Frequently asked questions about examinations and assessments

When you are on a semester on leave (aka 'semester out' or 'sabbatical' – Urlaubssemester in German), you can only resit examinations that you failed in a previous semester. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, there is a special regulation in place concerning exams: If you did not appear for an exam for which you had previously registered or attempted and failed an examination, your registration/exam result was (or will be) tagged 'KNA'. This indicates that the attempt will not be counted towards your degree and its status is as though you had never registered for or sat the exam in the first place.

However, that status also means that you cannot resit the examination you failed or did not appear for in summer semester 2020 while you are on a leave semester, as that would count as a first attempt, which is not permitted during a leave semester.

During the leave semester you may only register for and resit examinations that were not attempted/failed before summer semester 2020.

In order to ensure your protection as a pregnant or breastfeeding student and your (unborn) child, the University of Passau is obliged to take measures to make it as easy as possible for you to balance pregnancy and maternity with your degree studies. In order for the University of Passau to be able to fulfil its duties, it is necessary for you to register with the Equal Opportunities Section.

There you will also find out everything you need to know about taking examinations during the maternity protection period.

Additional assessments completed during your programme must be registered via HISQIS, just like all other assessments. The assessments to be included in the final grade are specified when you request your certificates at the end of the degree programme. The additional assessments are shown in a separate certificate.

As a rule, the study and examination regulations provide for a resit opportunity within one year.
If the failed examination is not offered within one year, you have to submit a request for deadline extension to the Examinations Office.

Many degree programmes allow for two resit attempts for each examination. In others, on the other hand, you only have one resit attempt. Whether you are granted a second resit attempt is then often dependent on your having passed other examinations. This must be requested from the Examinations Office. For details, please consult the study and examination regulations for your degree programme.

In case of illness, you should obtain a medical certificate before or – at the latest! – on the exam date. If your inability to take the exam due to illness was determined prior to the start of the exam, you do not require an official medical certificate from the 'Amtsarzt'. If is, however, important, that your certificate specifically state that you are unable to sit an examination (''Prüfungsunfähigkeit'). While we do not need the exact diagnosis, we need to know in what way you are prevented from attending the examination, e.g. whether your condition would deteriorate if you attended the exam or if you are bedridden. Make sure you submit the original medical certificate (doctor's note) to the Examinations Office, together with your matriculation number, examination code (HISQIS) and course code (Stud.IP).

<link file:16118 pdf-link a pdf>Information on inability to sit examinations due to illness (German)

If a medical certificate is submitted for an exam, you have to sit the examination at the next possible date, i.e. the next time the examination is offered. This does not, however, apply in the case of semesters on leave due to illness, semesters abroad, and if you hand in another medical certificate due to prolonged illness. Be sure to submit a deadline extension request to the Examinations Office.

Please send the application to the Examinations Office together with any supporting documents (medical certificates, disability pass etc.) as proof of impairment. The documentation should clearly identify the nature, duration and severity of your condition and a recommendation for suitable compensatory measures.

It is important that you submit your application as early as possible in your degree programme, but you must submit it before the exam registration deadline. This ensures that we can make the necessary arrangements when organising the examinations.

The chairperson of the Board of Examiners has final say over the approval of applications for access arrangements. This process usually takes up to three weeks. We will notify you in writing whether or not your application has been approved.

The exam dates are published on the Examinations Office webpages.

No; you must register for exams beforehand.
However, there are the following exceptions:

• General Studies ('Studium Generale') of the B.Sc. Business Administration and Economics programme
• ERASMUS exchange students
• Extension subjects for the teacher education programmes
• Voluntary additional assessments not included in the module catalogue
• Seminar assessments of the Faculty of Business, Economics and Information Systems, the Faculty of Computer Science and Mathematics and the Faculty of Law
• Credits gained at the main study stage of the undergraduate law programme

For these, you should enquire and register at the relevant Chair.

You can find the exact exam withdrawal deadline on the Examination Office webpages. Until that date you can simply withdraw your exam registration in HISQIS. Withdrawals after this date will only be accepted if you have a pressing reason for withdrawal; you will need to furnish proof of this before you can withdraw form the exam.

You should register during the semester in which you intend to sit the exam.

Registration is usually done via HISQIS. You must register for your exams before the exam registration deadline, which is published on the pages for the individual degree programmes. Please note that these are strict cut-off deadlines!

Exceptions:

• General Studies ('Studium Generale') of the B.Sc. Business Administration and Economics programme
• ERASMUS exchange students
• Extension subjects for the teacher education programmes
• Voluntary additional assessments not included in the module catalogue
• Seminar assessments of the Faculty of Business, Economics and Information Systems, the Faculty of Computer Science and Mathematics and the Faculty of Law
• Credits gained at the main study stage of the undergraduate law programme

For these, you should enquire and register at the relevant Chair.

