The University Application Maze: Part 2

This is the second part of my university application journey, which was shall we say, less than smooth… (Haven’t read part 1? Catch up now >)

Testing my German skills

Towards the end of my senior year in high school, just to test my German skills, I decided to take a German test from the Goethe Institute, an organization sponsored by the German government that teaches and tests German worldwide. I decided to take a C-1 test, the second hardest test they offer. When I went on the website, I found out that the C-1 test registration deadline had already passed… a week prior. I casually sent them an email asking if I could still take the test, thinking it was not even worth my effort trying. The lady responsible grudgingly said I could take the test if I sent the money to her the same day. I did that and a few weeks later passed the test. I did not know how significant that was until much later.

Preparing to apply to universities in Germany

I graduated from high school in early June. Before graduation, I ordered 11 high school transcripts: one to send to my US safety university to keep that option open for as long as possible, and the other 10 for applications to universities in Germany. Because the transcripts were not finalized until about two weeks after school ended and because almost all kids in my class were sending their final transcripts to universities, it took another week to get them all processed and sent. By this time, I was in Germany and my mom sent them to me using snail mail. But before she did, she convinced me that she should only send nine, and keep the last one just in case anything happened.

Because I was applying with my high school diploma and my SAT scores, I had to get all this recognized as equivalent to a German Gymnasium Diploma and have my GPA (grade point average) calculated. And just about every university had a different system to do this. I won’t bore you here with the technicalities because I could write a small book about it. Suffice to say it was a masterfully complicated system, set up almost as if it was designed to deter people. But I think the real reason it was so complicated was to only allow people who could maneuver the system to pass. It’s another type of application test.

Getting my university application documents together

I began assembling the required application documents and got all my documents certified copies. I double checked everything and happened to notice on the University of Frankfurt international application webpage that all applicants had to provide evidence that their German skills were at least at a C-1 level. I was so happy that I had casually taken the C-1 test, because without it, I would not have been able to apply to the University of Frankfurt, or as I found out later, to any universities in Germany. I had inadvertently dodged another bullet.

Finally I realized, that the only thing I still needed were the official high school transcripts that my mom had posted nearly a month earlier… they had still not arrived. I called the post office… and they had no idea where the package was. At this point I sat around and waited for a knock on the door every single day, but it did not come. It was so frustrating to think that I might fail because of a stupid mistake the post office made.

Fortunately, my dad was travelling to Germany and promised to bring the 10^th transcript with him, the one that my mom had convinced me not to send. The problem was, my dad was landing less than two weeks before the university application deadline – July 15, when all application documents had to be received, not sent. The post office was once again a huge problem for me because the memory of the still-unreceived transcripts was still infuriating me. I quickly made certified copies of the transcript, managed to send off all documents on July 10^th and the most important package, the one going to UniAssist, was received on the 15^th. Another close call.

Rejections and acceptances…

Back home in California, I got confirmation from UniAssist (Germany’s central application service for international students) that my application documents had been successfully processed and sent to my universities. Two weeks later I got a rejection letter from the University of Hamburg because I had not correctly completed their application. Then I was accepted by TU Braunschweig, and a few days later, by TU Berlin. Only the University of Frankfurt had not responded back. Frankfurt was from the very beginning my target university because I wanted to go into finance and banking, for which the university is well known and Frankfurt (the largest finance center in continental Europe) is of course nearby.

I called the university and asked what the problem was. The lady at the admissions desk asked for my application number, which I told her, and she told me I was not in the database. She searched for my name and again, I was not there. I asked her what I should do, and she told me that all students who would be studying at Frankfurt University that fall had already received their acceptances and that there were no more places available.

I was shocked. I asked her if they had even received my application documents, they hadn’t. I asked to speak to her supervisor, who told me the same thing; I was not in the database, all student places had already been given out, and I should apply again for the summer semester. But then she paused for a second, asked me to hold, and left the line. I waited. Five minutes later she told me she had just remembered that a package from UniAssist had arrived yesterday and that it had the incorrect address on it and so it had spent several weeks in limbo, before being returned to UniAssist who then sent it to the correct address. She told me my application documents were in there (she had checked) and that I and everyone else whose documents where in the package would receive the same chance as if the documents had been received by the university on time.

Making my final decision…

As soon as I received my acceptance from the University of Frankfurt, I had to decide whether to go to my ‘safety school’, the University of California, or to the University of Frankfurt. Because of all the delays that had help up my university application in Germany, I’d already missed the registration deadline for the German language skills test I’d need for Frankfurt. I did not know if I could still take that test. But in a split second, I decided to go to Frankfurt. I withdrew my acceptance from UC, bought a one-way ticket, and 10 days later, I landed in Germany.

If I even think about the number of times I could have hit an unrecoverable dead-end in my university application, it terrifies me. At the end of the day, getting a place at the University of Frankfurt was a mixture of hard work, perseverance, and sheer luck. And the hard work did not stop there; I still worked hard for several more months to get all my affairs in order.

I hope this serves as both warning and motivation to other prospective international students seeking to apply to universities in Germany: the university application path is difficult, and you can never start too soon or know too much. But this little story should also reassure you that, if you work hard enough and don’t give up, it can be done.