German recognition requirements for university entrance

The Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (Kultusministerkonferenz, KMK) of the German states (Lānder) has recommended to German universities that they accept the New Zealand National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) results for entry to German universities, provided that the requirements listed on the German language website www.anabin.de are met.

The requirements on www.anabin.de are largely New Zealand’s own minimum requirements for university entrance, although in addition KMK requires that at least five distinct subjects have been studied.   In effect this means that you cannot for example count both Design and Sculpture as two separate subjects.  Similarly, Mathematics with Calculus and Statistics and Modelling are considered to be one subject by Germany.  Please refer to the tables below for further information.

General Requirements

German students wishing to apply for university in Germany after studying at school in New Zealand must:

• obtain an NCEA Level 3 certificate
• achieve New Zealand University Entrance, and
• study at least five university entrance approved subjects in appropriate combinations, as detailed below.

Students are also strongly advised to achieve 90 or more Level 3 credits because students with less than 90 Level 3 credits will be disadvantaged when being compared with domestic German students.

Simply having the minimum requirements to achieve university entrance in New Zealand may not make you eligible for competitive entry courses.  To help inform your subject choices you need to check the requirements, including grade requirements, for your preferred university courses before commencing your final year of study at school.

The Abitur is the school leaving qualification in Germany for students intending to study at university. Unlike NCEA, the Abitur certificate provides an average score, the Abiturdurchschnittsnote, allowing universities to rank students for the competitive allocation of university places. The higher the grades you achieve in the standards you undertake in each NCEA Level 3 subject, the better the result you will get in the Abitur conversion. You should be aiming for as many Merit and Excellence grades as possible.

In addition, German universities (as distinct from KMK) might expect students with foreign qualifications to have followed a programme of study similar to that undertaken by students studying for Abitur. The main feature of the German requirements is that a student has studied a broad range of subjects. This normally needs to include languages, mathematics, science and some history.

Subject Choice

You need to take care when choosing your subjects because many common subject combinations that New Zealand students take may not be acceptable to German universities. There are strict rules about subject choice for students studying for Abitur. Students sit the final Abitur exams in four or five subjects. KMK requires that students studying in New Zealand take at least five subjects and advises that English or Te Reo Rangatira are suitable substitutes for German, which is compulsory in Germany.

Minimum subject requirements, as established by KMK:

• English or Te Reo Rangatira
• Mathematics
• at least three other approved subjects from those listed in Table 1.

If you want to take subjects that most closely follow the Abitur requirements you should consider taking:

• English or Te Reo Rangatira
• Mathematics
• any social science subject (preferably History)
• any natural science subject
• any language, literature and arts subject (preferably a second language)

View the list of approved New Zealand university entrance subjects and the corresponding approved Abitur subjects (PDF, 8KB).  The table indicates which subjects are classified as social sciences, natural sciences and as language, literature and arts.  If you are going to apply to a German university NZQA recommends that you choose from the list of jointly approved subjects.   If you want to study sport or a second social science, it is recommended you take this as an extra subject; that is, as a sixth subject.

View the New Zealand university entrance approved subjects that are not approved Abitur subjects (PDF, 14KB). KMK has advised that: “if any other subjects are offered by foreign applicants with foreign certificates, these subjects must be individually scrutinised to check if they could be accepted in the individual case”. Please see the table for full details.

Enquiries

Please refer any enquiries to: