Information on the Application for Submission to the PhD Program (Dr. phil.)

To apply for admission to the doctoral program, please submit the following documents to the Administrative Office Faculty 10:

All required documents must be certified (certificates/documents) or have original signatures (applications, etc.) and submitted no later than 3 weeks before the meeting.

3. Certificate and diploma of the university degree

as officially certified copy or as original and single copy.

The requirement for admission to a PhD program is the successful completion of a university degree that is meaningfully related to the planned dissertation topic, evidenced by a master's degree or a diploma earned at a university, a master's degree or a state examination. The degree must be better than 2.5 (good). In the case of foreign degrees, this must also be proven.

Students who have completed their studies with a bachelor's degree or a diploma from a university of applied sciences can be admitted to PhD studies if

1. a degree with an overall grade better than 1.5 (very good) is achieved,
2. the degree completed is meaningfully related to the planned dissertation topic,
3. knowledge, skills and abilities have been demonstrated through additional academic achievements, which show that the applicant is able to work scientifically in depth. The extent of these academic achievements is determined in connection with the acceptance as a PhD student at the request of the supervisor by the PhD board in agreement with the responsible department. The extent of these study achievements may not exceed 90 CP.

For foreign certificates, an evaluation by the International Office is required. Your first contact is the department in which you want to do your PhD.

First of all, please send your documents to the department, which will forward them to the International Office with a confirmation that the costs have been covered (109 euros).
The deadline for issuing the evaluation is usually 4 weeks after all required documents have been received by the International Office. The deadline may be extended under certain circumstances.

The following documents are required to process the evaluation:

• copies of all degree certificates (diplomas) in the original language (e.g. bachelor's, master's and possibly PhD certificates),
• copies of a German translation of all degree certificates, prepared by a sworn translator (not required for English-language certificates), and
• copies of the overviews of subjects and grades in the original language

After the submitted documents have been checked, the faculty will be informed directly about the result. The examination result is to be used only within the university.

5. Five bound copies of the dissertation

A written statement containing the following information must be included with the original signature at the end of each dissertation:

• - the thesis was prepared without unauthorized assistance
• - no sources and aids other than those indicated have been used
• - passages taken verbatim or with regard to content from the works used have been identified as such.

In the case of a collective dissertation, authorship must be indicated.
The following information is required:

• - the co-authors and type of cooperation
• - shares of the applicant in the topic

7. Procedure for proposing an external evaluator

If you request an external evaluator, please submit an informal justification together with the other documents.
Please remember to include the full address of the external evaluator(s), including their title. If external evaluators are to be appointed, it must be clarified in advance who will bear the costs incurred. It is not possible for you or the evaluator to bear these expenses. Therefore, please contact the relevant department or the University of Bremen BYRD (byrd@vw.uni-bremen.de) together with your supervisor. There, a confirmation of the assumption of costs should be issued, which you please enclose with your application.