Faculty of
Life Sciences Faculty of Life Sciences

Up-to-date information about how to register and deregister for exams at the current time is available here:
Life Sciences exams – current information

Credit points and failed attempts that were achieved or took place at another university, under a different set of examination regulations or in a different degree course need to be recognised as equivalent by the examinations committee for your degree course in order to be counted towards your degree.

Please note that you need to contact the chair of the examinations committee with your transcripts within the first subject semester. Otherwise it will not be possible to be transferred to the second semester. This will mean that you will be blocked from re-registering and it will not be possible to validate your chip card.

It is also possible that practical career-training activities or vocational training can be recognised. Please contact your examinations committee to determine whether this is the case.

If your degree course's examination regulations stipulate that you must take part in field trips, you will need to collect the field trip certificates and submit these to the chair of your examinations committee when you apply for your transcript.

Field trip certificate (in German)

Submitting a sick note
If you are ill, please send the original of your sick note (Arbeitsunfähigkeitsbescheinigung) together with your student number and the exam you have missed to the Faculty Service Office. We can only excuse you if we receive this.

• Deadline: One business day following the final date listed on the sick note.

If you fall ill during an exam
Because you sign a form directly before the exam takes place saying that you want to sit the exam, it is expected that you are physically able to do so. However, if you do need to interrupt an exam due to acute illness, please tell the examiner that you need to withdraw and go to a doctor as quickly as possible. You will need a certificate (Attest) from the doctor saying that you were physically unable to complete the exam (a sick note will not suffice in this case). Please also inform the chair of your examinations committee in writing immediately that you needed to withdraw from the exam.

Please submit the original certificate to the Faculty Service Office no later than one workday after it expires. The chair of the examinations committee will decide subsequently whether the withdrawal will be accepted.

If students withdraw in the middle of an exam without an important reason, the exam for the specific subject will be graded as a 'failed attempt' (numerical grade: 5.0) pursuant to Section 26 (1) of the General Examination and Study Regulations for Bachelor and Master Degree Programmes (APSO-INGI).

Regulations for the issuing of previous examinations

Requests for examinations from the archives must be made in advance via email. Please send your request after the lecture-free period begins and include the following information:

• Name
• Student number
• Name of the instructor
• Name of the exam
• Date/semester when the exam took place

Oral assessment (the so-called 'joker attempt' pursuant to 23 of the General Examination and Study Regulations (APSO-INGI)

If a written assessment is graded as a fail, the student concerned may apply to sit an oral assessment for the failed written assessment; each student may take three such oral assessments in total in any given degree course and a maximum of one for any given assessment.

Applications for oral assessment must be submitted to the examinations committee no later than four weeks after the announcement of the result; semester breaks do not count towards these four weeks. Oral assessments determine whether the student fails or passes the assessment.

You can find more information (in German) in the  handout on oral assessments.

Oral assessment signature checklist (Laufzettel)

If you have questions about supplementary oral assessments pursuant to examination regulations prior to 2013, please contact the chair of your examinations committee.

Once your application has been approved by the chair of the examinations committee, please be sure to contact the respective examiners well in advance of your exam. Only then can they determine on time whether additional measures are necessary to ensure the proper accommodation of your needs. For example, if you have requested more time, they will need to determine whether this will overlap with a subsequent exam and assign a new room where necessary.

Information sheet about accommodation of special circumstances for assessments and exams (in German)

Application for accommodation of special circumstances during examinations (in German)

Please submit all forms to the staff member responsible for managing internships. They will keep the registration and the teaching load statement on file and will forward the confirmation to the Student Admissions and Registration Office.

For insurance-related reasons, the Student Admissions and Registration Office will change your student status to 'internship semester'.

Please send the internship report, signed by the supervisor, to the staff member responsible for managing internships at least 14 days prior to the internship-semester colloquium.

Following the internship semester you will need to have your student status changed back to 'course semester'. You can request this by sending an email to the Student Admissions and Registration Office. If you do not do this, you will not be able to validate your chip card in the subsequent semester.

Registration form for main internship (in German)

Confirmation for the Student Admissions and Registration Office (in German)

Teaching load statement for the supervising HAW Hamburg instructor (in German)

Certificate of completion – internship report (in German)

If a project cannot be registered via myHAW, please use the following form to register your project:

Application to register project (in German)

If you want to attend courses that are not part of your degree course and would like to receive credit points for them, please clarify whether this is possible with the chair of your examinations committee and the individual instructor.

Registering for the exam:
Please send the written consent of the chair of the examinations committee and the examiner (via email) to the Faculty Service Office before the registration deadline so that we can register you officially for these 'external' credit points.

Please note!

Exams that are also offered in parallel in other degree courses by various instructors can generally only be completed with the instructor designated for your degree course.

More detailed information and instructions are provided (in German) in our HELIOS-Handout. Because the myHAW functions are currently still the same as those in Helios, these explanations also apply to the myHAW portal.

Students are not permitted to complete exams during a semester on leave. If examinations are completed regardless, these cannot be recognised.

An exception to this rule is failed examinations from the previous semester.

You can obtain more detailed information about taking a semester on leave (leave of absence) from the Student Admissions and Registration Office.