree that qualifies the holder for doctoral training is an academic degree that entitles a student to pursue a doctoral degree. In Germany, this is usually a Diplom, Magister or master’s degree.

Yes. On the application form, please select "außerhalb Deutschlands” (degree from a university outside Germany) in the field "qualifying degree“.

No. To apply for an LGF fellowship, you need to have successfully completed a university degree.

In this case, please ask your university for a temporary degree certificate. The temporary certificate must state that you have completed your studies successfully and include the grades received.

Please note that you must also submit the official letter of admission as a doctoral candidate from a faculty at Heidelberg University with your application.

Yes, if the enrollment certificate clearly indicates that you are enrolled for doctoral studies.

Yes. You can submit the attachments (as one PDF file) until the end of the application period using the link that is sent to you via email after you have filled out and submitted the online registration form. Simply follow the link and enter your LGFG identification number or your email address. Please note that if you upload your documents more than once, only the latest version of your application documents will be considered.

Yes, you can submit your documents in English.

The outline is limited to a maximum length of five pages of text plus a bibliography. The schedule for completion of the project is limited to a maximum of one page. As a guideline, we recommend a line spacing of 1.5 lines and a font size of 10 to 12 points. If your bibliography comes to more than 5 pages, we recommend that you limit your literature list to only selected works.

Please upload your application documents only as one PDF. Documents submitted in Word, PowerPoint or other formats will not be considered. PDFs can be created directly from Word documents, PowerPoint presentations or most image editing software by using the Adobe PDF function, if installed, or by using free software and the print function. After you have combined your application documents into one single PDF, please check to make sure that the PDF can be opened and the contents can be viewed with Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Please note that the PDF must not exceed the maximum file size of 10MB. Therefore, please be sure to compress images or image files before converting them into a PDF.

Please fill out and submit the online registration form again. After you have filled out the online registration form again, you will receive a new confirmation email including your new LGFG identification. Please use only this new identification number for any further correspondence and for uploading your application documents.

The purpose of the fellowship is to support you in the completion of your doctoral studies within the planned time frame. Therefore, while you are receiving the fellowship, you should concentrate primarily on carrying out your doctoral project. If you are nevertheless employed while receiving the fellowship, the following conditions apply:

• The work must be of academic nature (e.g. research or academic teaching) and must be related to the subject area of your doctorate and/or to a possible field of work that you could pursue after completing your doctorate.
• If you have an employment contract with Heidelberg University (e.g. as student assistant or a research assistant in the TV-L system), please be aware that there must be no connection between the activity supported by the fellowship and the work carried out within the employment contract. This does not exclude a relationship to the subject area of your doctoral studies.
• You can work a maximum of 40 hours per month.
• The net income you earn cannot exceed 25% of the monthly income of salary group TV-L E 13, level 3 according to the current table of the “Tarifvertrag für den Öffentlichen Dienst der Länder (TV-L), Tarifgebiet West”. If your net income exceeds this amount, the LGF fellowship will be reduced accordingly.

If you are awarded a fellowship, you will be required to provide information about your employment situation. If your employment does not comply with the requirements listed above, you will be obliged to resign from your contract or relinquish your claim to the fellowship.

It is not possible to receive an LGF individual fellowship if the following conditions apply to you:

• you were employed employed as a Mitarbeiter/in nach TV-L or a wissenschaftliche Hilfskraft at Heidelberg University (not including the University Hospital) in the three months before the start of the fellowship AND
• your employment consisted of a contract of more than 25% of a full-time position AND
• the work you did has a direct connection to your doctoral project (this means that through the contract you earned income for doing the research that makes up your doctoral project).

If this describes your funding situation, please contact the Graduate Academy.

 

Yes, you can apply for a fellowship even if your current income exceeds this limit. If your income exceeds the income limit during the time in which you receive the fellowship, the fellowship will be reduced by the exceeding amount. This rule applies only to the income you receive while receiving the fellowship.

Please notify the Graduate Academy immediately about any changes in your employment situation using LGF-Form 1.03 regardless of whether the maximum income limit has been/is about to be exceeded or not.

The Graduate Academy will notify you in writing about the awards decision after the completion of the awards process at around the beginning of July.

No. Parallel applications for other fellowships will not have negative effects on your application for the LGF fellowship.

No. The receipt of a fellowship does not create an employment relationship. Therefore, no benefits are awarded with the fellowship and the fellowship recipient cannot be obligated to provide any specific academic services or any other form of labor based on the award of the fellowship.

The fellowships may be paid out by the university free of income taxes and social security contributions if the requirements according to the Income Tax Act are met. The fellowship recipient is responsible for determining whether he/she is liable to pay income taxes. The fellowship recipient is responsible for paying any possible income taxes or insurance themselves.

A list of all LGF representatives is available here.

If you have not found the information you need here, please feel free to contact the Graduate Academy:

by email: ga-lgf@uni-heidelberg.de
 

Visitor’s address:
Graduate Academy
Im Neuenheimer Feld 370
69120 Heidelberg

The LGF completion grant serves to provide financial support to talented doctoral candidates of all academic disciplines at Heidelberg University who are in the final phase of their doctoral studies. The completion grants will be awarded for the completion of a dissertation and will be paid out for a maximum of 6 months. Completion grants will not be paid out in the time period between the submission of the dissertation and the thesis defense.

