Admission and Enrollment

As soon as you have received an agreement on the supervision of your doctoral dissertation from a professor, you will jointly conclude an advising agreement. This document is intended to ensure continuous support and supervision for the doctoral student and their dissertation project. Moreover, the advising agreement puts the mutual responsibilities of the supervisor and the doctoral student in writing.

Please download the advising agreement template and complete it together with your supervisor. You should take all the time you need and ask your supervisor all questions you might have – even if these points do not appear in the advising agreement. Immediately after signing, please submit the completed and signed advising agreement together with the also agreed upon work and time schedule to the dean's office of your school/department so that we can record your data centrally.

After finalizing the advising agreement, you need to submit an application for admission as a doctoral student to your school/department. At this point, your school/department checks whether you meet all requirements for admission as a doctoral student, as outlined in the regulations and procedures governing the doctoral dissertation. In addition to the application form, your application should usually comprise a CV as well as certified copies of your degree certificates. For an overview of the required documents for your school/department, please take a look at the respective regulations and procedures governing the doctoral dissertation as well as the application form.

Please download, fill in, and submit the respective application form of your school/department to the relevant dean's office. Once you have been admitted as a doctoral student, you will receive a written confirmation of being accepted as a doctoral student from the respective school/department.

According to section 38 subsection 5 LHG, you are obliged to enroll once you have been accepted as a doctoral student by your school/department. There is an exception for those doctoral candidates who are employed at the University of Mannheim under the Collective Agreement for Public Service Employees of the German Länder (TV-L) and whose working time equals at least 50 percent of the regular working time of a full-time position: They can apply for an exemption from mandatory enrollment.

If you have not requested to be exempted from mandatory enrollment, you will be automatically enrolled. A few days after you have received the confirmation of being accepted as a doctoral student from your school/department, we will inform you by e-mail that you have been enrolled and send you your enrollment certificates. At the same time, we will ask you to transfer the semester fee in order to complete your enrollment. As soon as you have transferred the semester fee and it has been credited to our account, we will send you your Uni-ID (user ID) for the University Library and IT services as well as the corresponding initial password.

After successful enrollment, you are required to re-register for the next semester. If you do not re-register on time, you will have to pay an additional late fee. The obligation to re-register ends as soon as you have successfully passed either the oral defense of your doctoral dissertation (Disputation) or the oral examination to obtain a doctoral degree (Rigorosum).

More on the topic of “re-registration”

In order to be exempted from mandatory enrollment, you need to submit a written request – either promptly after having been admitted as a doctoral student or at any later point in time, provided that you take up employment at the University of Mannheim to the extent mentioned above. If possible, you should observe the academic calendar of the University of Mannheim as you will also have to pay the full semester fee if you enroll in the middle of the semester.

You will find the application form for exemption from mandatory enrollment together with the application form for admission as a doctoral student in the download area. Please do not forget to include a copy of your current work contract when submitting your request.

For doctoral students who are not employed at the University of Mannheim, enrollment establishes membership, i.e. affiliation with the university. For doctoral candidates who are employed at the University of Mannheim, membership is linked to the employment relationship. Those who are enrolled at the university can exercise their active and passive voting rights in the status group of doctoral students; those who are employed at the university and thus are exempt from mandatory enrollment can do so in the group of academic staff members. Upon request, employed doctoral candidates who do not wish to be exempted from mandatory enrollment may change to the status group of doctoral students.