A valid CampusCard for students (orange colour) with a photo is sufficient for identification. If you have a grey CampusCard or a replacement card or a card without a photograph, you must present another form of official photographic ID, such as your identity card (European Union citizens only) or passport, as well as a current certificate of enrolment.

If you suddenly become ill during an exam, you should contact an invigilator immediately. You will then receive a document with which you must immediately visit the doctor. If it was not apparent at the beginning of the examination that an illness was occurring, the inability to take the examination is approved.

After your appointment with the doctor at the 'Gesundheitsamt' (public health department – see below for the address), you should submit the original medical certificate (doctor's note) to the Examinations Office, together with your matriculation number, the examination code (HISQIS) and course code (Stud.IP).

Gesundheitsamt (public health department)

Address:
Landratsamt Passau
Passauer Str. 33
94081 Fürstenzell

Phone: +49 8502 91310
Fax: +49 8502 913155
E-mail: gesundheitsamt@landkreis-passau.de

Office hours:
Monday to Thursday: 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Friday: 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon
Individual appointments are available outside the general opening hours.

For exams of the Faculty of Business, Economics and Information Systems the permitted examination aids are listed on the Examinations Office website. For other examinations, you should enquire at the relevant Chair.

Please use Stud.IP to register for exam script viewing. The Examinations Office will publish the registration dates in due time.

Please note that only exam scripts of the Faculty of Business, Economics and Information Systems can be viewed at the Examinations Office. All other exam scripts should be viewed at the respective Chairs.

If you are unable to come to the exam script viewing appointment, you have two options:

• You can authorise someone else to view the scripts on your behalf. In that case you must give that person a written power of attorney and a copy of your ID card (European Union citizens only) or passport, which he or she must present when coming in to view your exam scripts.
  
  
• You can view your exam scripts at the next viewing date (about half a year later). In that case, please contact Ms Ossada to ensure that your exam scripts are not sent to the archives. Then, in the following semester, you should register for exam script viewing in Stud.IP, as you would normally do, and contact Ms Ossada again to inform her that this appointment is for viewing an exam script from the previous semester. Then you simply go to your script viewing appointment as usual.

The following applies to degree programmes of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities: As a rule, you can resit individual or all examinations once for up to 20% of modules in which you attained a pass mark in an attempt to improve your module marks. Depending on the study and examination regulations for your degree programme, this 20% figure may be limited to a fixed number of examination modules.

In the case of bachelor's programmes of the Faculty of Business, Economics and Information Systems, you can resit up to six examinations for mark improvement.

You cannot resit examinations in which you have attained a pass mark in degree programmes of the Faculty of Computer Science and Mathematics.

Fill in the Mark Improvement Registration Form (available from the page for your degree programme) and hand it in to your Examinations Officer before the HISQIS exam registration deadline. The Examinations Officer for your degree programme will also be able to advise you on the number of examinations you are allowed to resit for mark improvement in your programme. The same procedure applies for Language Centre exams.

The better mark out of the two is counted, and you cannot voluntarily resit the passed exam again.

For exams of the Faculty of Business, Economics and Information Systems, you should register first to view your exam scripts. You can then come in to the Administration building (Innstrasse 41) on the assigned date to view your script. This is currently done in room 207. The registration dates are published on the website. Other exams can be viewed directly at the relevant Chair.

Once you have viewed your exam scripts you can submit a review request. You should do this without any undue delay. Your request must include a written statement in which you outline the rationale for reviewing your assessment.

The request should be submitted to:

• your examiner, or
• the Examinations Office, in the case of exams of the Faculty of Business, Economics and Information Systems.

This is free of charge for you.

Please note that there may be deadlines for appeals or legal remedies to be observed if your study regulations and examination regulations provide for them for the exam in question.

The resit examination must take place within one year, unless it can be substituted for by a different examination. The examiner decides whether a resit is offered. There is no obligation to offer a resit exam.

If it is a compulsory assessment in your degree programme, you will usually lose your examination entitlement and be de-registered from the programme. Since the study and examination regulations contain divergent provisions on this matter, you should contact the Examinations Officer for your degree programme in good time.
Optionally, you can take up another, perhaps related, degree programme and have the credits earned for your first degree programme transferred.

If the courses you have attended are included in the module plan of your degree programme, you can present the certificates of attendance to the Examinations Office and have them credited. You may collect a certificate (the so-called KompetenzPAss) listing all seminars completed at Zukunft: Karriere und Kompetenzen from the centre itself.

• Approval of internships (Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences)
• Approval of internships (Faculty of Humanities and Cultural Studies)
• Internships Approval Form (Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences and Faculty of Humanities and Cultural Studies) (German)
• General Internship Guidelines (Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences and Faculty of Humanities and Cultural Studies)

In general, you can use the HISQIS examination codes as a reference: if these are identical in the old and new degree programmes, it will likely be approved. If the assessments/modules are not identical, you must obtain a signature (for approval) from the module/course lecturer. For the degree programmes of the Faculty of Business, Economics and Information Systems, the Examinations Officer for your degree programme will obtain the signature on your behalf. In either event, you should also submit a formal request for approval Examinations Office to your degree programme.

