Are south african undergraduate degrees recognised in Germany?

Check your degree recognition here:
http://anabin.kmk.org/ (official site, only in German language)
http://www.anerkennung-in-deutschland.d … /index.php (this also has English)

Hi Nommzi,

Under the Bologna process, Germany is adapting to EU norms and are relaxing the standards of its Diplom (FH) towards more international aligment.
Historically, in South Africa, bachelor's degrees (BA, BSc, BCom) are three year degrees. Engineering and Medicine took longer (hence the honor degree year).

Global competition is strict and it often occurs that that US& UK universities do not credit all German subjects, the same happens inversely to foreign students visiting France, Netherlands, Germany. Even between the German Provinces (ie NRW, Bayern, Hessen), it is customary to decline a number of subjects as a matter of principle.

Historically the German Engineering covered the same amount of subjects than South African BSc Eng., where the last year is dedicated to a dissertation  + subjects typical for honors degree. Note that a Masters and a Magister is different also, where the Magister were closer (sometimes almost equivalent) to a Doctorate. Under the Bologna process, The Magister is also deprecated and diluted towards a Masters degree.

South African Primary and Secondary Education  also did not stand still - whereas in 1995, according to the TIMMS (Trends in Mathematics and Science International comparison Mid level schools) report, under HoD/R/A, South Africa ranked 27 from the top, the situation changed drastically after that.  With the introduction of a brand new curriculum over the last two decades, South Africa is now consistently featuring last place overall (262/262) since 9 years (below other African participating countries like Ghana, Egypt, Morocco). The curriculum in South African Universities have also been relaxed over the last 20 years to accomodate a wider variety of semi-autonomous or independent institutions with more inclusion and less specialization.

This change could imply that the EU may soon not accredit such mixtures of South African Tertiary institutions anymore, with similiar accreditations of H+/- as witnessed in the aforementioned countries.

The book "Mathematics and Science Achievement at South African Schools in TIMSS 2003" could be very helpful for you to compare the trends from 1995-2003 with the latest international reports.

Most are. Go to daad.de and check on admission requirements. I did my BA in Zambia and was admitted to Johannes Gutenberg Universität for a MSc Programme without writing any entrance exam

Interesting.

Did you finish the MSc. already or just started? It would be great to hear from you again once you finished that since there is a major difference between a BA vs. MSc and you'll beat statistics by a long shot. We'll keep our fingers crossed in the meanwhile.

BSc itself, have a failure rate of  1/4 students (that all got university admission). So it's study study study, from now on and no social life for the next 2 years.

I finished early last year. It was a 2 year programme. Extremely tiresome. Ever studying. The whole experience was however rewarding. Visited places that I never thought I would. Met people from all walks of life. Go for it!!!!
If you need any tips, I'm here. Cheers!!!

Congrats. Which type of MSc and what was your dissertation about?