The LGF completion grant does not constitute income in the sense of §§ 18, 19 EStG.  

The LGF completion grant does not establish an employment relationship between Heidelberg University and the grant recipient. The grant payments are therefore not remuneration for work in the sense of § 14 SGB IV and are not subject to social security contributions. The grant recipient cannot be obligated to provide any specific academic services or any other form of labor based on the award of the fellowship.

No applicant has a legal claim to receive a fellowship.

Doctoral candidates who have been admitted to one of the 12 faculties of Heidelberg University to do their doctoral studies can apply for a grant.

However, you are not eligible for the funding if:

• you are a medical student who is writing her/his doctoral dissertation during your medical studies at Heidelberg University
• you are simultaneously receiving an equivalent grant for your doctoral thesis from public or private sources
• you have already received funding for the completion of your doctoral thesis from other sources

In order to apply, you should be in the final stage of writing your dissertation and you should expect to submit your dissertation directly after or up to a maximum of 3 months after the grant expires.  You should ensure that it is feasible for you to complete the work in this stage during the funding period.

If you will be employed at Heidelberg University for any length of time during the three months before your grant begins, you must ensure that there is no connection in terms of time, place or content between the activity supported by the grant and the work carried out within the employment contract. This does not exclude a relationship to the subject area of the dissertation.

For the application deadline in spring (mid-April), funding can begin in August at the earliest and the following January at the latest. For the application deadline in fall (mid-October), funding can begin in the following February at the earliest and in the following July at the latest. The completion grant can be awarded for a maximum period of 6 months after the desired funding begin. Please indicate on the online registration form the time period during which you would like to receive the completion grant.
Note: The grant can begin only at the beginning of a month and ends at the end of a month.

Example: Your current doctoral funding expires on 30 September 2024. You are planning to complete your thesis in March 2025 and submit it to your faculty by 31 March 2025. For this 6-month period between the end of your funding and the completion of your thesis, you would like to apply for the completion grant. Your application must be submitted by the deadline in spring (mid-April) 2024. Please indicate the following dates for your desired funding period on the online registration form: 01 October 2024 to 31 March 2025.

The completion grant of the Landesgraduiertenförderung is 1,203 Euro per month. This includes a monthly allowance of 103 Euro for travel and materials.

Grant recipients who do not have mandatory public health insurance through an employment contract can apply for a health insurance allowance of 50% of the actual costs of their health insurance up to a maximum of 100 Euro per month.

Grant recipients with children can apply for a child allowance of 400 Euro per month for the first child and an additional 100 Euro per month for every additional child.

Applications can be submitted using the online application process by the given application deadlines (see: Completion grants of the Landesgraduiertenförderung (LGF)) at midnight. This deadlines also appliy to the submission of the online registration form, your application documents and the evaluation report; therefore, please make sure to request the report from your supervisor in plenty of time.

Yes. You must submit your dissertation to your faculty no later than 3 months after the completion grant has ended. Please submit a confirmation from the faculty of your submission within this time period to the Graduate Academy.

If your dissertation is not finished within three months of the end of the completion grant, you must submit an interim report on the status of your dissertation, a work schedule and a short assessment by your doctoral supervisor to the Graduate Academy.

Your application is complete if you:

• filled out and submitted the online registration form,
• uploaded your application documents in a single PDF including all the necessary attachments (see call for applications),
• after the submission, received a notice in your browser confirming that your data was transmitted correctly and
• an evaluation report accompanying your application was submitted by our doctoral supervisor directly to the Graduate Academy. Therefore, you should contact your doctoral supervisor in plenty of time to request the necessary report.

An automatic email will be sent to you as soon as

1. you have filled out and submitted the online registration form. This email will provide you will your LGFG identification number and the relevant additional information required for the application for the completion grant,
2. an evaluation for your application from your doctoral supervisor has been uploaded. Please check your spam folder.

Please note that if the evaluation report is not received by the application deadline, your application will not be considered, even if all other documents are complete. There is more information about the evaluation report below.

Yes. You can submit the attachments (as one PDF file) until the end of the application period using the link that will be sent to you via email after you have filled out and submitted the online registration form. Simply follow the link and enter your LGFG identification number or your email address. Please note that if you upload your documents more than once, only the latest version of your application documents will be considered.

Applications with incomplete documents in the PDF will not be considered.

The report can be written only by university professors as defined by § 44 (1) Nr. 1, LHG Baden-Württemberg. As a rule, these are professors, junior professors, junior group leaders, or lecturers with a Habilitation or equivalent qualification. Ideally, the evaluation report for an application for a LGF completion grant should be submitted by your primary doctoral supervisor.

Please make sure to forward your LGFG identification number or, if you do not yet have an LGFG identification number, your personal email address to your supervisor. You will be notified via automatic email when the evaluation has been submitted to the Graduate Academy for your application. Please check with your supervisor if you have not received such a notification by email before the application deadline.