With regard to the standard dates and deadlines specified in the examination regulations applicable to degree programmes in accordance with Art. 84 para. 2 sentence 1 and for universities of applied sciences, the summer semester 2020, the winter semester 2020/2021, the summer semester 2021 and the winter semester 2021/2022 do not count as semesters. (Art. 130 para. 1 BayHIG) Thus, regular dates and deadlines have been postponed. Please check whether the affected semesters have been excluded from your maximum duration of study. For regular dates and deadlines, please refer to the  examination regulations applicable to your degree.

The Ministry of Science has updated the FAQ on its website. There you will find further answers, e.g. on the topics of BAföG and exams.

You do not need separate applications and proof. These deadlines may have been automatically extended or will continue to be taken into account when calculating the maximum duration of studies. From the summer semester 2022, the review of the maximum duration of studies will be resumed.

What does that mean for you?

• You reached the maximum duration of your studies according to your examination regulations before the Corona Emergency Act came into force and received a notice of failure for the first time? You have already received a new notice with new deadlines/dates from the examination office.
• You have reached the maximum duration of your studies by the end of the 2020 summer semester, the 2020/21 winter semester, the 2021 summer semester or the 2021/22 winter semester. In these semesters, the review of the maximum duration of study was suspended and these semesters are not counted if you were regularly enrolled. Passed and passed exams were taken into account.
• In these semesters you did not achieve a certain number of ECTS that you need to continue your studies (e.g. Bachelor BAE, Bachelor Business Informatics, FIM courses, trial studies)? Here, too, the 2020 summer semester, the 2020/21 winter semester, the 2021 summer semester and the 2021/22 winter semester did not count as semesters.
• You are regularly enrolled in a degree program but have not (by a long way) reached the maximum duration of your studies or another deadline? The 2020 summer semester, the 2020/21 winter semester, the 2021 summer semester and the 2021/22 winter semester will not be counted when checking the maximum duration of your studies.
• You were on leave during the semester mentioned above? Vacation semesters have no influence on your course of study and are not considered as corona semesters.
• Are you studying to become a teacher? The Bavarian Ministry of Culture has announced special regulations for the first state examination on its website.
• Are you studying law at the University of Passau? The automatic extension when the examination deadlines or the maximum length of study are reached also applies to the intermediate legal examination and the university law examination.

If you have any further questions, please contact the person responsible for your course of study.

As of 1 October 2021, the dissertation/thesis writing periods at all faculties continue as normal; the deadlines are no longer suspended. The Examinations Office has written to students who were affected by the suspension of deadlines to inform them of their new submission deadlines.

The exams in spring 2023 will take place as planned.

All information about on-site examinations and the measures taken to protect against infection can be found online on the website of the examination office.

There are currently no mandatory protection and hygiene measures for exams. However, there is still a recommendation to wear a medical face mask and voluntary tests in the event of symptoms of illness.

No, but there is a recommendation to wear a mask.

No, but there is still a recommendation for voluntary testing in the event of symptoms of illness.

In the summer semester 2020, winter semester 2020/2021 and in the winter semester 21/22, the University of Passau decided on free attempt regulations in the Corona statutes, i.e. examinations that were not taken or not passed in these semesters were not counted ("free examination attempt"). Please note that there were no free attempt regulations for the 2021 summer semester.

• The free attempt regulation did not apply if an attempt at cheating or plagiarism was determined. In these cases, the test is considered failed.
•  The regulation did not apply to passed exams or final theses.
• The regulation did not apply to the law university examination.

If you are ill on the day of the exam, you must submit a written request to withdraw from the exam. More information can be found here.

For information on the first state examination for a teacher education programme visit the website of the Bavarian Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs.

Current (pandemic-related) changes in the study and examination schedule of the Faculty of Law for the semester can be found on the web page of the Dean of Studies.

You must be enrolled as a regular student (i.e. not on leave) in your degree programme when you register for your dissertation/thesis, while you are writing it and on the day of submission.

First you should discuss the project with a person who has the authority to conduct examinations. Then you should register for a topic. Once this has been agreed, you should submit a Dissertation/Thesis Registration Form. This must be signed by the person with the authority to conduct examinations and submitted to the Examinations Office. All copies of your dissertation/thesis must be submitted to the Examinations Office. You will be notified of your dissertation/thesis mark via Campus Portal.

If the submission date falls on a Saturday, Sunday or a public holiday (for the State of Bavaria), the submission date is automatically moved to the next working day.

Yes. The postmark then counts as the submission date. Please send your dissertation/thesis to the following address:

University of Passau
Examinations Office
Dissertation/thesis for [write the name of your degree programme here]
Innstr. 41
94032 Passau
Germany