Study in GermanyStudent Visa Guidance from Jalandhar

Information on this page was checked against official German Government sources on 22 October 2026. Reviewed by Mandeep Sandhu, Sandhu Overseas, Jalandhar. Next scheduled review: January 2027. Germany republishes its financial figures every January and has just introduced a new test for Indian Master’s applicants — both are covered below. Always confirm on the official page linked beside each point before you act.

Why students from Jalandhar look at Germany

Germany is the destination where the sums work differently from everywhere else on this site. Public universities generally charge no tuition fee — only a semester contribution — so the money you must show is for living costs rather than for fees. For a family in Punjab weighing a two-year master’s in Canada against one in Germany, that single difference often changes the answer.

What Germany asks for instead is process. Your Indian qualifications must be verified by a body run by the German Embassy before you can even apply. Your funds must sit in a particular kind of account with a particular monthly withdrawal limit. Your language certificate must come from a short list, and a “medium of instruction” letter from your Indian university will be rejected outright. Germany is cheaper and slower, and it rewards preparation more than any other destination we handle.

The dMAT: new, and only for Indian applicants

In June 2026 the Academic Evaluation Centre introduced the dMAT, a standardised academic aptitude test for Master’s applicants from India, run by g.a.s.t. and folded into the APS procedure. It is the newest thing in German study admissions and it applies to your nationality specifically.

Who is exempt: anyone who completed APS registration or shipped complete APS documents before 29 June 2026; anyone who already holds an APS certificate; confirmed exchange, double-degree or university-partnership students; all Bachelor’s applicants; Bachelor’s students with fewer than five semesters of a three-year programme or seven of a four-year programme; PhD applicants; and anyone whose previous degree falls outside the selected fields.

Official source: APS India — dMAT. Dates on the APS page have been revised more than once; confirm them there before booking.

APS: the step that comes before everything

The Academic Evaluation Centre (APS India) is run by the Science Section of the German Embassy in New Delhi. It verifies academic documents issued by Indian institutions, and an APS certificate is required both by the German Mission for your visa and by uni-assist for your university applications. For an Indian applicant it is not optional and it is not quick, so it belongs at the start of your timeline, not in the middle.

What to gather: the signed application form with a passport photo under six months old; the fee receipt; your Aadhaar card copy with a linked mobile number; passport first and last pages; Class X and Class XII marksheets and certificates, plus the Class XII admit card if you have it; marksheets for every semester; your Bachelor’s degree certificate, where a provisional certificate under a year old is accepted; Master’s documents if relevant; your language certificate; and the signed Student Authorization Letter.

One rule worth flagging for Punjab, where polytechnic routes are common: polytechnic and vocational certificates cannot be treated as equivalent to a Bachelor’s programme.

Official source: APS India. APS does not publish how long a certificate remains valid, so ask them directly if yours is more than a year old.

Two different visas — make sure you apply for the right one

The visa itself is only an entry document. After you arrive and enrol you apply at your local Ausländerbehörde for the residence permit for study purposes, which is issued for up to two years at a time and should not be for less than one. If you lose your place through no fault of your own, the law gives you up to nine months to find another before the permit is withdrawn.

Since 1 January 2025 national student visas can be applied for worldwide through the Federal Foreign Office’s Consular Services Portal.

Official sources: § 16b Residence Act · Federal Foreign Office.

The blocked account, and the monthly limit people forget

Germany does not ask you to show a balance. It asks you to place a year’s living costs in a Sperrkonto, a blocked account from which you can draw only a fixed amount each month. For 2026 that is €992 (approx. ₹1.03 lakh) a month, or €11,904 (approx. ₹12.42 lakh) for the year. The figure is tied to the maximum German student support rate and is republished every January.

Three accepted ways to prove your funds, as the German Mission in India lists them:

• A blocked account covering the first year
• Confirmation of a German or EU scholarship
• A Verpflichtungserklärung — a formal declaration of commitment from a sponsor living in Germany, filed with the foreigners authority there

Note what is not on that list. Parental income on its own is not listed as an accepted route for Indian applicants, and a relative in Canada or Dubai cannot give a declaration of commitment — the sponsor must be resident in Germany. If your funding plan rests on either of those, it needs rethinking before you apply.

Where your university does charge tuition, that is on top. Indian applicants must show funds for the first two semesters with a detailed fee breakdown, evidenced by a university payment confirmation, an education loan, or an unblocked deposit added to the blocked account.

Official sources: Federal Foreign Office — blocked account · German Mission in India — national visa for students. The Federal Foreign Office recommends no providers and accepts no liability for them. Amounts change each January.

Language: the certificate your Indian university gives you will not work

Officially, your university sets the language level. In practice the visa section checks it too, and the German Mission in India is unusually direct about what it will and will not accept.

• Proof of ability in the language of instruction is required unless your university confirms it in the admission notification
• For German-taught programmes, “a level of at least B2 is generally expected, without a preparatory language course”
• Accepted: Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, ÖSD, IELTS, TOEFL, Cambridge Assessment English
• Certificates from online exams are not accepted

If you are applying to a German-taught programme, the certificates that give unrestricted admission are TestDaF at TDN 4 in every section or DSH-2 in every section. The Goethe C2 certificate, telc Deutsch C1 Hochschule, the DSD II and the German Abitur exempt you from the test altogether. For English-taught programmes, proof of German is normally not required at all, though B2 German is worth having for daily life and for work afterwards.

Official sources: German Mission in India · DAAD — German language skills. Our IELTS guide covers the English test.

Will your Indian qualification be accepted?