Please only submit the number of evaluations indicated in the application instructions. Additional evaluations will not be considered.

Yes. The evaluation form will be available on the website of the Graduate Academy as soon as the call for applications is open. After the evaluation form has been filled out and saved, the evaluator can upload it on the Graduate Academy’s website.

Please make sure to forward your LGFG identification number or, if you do not yet have an LGFG identification number, your personal email address to your supervisor. You will be notified via automatic email when an evaluation has been submitted to the Graduate Academy for your application. Please check with your supervisor if you have not received such a notification by email before the application deadline.

You will be notified via automatic email as soon as the evaluation has been submitted to the Graduate Academy for your application. Please make sure to forward your LGFG identification number or, if you do not yet have an LGFG identification number, your personal email address to your supervisor. Please check with your supervisor if you have not received such a notification by email before the application deadline.

Yes, if the enrollment certificate clearly indicates that you are enrolled for doctoral studies.

Yes. You can submit the attachments (as one PDF file) until the end of the application period using the link that is sent to you via email after you have filled out and submitted the online registration form. Simply follow the link and enter your LGFG identification number or your email address. Please note that if you upload your documents more than once, only the latest version of your application documents will be considered.

Yes, you can submit your documents in English.

The report is limited to a maximum length of five pages of text plus a bibliography. As a guideline, we recommend a line spacing of 1.5 lines and a font size of 10 to 12 points. If your bibliography comes to more than 5 pages, we recommend that you limit your literature list to only selected works.

Please upload your application documents only as one PDF. Documents submitted in Word, PowerPoint or other formats will not be considered. PDFs can be created directly from Word documents, PowerPoint presentations or most image editing software by using the Adobe PDF function, if installed, or by using free software and the print function. After you have combined your application documents into one single PDF, please check to make sure that the PDF can be opened and the contents can be viewed with Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Please note that the PDF must not exceed the maximum file size of 10MB. Therefore, please be sure to compress images or image files before converting them into a PDF.

Please fill out and submit the online registration form again. After you have filled out the online registration form again, you will receive a new confirmation email including your new LGFG identification number. Please use only this new identification number for any further correspondence and for uploading your application documents.

The purpose of the completion grant is to help you to complete your doctoral project quickly and successfully. Therefore, while receiving the completion grant, you should concentrate primarily on carrying out your doctoral project. If you are nevertheless employed while receiving the grant, the following conditions apply:

• The work must be of academic nature (e.g. research or academic teaching) and must be related to the subject area of your doctorate and/or to a possible field of work that you could pursue after completing your doctorate.
• If you have an employment contract with Heidelberg University (e.g. as student assistant or a research assistant in the TV-L system), please be aware that there must be no connection between the activity supported by the completion grant and the work carried out within the employment contract. This does not exclude a relationship to the subject area of your doctoral studies.
• You can work a maximum of 40 hours per month.
• The net income you earn cannot exceed 25% of the monthly income of salary group TV-L E 13, level 3 according to the current table of the “Tarifvertrag für den Öffentlichen Dienst der Länder (TV-L), Tarifgebiet West”. If your net income exceeds this amount, the LGF completion grant will be reduced accordingly.

If you are awarded a completion grant, you will be required to provide information about your employment situation. If your employment does not comply with the requirements listed above, you will be obliged to resign from your contract or relinquish your claim to the completion grant.

Please note: If your income or employment situation changes while receiving the completion grant, you must contact the Graduate Academy immediately.

It is not possible to receive an LGF completion grant if the following conditions apply to you:

• you were employed as a Mitarbeiter/in nach TV-L or a wissenschaftliche Hilfskraft at Heidelberg University (not including the University Hospital) in the three months before the start of the funding AND
• your employment consisted of a contract of more than 25% of a full-time position AND
• the work you did has a direct connection to your doctoral project (this means that through the contract you earned income for doing the research that makes up your doctoral project).

If this describes your funding situation, please contact the Graduate Academy.

 

Yes, you can apply for the completion grant even if your current income exceeds this limit. If your income exceeds the income limit during the time in which you receive the completion grant, the grant will be reduced by the exceeding amount. This rule applies only to the income you receive while receiving the completion grant.

Please notify the Graduate Academy immediately about any changes in your employment situation using LGF-Form 1.03 regardless of whether the maximum income limit has been/is about to be exceeded or not.

The Graduate Academy will notify you in writing about the awards decision after the completion of the awards process at around the beginning of July/January.

No. The receipt of a completion grant does not create an employment relationship. Therefore, no benefits are awarded with the grant and the recipient cannot be obligated to provide any specific academic services or any other form of labor based on the award of the completion grant.

The completion grants may be paid out by the university free of income taxes and social security contributions if the requirements according to the Income Tax Act are met. The grant recipient is responsible for determining whether he/she is liable to pay income taxes. The grant recipient is responsible for paying any possible income taxes or insurance themselves.

A list of all LGF representatives is available here.

If you have not found the information you need here, please feel free to contact the Graduate Academy:

by email: ga-lgf@uni-heidelberg.de
 

Address:
Graduate Academy
Im Neuenheimer Feld 370
69120 Heidelberg