Academic Services in Germany

Hausarbeit & Seminararbeit

A Hausarbeit is a written term paper completed at home; a Seminararbeit is a research paper tied to a specific seminar — both are core forms of German assessment.

Bachelorarbeit / Masterarbeit

The final thesis for a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Germany, and usually the largest single piece of assessed work in your programme.

Promotion & Dissertation

Promotion is the doctoral process; the Dissertation (or Doktorarbeit) is the original research thesis it produces, defended in a Disputation.

Exposé

A structured research proposal outlining your topic, question, method and plan — required before starting a thesis or doctorate.

Prüfungsordnung & ECTS

The Prüfungsordnung is your programme’s binding exam regulations; ECTS credits weight each module, with 30 per semester.

Staatsexamen

A state examination required to qualify in fields such as law, medicine, pharmacy and teaching — a distinctly German pathway alongside Bachelor/Master.

Similarity report

The percentage of your text that matches sources already in Turnitin’s databases: the web, published journals and previously submitted student papers. It is deterministic text matching, so it gives the same answer twice. Turnitin’s own position is that it does not check for plagiarism, it identifies matching text. High scores routinely come from correctly quoted and cited passages, your reference list, the assignment question itself and standard methods sections.

AI writing indicator

The percentage of qualifying prose a model predicts could have been generated or paraphrased by AI. It is a probabilistic estimate, not a measurement. Turnitin states it should not be the sole basis for action against a student, and suppresses scores between 1 and 19 per cent because false positives are more common there. Plain, well-structured academic prose and writing by people whose first language is not English are the classic false positives.

Ghostwriting is not itself a crime here

Unlike Australia, England or Ireland, Germany has no statute against selling academic work: supplying the text is a lawful Werkvertrag under section 631 BGB. The liability lands on the student instead, through the declaration they sign. Where that is an eidesstattliche Erklärung, a false one can engage section 156 StGB. Austria, by contrast, does ban the trade, so do not assume the German rule applies across the border.

The Prüfungsordnung is the binding document

Not a policy, a regulation. It defines the assessment formats, the permitted Hilfsmittel and the consequences of Täuschung, and sanctions run from a failed attempt through exclusion from resits to revocation of the degree. AI is analysed as a Hilfsmittel, so an aid that is not listed as permitted is an unauthorised aid. That is why courts have upheld deception findings even where no explicit AI ban existed.

Bavaria has banned the ban

The amendment to the Bayerisches Hochschulinnovationsgesetz approved on 23 June 2026 means Bavarian universities may no longer exclude AI systems in unsupervised written examinations, but must instead attach documentation and labelling requirements in their examination regulations. Restrictions remain possible in supervised exams. Elsewhere the presumption is still restrictive, so where you study genuinely changes the answer.

Institutions diverge sharply outside Bavaria

LMU Munich’s November 2023 recommendations generally permit generative models for ideation, drafts and language correction, with a short accompanying text explaining how and why. Universität Hamburg devolves the decision to faculties and lets thesis supervisors fix the permitted scope on the registration form, or prohibit it entirely. Heidelberg Geography requires coordination with the instructor plus a transparency table.

The Eigenständigkeitserklärung has been rewritten for AI

This is the change most students miss. Heidelberg’s version, dated November 2025, requires a table listing each AI tool, its purpose and the chapters affected, and confirmation that use was agreed with the instructor and that the student retains full responsibility for the content. HWR Berlin and Hochschule Mainz publish AI-aware declaration templates, and Duisburg-Essen pairs the declaration with a list of permitted aids.

Detection, and the end of Ouriginal

German universities run Turnitin widely for similarity, and treat the AI indicator cautiously: Universität Hohenheim has it enabled for English texts while warning that the report does not yet work in a fully mature way. Note a practical change: Ouriginal is being discontinued from 30 June 2026 and customers are migrating to Turnitin, so the tool your faculty used last year may not be the one it uses now.

The Note scale, and why 4.0 matters

1.0 to 1.3 sehr gut, 1.7 to 2.3 gut, 2.7 to 3.3 befriedigend, 3.7 to 4.0 ausreichend, and above that nicht ausreichend. Lower is better, and 4.0 is the lowest pass. Law uses a 0 to 18 Punkte scale instead, and doctorates use summa, magna, cum laude and rite. ECTS is workload, not grading: 60 credits to a full-time year, and a German 1.7 does not map to a B by rule, it maps through your institution’s published grading table.

Research work has its own rulebook

If you are publishing rather than submitting coursework, the DFG code on good scientific practice applies, and its September 2023 statement requires researchers to disclose whether, which, why and to what extent generative models were used. AI cannot be listed as an author, and using generative models in peer review is forbidden because review material is confidential. Ombudspersons handle research misconduct; the Prüfungsamt handles assessment deception. They are separate tracks.

We start from your rules, not ours

Before anything is written we take your Prüfungsordnung and module description, your rubric, your referencing style and your institution’s integrity and AI position. If your assessment sits in a no-AI band, that constrains the whole engagement.

Source first research

Every claim is traced to a real, checkable source that we have actually read. No invented citations, no fabricated data, no references to papers that do not exist. This is a hard rule and it is not negotiable.

Written from scratch, every time

Nothing is recycled from a previous student’s work and we keep no library of pre-written essays to resell. Work delivered to you is never delivered to anyone else, which is what keeps it out of the student paper database that flags the next person.

Referencing built and checked entry by entry

Citations and the reference list are built in Deutsche Zitierweise, APA 7, Harvard, DIN ISO 690, IEEE or whatever your Lehrstuhl requires, then checked back against each source individually. This is where most easy marks are lost and the cheapest place to gain them.

Similarity checked before it reaches you

A similarity report is run before delivery and the matched text is reviewed line by line, not glanced at as a number. Quoted and cited matches stay. Uncited overlap is rewritten or properly attributed.

Explained, not just handed over

You receive the report with the work, plus a short walk-through of the argument and the sources, so you can defend the piece in a tutorial, a viva or an integrity meeting. If you cannot explain it, it has not been delivered properly.

What we do

✓Tutoring, structural feedback and worked explanation of difficult material

✓Model answers and exemplars that show how a top band is actually reached

✓Research support, literature searching and source evaluation

✓Editing and proofreading of work you have written

✓Referencing correction and reference list construction in Deutsche Zitierweise, APA 7, Harvard, DIN ISO 690, IEEE or whatever your Lehrstuhl requires

✓Statistical analysis with the method explained so you can defend it

✓Thesis and dissertation coaching chapter by chapter, at your pace

✓A similarity report and a plain-English explanation of what it shows

What we will not do

✕Sit an invigilated exam, online test or proctored assessment for you

✕Log in to your university account or learning management system

✕Submit work to your institution on your behalf

✕Resell work already delivered to another student

✕Invent citations, sources, participants or data

✕Help you falsify a declaration about AI use, or write your prompt log for you

✕Claim we can guarantee a specific grade or a specific similarity percentage

✕Tell you that a detector score is something we can control