Germany assesses every foreign school certificate centrally. The ZAB, part of the standing conference of state education ministers, issues assessment recommendations published in the anabin database, and all sixteen federal states apply them. Where a school-leaving qualification is not treated as equivalent, the applicant must attend a Studienkolleg — normally two semesters of about thirty lessons a week — ending in the Feststellungsprüfung. State Studienkollegs generally charge no tuition.

One structural rule is worth knowing before you choose a Studienkolleg: a Feststellungsprüfung taken at a Fachhochschule lets you study only at universities of applied sciences, while one taken at a Universität opens both.

What is officially confirmed for Indian applicants through uni-assist: a school-based application needs your Class X and XII certificates with all subjects and grades, your school’s grading system, and your JEE Main and Advanced results if you passed both, plus the APS certificate. A university-based application needs the official transcript, the degree certificate and a grading-system document showing the maximum grade and the minimum grade required to be awarded the degree — the pass mark for individual courses is explicitly not accepted. A provisional degree certificate is valid for twelve months after your studies end.

Two more things about uni-assist. Its assessment is orientation only; the university’s recognition office is not bound by it. And uni-assist states that it does not work with commercial placement agencies and that payment requests come only through its own portal — useful to know if anyone offers to “handle uni-assist” for a fee.

Official sources: KMK / ZAB — access to higher education · uni-assist — country information: India.

Health insurance, and one decision you cannot undo

You need health insurance proof twice: to enrol at your university and to get your residence permit. At the visa stage the German Mission in India requires travel health insurance valid from the date you arrive until the enrolment date stated in your admission letter, which is usually about three months.

For a foreign policy to count as equivalent to German public insurance it must have no reimbursement cap, a deductible of no more than €300 (approx. ₹31,300) a year, cover for pre-existing conditions, no termination clause tied to your age or your residence status, and no time limit. Indian travel policies frequently fail on at least one of these.

Working while you study

A student in Germany may work 140 full days or 280 half days a year without any approval from the labour office. The allowance rose from 120 days on 1 March 2024, so anything you read quoting 120 is out of date.

The counting is done in whichever way is more favourable to you. A working day of up to four hours counts as half a day and over four hours as a full day. Alternatively, a week in which you work up to twenty hours during the lecture period — or any amount outside it — counts as a flat two and a half days. During the lecture-free period there is no hourly limit at all.

A mandatory internship that forms part of your course is covered by your study permit. Other internships count against the 140 days. Self-employment and freelancing need approval from your local foreigners authority, which will consider whether the work would delay your studies. The same 140-day allowance applies to Studienkolleg and preparatory language-course students.

Official source: § 16b(3) Residence Act.

After you graduate

The graduate advantage worth planning around: a recent graduate — meaning the qualifying degree was obtained no more than three years before applying — qualifies for the lower Blue Card threshold regardless of profession. That is a wider door than most people realise, and it closes three years after graduation.

On the Opportunity Card, points come from things you can plan: German B2 is worth three points, B1 two; being under 35 is worth two points and 35 to 39 one; five years of work experience in the last seven is worth three. Six points is the bar.

Official sources: Make it in Germany — prospects after graduation · § 20a Residence Act — Opportunity Card. Salary thresholds are adjusted annually.

Can your husband or wife join you?

There is a rule here that catches married applicants from Punjab more often than any other, and it is worth reading twice.

The other conditions are that your spouse is 18 or over, holds German at A1 level, your own permit is valid for more than a year, and there is sufficient living space and secured subsistence for the household. Administrative practice is strict: one state authority states that spouses and minor children of students receive permits “only in individual cases”, and that each family member is assessed separately against the basic support rate plus a share of local rent — on top of your own blocked account.

We are not going to tell you whether your spouse could then work, because we could not confirm it on an official page, and this is exactly the kind of question on which a confident wrong answer costs someone a year. It is a question for the competent foreigners authority, and we will help you put it to them. Our spouse visa and dependent visa pages cover the wider family routes.

If your application is refused

This is the section where Germany differs most sharply from what is still being sold in Jalandhar.

What the Federal Foreign Office does publish are two remaining routes. Judicial review remains available and is expressly not limited by the abolition — the Office states that adequate legal protection continues to be guaranteed. And a new visa application can be submitted at any time after a rejection, which in practice is what most students do, after fixing whatever the rejection letter identified.

The German Mission in India also states that it may request additional documents or verification of your certificates, which can incur fees, and that submitting documents does not guarantee approval. Document verification is a normal part of the process for Indian applicants, not a sign that something has gone wrong.

Official sources: Federal Foreign Office — abolition of the remonstration procedure · German Mission in India — remonstration and legal action.

Starting your German application from Jalandhar

Germany is the destination where the timeline matters most, because the APS step sits in front of everything else and the dMAT now sits in front of that for some Master’s applicants. A student who comes to us in June for a winter intake is usually too late; one who comes in October for the following winter has room.

Jalandhar has a great many immigration offices and the quality varies. Whoever you work with, ask them to show you the auswaertiges-amt.de or aps-india.de page behind any rule they quote. If they offer to file a remonstration against a German refusal, you have your answer.

How Sandhu Overseas helps

We are an immigration and visa consultancy in Jalandhar. We are not part of the German Embassy, we do not represent it, and no consultancy can guarantee a visa. What we can do is make sure your file is complete, current and consistent, and that you understand each requirement before you spend money against it.

Other services from our Jalandhar office

This page covers the German student visa. If your plan takes a different route, these pages go into each one:

Frequently asked questions