Accreditation of Academic Achievements

In general, all achievements accomplished in a previous university degree program are recognized after switching your study program or university, if there are no decisive differences in content and standards in comparison to the modules offered in the Medical Engineering degree program at FAU. The accreditation process is only initiated upon request of the student. This means that you decide whether you want to file a request for accreditation of modules from previous studies and for which modules you want to file that request. You can also combine the contents of your previous modules and ask for their accreditation of one FAU module.
Achievements that have already been included in the Bachelor´s degree cannot be accredited a second time in the Master’s program, as students have to proof a gain in knowledge with respect to their first degree.
The accreditation process is initiated when a student files a petition for accreditation and hands in the required documents (see “accreditation procedure” below). The decision about accreditation is made by the responsible lecturers of the Medical Engineering program based on the presented module descriptions.

You can submit the request for academic recognition during the whole duration of your studies and even submit different requests during that time. Exception: Exams that you have already passed at FAU cannot be substituted retroactively by an accreditation. The same applies for exams of which you have failed the last attempt.

In order to find out about your chances to accredit achievements from previous studies for a concrete module from the Medical Engineering course catalog, please check the contents of both modules thoroughly and assess to which extent they overlap. We strongly recommend that you have a look at the FAU module description in the Campo portal (see below) and the description of the external module that you wish to have accredited and mark the contents that they have in common. Please do not just file petitions based on similar module titles! The more extensive the overlap between the module descriptions, the more likely is the accreditation.  An 80% of content overlap is considered the minimum overlap for “direct accreditation”. Direct accreditation means that the external module will be accredited under the title of the FAU module and with the same amount of ECTS credits as the FAU module.

You can find an overview  our Master´s degree program in Medical Engineering and the course catalogs here:

• Overview Master (according to the newest Examination Regulations, FPO 2023)

The module descriptions can be found in Campo.

You do not have to prove that your academic achievement is equivalent in content to a concrete module that is taught in the Medical Engineering degree program at FAU. A professor of the degree program must solely verify that the academic achievement fits the contents and quality (Master’s level) of the Medical Engineering degree program. Therefore, the applicant must name a professor of the degree program whose subject is similar to the course  and provide detailed information on the external module to the accreditation representative (see below). If the professor approves the accreditation, the academic achievement will be registered under its original title (if not in English, an English translation will be used) and with its original credit amount (converted to the ECTS system) in the respective module group (M1, M2 etc.)

This option is especially suitable for academic achievements rendered during a semester abroad.

For the module “Free Choice Uni” every graded academic achievement is accepted. You do not have to find an equivalent module at FAU.

Academic achievements acquired at FAU, that you cannot or do not want to use as part of your regular Master’s degree and Master’s certificate, can be listed in the “Additional Subjects” section of your Transcript of Records. For modules that you have completed outside FAU or VHB (hence, at a university abroad or at another university in Germany), this is not allowed anymore since October 2018. However, you can still submit proof of these external achievements to your future employer by handing in the Transcript of Records by the respective university together with your job application.

The following documents are required for the accreditation:

• Excel spreadsheet with detailed content description for external modules/academic achievements (it must contain weblinks to the official course content discriptions of the external university or you must submit an official course handbook in PDF format together with the excel spreadsheet). If there are no module descriptions available or they are too short, please submit additional course materials such as lecture presentations, official lecture notes or similar. This step is not necessary if you have previously agreed with your accreditation officer on a Learning Agreement for a study mobility abroad.
• Transcript of Records/certificate with grades and credits
• Accreditation form – completed and signed.

Please fill the required information in the excel spreadsheet (the pre-existing examples are a visual aid and can be erased) and forward it including your certificate/transcript and accreditation form to the accreditation representative of Medical Engineering, Ms Claudia Barnickel (studienberatung-medizintechnik@fau.de). She will forward your request to the professor in charge of the module. If the professor accepts the accreditation for his module, your achievement will be transferred directly to the Examinations Office. If the professor denies your request, you will receive a statement from the professor.

If the achievements accredited in one semester sum up to 30 ECTS credit points, you will automatically be upgraded to a higher semester. The same applies for 60, 90 ECTS credits, etc. (upgrade of 2 or 3 semesters). If you have applied for a leave of absence during your stay abroad and have more than 29 ECTS credits accredited after your return, your leave of absence will not be revoked, but you will subsequently enter a higher semester.

The accreditation of academic achievement from vocational education also follows the above mentioned procedures, but is subject to slightly different regulations. If you have questions, please contact your accreditation representative.

 

The accreditation of foreign achievements converts grades and credits according to the following formulas, unless you provide other official conversion tables:

Grade conversion: x = 1+3 (Nmax-Nd)/(Nmax-Nmin)

Nmax= best possible grade

Nmin= minimum grade to pass

Nd= achieved grade

Converted grades are not rounded up or down but cut off afer the first decimal point.

For exceptions to the grade conversion (official top grade is never awarded, etc.), our Faculty of Engineering maintains a corresponding conversion table; if you are unsure, please ask BEFORE you decide to study abroad how your grades from abroad are going to be converted! It is not possible to “negotiate” the conversion afterwards!

 

Credit conversion in ECTS: x = Cd (CFAU/CAusl)

CFAU = Credits FAU per semester (30)

CAusl = Credits abroad per semester

Cd = achieved credits per module

If you started your studies in winter term 2018/19 or later, i.e. you are studying according to the study regulations (FPO) version 2018, 2019 or 2022, you have to prove to our Examinations Office that you completed certain mandatory modules when registering your Master’s thesis. These mandatory modules (which are also marked with footnotes in your module catalog) are the following – they are not to be confused with conditional subjects!

• Fundamentals in Anatomy and Physiology for Engineers (module group M1, all English-taught specializations)
• Pattern Recognition (module group M2, specializations “Medical Image and Data Processing” and “Health & Medical Data Analytics and Entrepreneurship”)
• Pattern Analysis (module group M2, specializations “Medical Image and Data Processing” and “Health & Medical Data Analytics and Entrepreneurship”)
• Robotics 1 (module group M2, specialization “Medical Robotics”)

If you have already covered the contents of these modules in your previous degree please contact the responsible person for accreditation with the above-mentioned documents (see category “Accreditation procedure”) and ask for an exemption from the obligation to complete them again at FAU. If the exemption can be granted you are free to skip these modules and choose other modules from the same module group instead. It also means that you are not allowed to take the accredited courses anymore. Important: As the modules from your previous studies counted towards your first degree they will be accredited  with 0 ECTS credits and without a grade, hence not be counted for your Master’s degree. Please note that you can only file an application for the zero-credit accreditation of a mandatory module if you have not definitely failed the module yet. Once you have had your last exam attempt and failed it, you are not allowed to file an accreditation for the module anymore.