Registering your PhD is necessary for handing in your PhD dissertation. It’s therefore not necessary to do it right away though it is desired by the department that everyone registers early on. After applying for acceptance, you have 5 years to finish your PhD(in most cases it is no problem to get an extension if necessary).

Registering your PhD can be done with or without an additional . There are some benefits from also becoming a student: discount in the Mensa, getting discounts all around the city/country and partly also other European countries etc. Although you have to pay the semester fee, you can refund it partly since you already have your job ticket (Hessenticket) – if you want to register for a student status as well you can find the necessary steps below, otherwise just ignore the last part. You can choose to switch between being only registered and having student status each semester.

Each PhD application is accepted/denied by the department’s doctoral committee. There are a few (partially optional, partially mandatory) steps to be officially accepted as a PhD at the TU/institute. They are all listed in the following part, each indicated with what is relevant for whom in more detail. The university also provides information on the registration process and there are additionally department specific information.

Read the following parts completely and carefully before starting your process!

Confirmation of supervision and application for acceptance as a PhD candidate

In a first step, you need to hand in the application for being accepted as PhD (PDF file) (opens in new tab) and conformation of supervision as well as the there listed additional documents:

• Copy of your degree certificate (“Abschlussdokumente”)
• CV (“Lebenslauf”)
• Registration in TUCaN
• Exposé (only mandatory if you do not have a standard degree for this PhD)
  • standard degrees for a psychology PhD are:
    • Psychology,
    • Psychology in IT,
    • Cognitive Science
  • standard degrees for a cognitive science PhD are:
    • Cognitive Science
    • Psychology
    • Psychology in IT
    • Computer Science
    • Neuro Science/Biology
    • Sports science with a focus on computer science

Note: The exposé you have to create normally contains an overview about what research you plan for the next years of your PhD. This will be part of the evaluation process by the doctoral committee later. Additionally, your supervisor needs to write an explanation why you – although you do not have a standard degree – are fitting/your degree is sufficient to fit the requirements for the position. This also contains proposing if you will need to do additional courses or not.

Registration in TUCan

TUCaN is the campus management system of the TU. You can login to TUCaN with your TU-ID and password.

To apply for the PhD you have to open an application process in TUCaN. On the top corner, open “application” and go to “my application” and start the process. All the information you need on what to upload additionally and which information you need you can find there.

Important note: If you register shortly before a semester ends, there are two registration options available: you can register for the current or for the upcoming semester. Make sure to register for the upcoming semester, otherwise the process might just get closed after some time instead of completing your registration.

Fill out all the registration – if you have finished you will be able to print out some pages – those are necessary to apply at the deanship (offline unfortunately all as printed out forms)!

Important note: If you want to matriculate and get student status you have to select this in the TUCaN application.

Actual application

You have to send all the gathered documents to the deanship.

• Betreuungszusage/Antrag auf Annahme als Doktorand:in (signed by yourself and your supervisor)
• “Antrag auf Einschreibung/Registrierung TUCaN” with signature (the printed pages from TUCaN)
• certificates of your degree that qualify for a doctoral position

Congrats, after handing all those documents in it is time to wait: they will let you know if you forgot something or if you are accepted as a PhD!

If you now also want to get the student status and have the many benefits of being a student, this is possible without losing your employee status! You can have both. For this, the immatriculation is necessary. You have to select this specifically in the “registration in TUCaN” step!

If all the additional documents are at the Studierendenservice and you also got accepted as a student at the TUD, there are a few tips and tricks for you to know:

• 1. To actually become a student now (you are just accepted to become one at this point), you have to pay the semester free (Semesterbeitrag), information should be included in your acceptance letter, however you can find the fee and the deadlines here as well.
• 2. When everything above is done: Congrats, you are now a student and have:
• • Student card (Studierendenausweis) (= gives you discounts etc. in the Mensa, at many different places in Darmstadt and all of Germany/Europe, etc.)
  • Semesterticket, i.e. the digital Deutschlandticket

Refunding Semesterticket because of the Hessenticket

As an employee of a German (Hessian) public university, you already have a job ticket – the Hessenticket. Since we do not need two different tickets for the same purpose we can refund the Semesterticket – you get the money from the Semesterbeitrag back that is dedicated for the ticket.

Note: Since the Semesterticket is a Deutschlandticket, it has a much wider area of vaildity, namely the entire German local public transport system. If you're planing to travel a lot outside of Hesse with local public transport (not ICE or IC) it might be cheaper to keep the Semesterticket instead needing to get another ticket for these travels.

It is rather simple to get back the partial semester fee, as long as you are within the deadlines: Just look at the information for refunding and fill out the request. It gets a little more difficult if you can not meet the deadlines (e.g. if your acceptance process of all the above steps just took way longer than expected):. If you realize this early enough, already message the AStA TUD (responsible for the refund) at service@asta.tudarmstadt.de and/or rueckerstattung@asta.tu-…. You then will have to write a written letter (Härtefallantrag) to

AStA TU-Darmstadt
Hochschulstraße 1
64289 Darmstadt

This letter should specify:

• Why you could not use the online system to finish your refund request
• Why you could not hand in the needed documents (Landesticket and Semesterticket) within the deadline

You should also add a copy of your Landesticket/s for the relevant semester. Then you have to wait for their reply, the next semester you will make it in time if you do not forget the deadline!

The department FB03 – Human Sciences created a supervision agreement (PDF file) (opens in new tab) which is a written form of both the PhD student and the supervisor to have some outlines and rules for the supervision during the PhD. At the moment it is still unofficial so it is optional. It is supposed to be seen as an informal set of rules and agreement to have some guidelines and things to rely on.