Dialogue-oriented Service Procedure (DoSV)

Many universities restrict admission to certain programs. Many prospective students apply for several programs at different universities. These applicants often receive more than one admission offer, which means that these places in a program are blocked for other applicants who are then waitlisted to be offered admission at a later date. 

The Dialogue-oriented Service Procedure ('Dialogorientiertes Serviceverfahren', DoSV) supports participating universities in carrying out their admission procedures for first-year students applying to admission-restricted programs by coordinating the admission offers. An online-based data comparison prevents that applicants receive several admission offers. Admission is only offered for the best-possible application on the applicant's rank list. Thus, places for lower-ranked applications can be offered to other applicants without delay.

The participating institutions conduct their admissions procedures themselves, in accordance with state law and instituition-specific regulations. 

TH Köln participates in DoSV with all its admission-restricted Bachelor's programs.

Program overview

During the application phase, you need to register with hochschulstart.de. Once registered, you will receive an applicant ID as well as an applicant authentication number (BAN) that you need for your application through TH Köln's campus management system (CaMS). You can access this information through your user account (My Data > Personal Data). 

In addition to your registration for the Dialogue-oriented Service Procedure (hochschulstart.de) you are required to submit an application directly to TH Köln through CaMS, TH Köln's campus management system. This can be done from early December 2024.

Registration - hochschulstart.de

TH Köln's campus management system

This process applies to

• German citizens
• EU/EEA citizens and their spouses
• Applicants with a Higher Education Entrance Qualification from Germany or another EU/EEA member state
• Applicants with a German first-cycle degree (Bachelor's degree, 'Magister' or 'Diplom')
• Vocationally qualified applicants

If you belong to one of the groups mentioned above and have certificates from outside of Germany, these documents will be reviewed at TH Köln as part of the applications process and grades will be transferred to the German grading system. It is not necessary to have your diplomas recognized beforehand.

PLEASE NOTE:
If you do not belong to the groups listed above and have certificates from outside of Germany, please register at hochschulstart.de, but apply through uni-assist. It is not possible to submit an application through TH Köln's campus management system (CaMS).

uni-assist

Your applications will automatically be ranked according to their respective date of submission through the universities' application platforms, through hochschulstart.de or uni-assist. This ranking process is called prioritization. You may actively change the ranking of your applications and move up applications that are most important to you.

The ranking of your applications is an important factor with regard to the admission offers you will receive later:

Based on the prioritization, the dialogue-oriented service procedure (DOSV) ensures that you will always receive the best possible admission offer. Thus, it is important that you decide which applications are the most important to you and how your applications should be ranked. Make sure to check the ranking of your applications by January 22, 2025 at the latest, i.e. make sure that your preferred applications are on top of the list. Starting on January 23, 2025, admission offers with a lower rank will be eliminated and you can receive a Letter of Admission for your highest ranked application.

Please note that if you submitted more than twelve applications through DoSV, only the twelve highest-ranked applications are active, i.e. only those are considered for the admissions procedure.

Admission offer: You receive an admission offer if an insititution of higher education can, upon completion of the admissions procedure, offer you admission to a program you applied to. It is possible to receive more than one admission offer for different programs. 

Admission/Letter of Admission: If you either accept one of your admission offers or if you are admitted to a program automatically based on the coordination rules described below, you will receive a Letter of Admission. Your Letter of Admission will provide information on the enrollment period and required documents. Once you have received a Letter of Admission, all other admission offers are automatically eliminated.

You may receive admission offers during this phase. We encourage you to regularly check your email inbox (as well as junk or spam folders) and your user account on hochschulstart.de during this phase, to find out if you have received one or more admission offers.

Make sure to check the prioritization of your applications in the hochschulstart portal by January 22, 2025 at the latest. Starting on January 23, 2025, the rules described below are applied and admission offers with a lower rank are eliminated. It is generally possible to change the order of your applications until February 21, 2025. However, it is possible that one or more application(s) has/have already been eliminated and can no longer be re-prioritized.

You also have the option to actively accept an admission offer during this phase, i.e. if you have an admission offer for a lower-ranked application, you may accept this offer. All other applications will then be permanently eliminated. 

