German Courses

Are you interested in learning German? Karlsruhe House of Young Scientists (KHYS) offers docs and postdocs at KIT the opportunity to take part in the German courses at Studienkolleg. For those doctoral researchers, who are not enrolled, we even offer a refund for participation fees for doctoral researchers and postdocs for German classes in the winter semester 2026/2027.

The call for applications is now open on our event caledar and closes on September, 4 2026.

  • Doctoral researchers who are enrolled at KIT and are a ▶ member of KHYS can apply for a place at STK via the KHYS event calendar. 
  • Doctoral researchers and postdocs who are not enrolled at KIT and who are a ▶ member of KHYS can apply for a place at STK and a refund at KHYS via the KHYS calendar. 

If you are a KIT doctoral researcher or postdoc in Ulm or Garmisch-Partenkirchen, please contact us via ▶ germancourses∂khys.kit.edu concerning the possibility to get a fee refund for German courses.

Doctoral researchers who are enrolled at KIT as PhD students (i.e. who pay the student semester fee) receive one German course per semester at Studienkolleg free of charge. However, you need to apply for a place on a STK course via our event calendar.

In this case, please contact us via ▶ germancourses∂khys.kit.edu. You might be allowed to apply for the refund while you are still in the registration process.

You can apply via our event calendar.

 

The application period for the winter semester normally starts in August and ends in late September or early October, for the summer semester it runs from February until late March or early April. The current call for application is published on this website, we will also inform you about this in our KHYS infomail.

For most courses at Studienkolleg, it will be necessary to take an online placement test which gives information on the level of your German language skills. Read more about this in “course selection” on this website. There will be no test for level A 1 or in case you have already passed the preceding Studienkolleg course.

KHYS will make the funding decision on a first come, first served basis (provided that all prerequisites have been met), so make sure you take the necessary steps early on. If you have already received funding more than twice it might be less likely that KHYS will fund you again.

We will inform you about our funding decision via e-mail about a week before the registration for the German courses starts at Studienkolleg. Thus, you will know if you receive funding by us before paying for the course.

If you receive an email that your application has been succesful, you will receive a registration link for Studienkolleg. You can then register, select your preferred course, and upload the required documents (e.g. your placement test). Those applicants who are not enrolled need to pay the course fee, those enrolled need to send proof of immatriculation to STK. 

After the end of the course, you will have to show proof that you have passed the final exam. So please send a scan of the certificate issued by Studienkolleg after the end of the course to ▶ germancourses∂khys.kit.edu. We will send you an e-mail informing you about additional data we need from you like your bank details. After you handed in all information and documents, KHYS will pass them on to the financial department at KIT in order to pay the refund.

Please note that the certificate of attendance will no longer be provided. A successful final exam is required for claiming the refund.

If you applied for the refund successfully but you do not plan to claim it, please let us know by sending a short e-mail to ▶ germancourses∂khys.kit.edu.

Unfortunately, you cannot receive the refund retroactively, you have to apply at the beginning of the semster before the course starts. This is due to the fact that we only have a limited budget each semester. While making our funding decision, we already take into consideraton that not every applicant will claim the refund.