Exams

Everything about the legally binding deadlines and examinations in general can be found in the General Regulations for Bachelor's and Master's degree programs not related to teaching (BAMA-O) and the General Regulations for Bachelor's and Master's degree programs related to teaching (BAMALA-O). It may well be worth taking a look at these as a student, as they also contain rules that lecturers must follow. 

Link to the regulatory framework

As official documents are often difficult to understand, we have written out a few of the most important points for you. If you have any questions or need support, you can always contact the FSR, we will be happy to assist you.

You can find explanations and assistance on the legal framework for exam grading and point deductions below.

You can register for an exam up to 8 days before the exam date. Registration for an exam is done via PULS. Lecturers may set a date that is not the actual date, especially for examinations that are not written exams. You have to discuss such things with your lecturers, but you will usually receive information about the examination schedule at the first event of a course.

You can cancel your exam registration up to 3 days before the examination date. If you cancel your registration in time, you will not lose an examination attempt and do not have to register a “free attempt”. After this deadline, you can only excuse yourself if you are ill. To do this, you must send an official sick note proving your inability to take the exam to the Examinations Office within 7 days. This can be done via PULS in the document upload or by email to the Examinations Office.

After an oral examination, the grade must be entered in PULS immediately. For written exams, teachers have two weeks to correct and enter the grade in PULS. Particularly important: you should receive the exam results in good time so that you can prepare for the second date if you have failed or want to improve your grade. There should be at least 6 weeks between the first date and the second date. Many lecturers do not know this themselves, so it is best to carefully point out the BAMA-O/BAMALA-O to them before you submit an official complaint because a deadline was not met by the lecturers.

Free attempts allow you to retake an exam to improve your grade or to negate a failed exam in order not to lose the attempt.

The university has a very informative page on free attempts; special features in the first semester, how many examination attempts you have and how to register a free attempt.  Have a look here.

Even if you put a lot of effort into your studies and do a lot for your exams, it can sometimes happen that you just don't get the grade you were hoping for in the end. You often ask yourself “So... what was the reason?”. 

There are usually several options here. In the best case scenario, the reason lies with yourself and you can resolve it by doing things differently next time. In the worst case, it is down to the lecturer and the way in which the exam was assessed. As the latter can sometimes occur, we have put together a little input for you regarding the legal framework. However, we hope that you will never have to take legal action. In any case, however, we are a possible contact for you as FSR regarding “examination services”.

There are examination boards at the university, which deal with such problems at university or faculty level. In the end, however, it may even be sufficient to contact the person carrying out the assessment directly or anonymously via us as the FSR.

*** All above information without guarantee ***