From February 22 to 24, 2025, the hochschulstart.de online portal will be closed. During this period, the last remaining admission offers are determined and Letters of Rejection are issued. 

The following coordination rules are applied during the period from January 16, 2025 to February 24, 2025:

Rule 1:

- You only have one active application.
- You received an admission offer for this application.

⇒ This admission offer will automatically be turned into a Letter of Admission.

Rule 2:

- You have more than one active application.
- You received admission offers for all your applications.

⇒ The admission offer for your highest ranked application will automatically be turned into a Letter of Admission.
⇒ All other applications are automatically eliminated.

Rule 3:

- You have more than one active application.
- You have received an admission offer for more than one of your applications.
- There is at least one application for which you have not yet been offered admission.

⇒ All lower ranked admission offers are automatically eliminated.
⇒ Applications for which you have not yet been offered admission as well as the application with the highest-ranked admission offer are still active.
⇒ You also have the option to actively accept the admission offer and receive a Letter of Admission. In this case, all other applications are eliminated.

Rule 4:

- You have one or more active applications.
- By the end of the coordination phase, you have not yet received a Letter of Admission, but you have an admission offer.

⇒ This admission offer will automatically be turned into a Letter of Admission.
⇒ You will receive Letters of Rejection for all other applications.

If you have not received an admission offer by the end of the coordination phase, unfortunately all your applications have been rejected.

In case that places in DoSV programs remain vacant, TH Köln will allocate these places through the coordinated succession procedure by hochschulstart.de. 

Applicants who did not receive an admission offer during the coordination phase may still be offered a study place. Interested applicants need to submit an application between February 25 and 27, 2025 through hochschulstart.de. hochschulstart.de will notify you by email once this option becomes available. If you have already submitted one or more applications, please check if all your applications are to enter the succession procedure.

Even if you have not submitted an application so far, you now have the option to submit an application and may be offered admission if places are available. In this case, the application deadline is March 31, 2025.

Please note that your priotization is irrelevant in the succession procedure and that you can only receive one Letter of Admission.

Additional information on the coordinated succession procedure and admissions lottery ('Losverfahren in der Studienplatzbörse') is available at hochschulstart.de [in German].

Letters of Admission are issued by TH Köln. They are available in CaMS in the section "My Applications" > "Inbox". You will receive an email notifying you that a new document is available in your CaMS inbox. Your Letter of Admission provides relevant information for your enrollment.

Information for applicants using uni-assist: After uni-assist has forwarded your application to us, we will open an account for you in TH Köln's campus management system (CaMS). This will not happen before early December (application period for the summer semester) or early May (application period for the winter semester). Once the process is complete, you will receive all relevant information by email.

Our advice: 
Check your email inbox and your spam or junk folder regularly for emails from hochschulstart or TH Köln.

When are the Letters of Admission/Rejection distributed? 
For the admission process for the summer semester, Letters of Admission are issued between late January and the end of February; Letters of Rejection are issued in late February. For the admission process for the winter semester, Letters of Admission are issued between late July and the end of August; Letters of Rejection are issued in late August. 

When do I need to submit my enrollment documents?
For online enrollments (i.e. through CaMS), you need to submit your enrollment documents within one week of the day your Letter of Admission was made available for download in CaMS. Detailed information on the enrollment process is provided in your Letter of Admission. To ensure that you will not miss the enrollment deadline, check your email inbox regularly and do not forget to check your junk or spam folder. We also recommend to regularly log in to CaMS.

You can only enroll within the time frame stated in your Letter of Admission. In exceptional cases, it is possible to extend the enrollment period. However, this can only be done if you contact us whithin the enrollment period stated in your Letter of Admission. Once the enrollment deadline has passed, it is no longer possible to enroll at TH Köln.

When can I expect to receive a Letter of Rejection?
Letters of Rejection for programs participating in DoSV are always issued by hochschulstart.de. They are available for download in the DoSV application portal upon completion of the coordination phase.

Can I defer my admission?
Prospective students who have received a Letter of Admission and are starting a military or social service period may defer their admission in the DoSV Application Portal and submit an Application for Special Admission at a later date. Please note that this is only possible as long as your admission offer or Letter of Admission is valid, i.e. until the end of the enrollment period.
Additional information is available at  hochschulstart.de [in German].