Frequently asked questions about admission and enrolment

Possible supervisors of the dissertation project may be:

• Professors
• private lecturer ("Privatdozent/in")
• junior research group leaders ("Nachwuchsgruppenleiter"), if their scientific qualification has been confirmed by an external evaluation procedure.

One of your supervisors must be a member of the faculty at which you are about to carry out your project. Exceptions are possible, however, only when the faculty's council grants its approval.

If you want to start a so called individual doctorate, you should look at the website of the institute, in which your doctorate would be ideally located. Your possible supervisor should have done, or should be doing, research in the field in which you want to do your doctorate. It might be useful to search for the latest publications of the supervisor in question.

When you have found a supervisor, you should ask her or him if it would be possible to conduct a PhD thesis under her or his supervision. If you decide to contact a possible supervisor via e-mail, please provide information regarding your prior academic achievements, the topic of your master’s thesis and the subject area in which you wish to specialise. It is important to illustrate, how your research interests and experiences could enrich the research done by the professor. If you are in Jena, you can also do this in person during the office hours of your possible supervisor.

In order to get an admission as a doctoral candidate, you usually need an academic degree in the same field. If you decide to do your doctorate in a subject that has not been your field of study previously, the respective faculty will examine your qualifications and, if necessary, may impose certain conditions like attending additional courses.

Enrolment is optional. There are no enrolment deadlines – doctoral candidates can enrol at any time during semester.

The enrolment as a doctoral candidate is different from the enrolment as a student. Therefore, you have to de-register as a student first and then you can enrol as a doctoral candidate. But before you can enrol as a doctoral candidate, you will need to apply for the admission as a doctoral candidate at the Dean’s Office of your faculty. You can find all information about the admission here.

In order to apply for the admission you will need a final degree certificate, which means that, as a rule, you can only start the admission process once you finished your prior studies.

Once you handed in the application for admission at the Dean’s Office, it may take up to two or three weeks until you receive an admission letter. With this letter, you can start the enrolment process. Enrolment as a doctoral candidate is possible at any time. You can find all information about enrolment here.

You can start with your doctorate, even though you have not found a way to finance it. But please keep in mind that finding the proper funding may take several months, in which you also need to be able to finance your living expenses. Possible options for funding can be found here.

Please log in to FriedolinExternal link with your computer centre log-in credentials (which follow the pattern "ab12cde"). There you will find the option "Student certificates" on the left-hand side that allows you to download and print the student status certificates for the respective semester.

If you do not see the item "Student certificates", please check with which role you are registered in Friedolin. You can find the role in the top bar. You can only see the student status certificate if you are in the role "Student".

Please note: The student status certificates you receive in Friedolin cannot be used as proof for the Immigration Office! To obtain a certificate for the Immigration Office, please log in to doc-inExternal link and select the option "Downloads". There you will find the "Certificate of doctoral status for immigration office".