Initial Processing: Formal Requirements

After you submit your application in TUMonline, the TUM Center for Study and Teaching will verify that all formal requirements were met, for example:

• Are all required documents uploaded?
• Are all required documents readable?
• Is the photo in your photo ID blurry?
• Have any documents exceeded their validation date?
• Is the VPD from uni-assist valid? 

If your application is rejected for formal reasons, it would be the TUM Center for Study and Teaching that rejected your application and not the TUM School of Management admissions team. After all formal requirements are met, the TUM Center for Study and Teaching sends the application to the TUM School of Management to be reviewed.

Stage 1: Previous Academic Background + GPA + GMAT

Applicants must meet all three prerequisites to continue in the assessment process. Not meeting a prerequisite will result in a rejection.

• 25 ECTS credits in Business/Management
• 10 ECTS credits in Economics
• 15 ECTS credits in Engineering / Natural Sciences

Table 1: Point allocation for academic background

If an application meets the eligibility requirements, 20 points will be immediately granted for the credits in business/management and 10 points for credits in economics.  Additionally, 10 points may be granted for meeting a minimum of 5 ECTS credits in operations research. The engineering/natural science prerequisite is required for eligibility but does not contribute points in the assessment procedure.

• The TUM School of Management requires a passing grade on the transcript when an applicant submits an application in TUMonline in order to consider a module/course for a prerequisite.
• The TUM School of Management does not require that all prerequisites be core components of an applicant's undergraduate degree program. Courses on additional transcripts from other universities will be considered.
• If the application does not reach the minimum number of credits stipulated for each category, zero points will be given in that specific field.

• We can only consider courses with academic credits granted from an accredited university.

   

An applicant may receive up to 10 points for the overall final bachelor’s degree GPA. If you apply with an undergraduate degree from outside Germany and / or with a grade of a grading system other than the German system, your GPA will be converted into the German grading system using the Bavarian formula by uni-assist or the TUM Center for Study and Teaching. For reference of international applicants, decimal points in the German system are represented with commas. Please refer below for more information:

Table 2: Point allocation for GPA

The points from the core modules and your GPA will be combined. 

Our curricular analysis system will calculate a separate GPA based on the best 140 ECTS credits from your undergraduate degree. If this GPA is better than the GPA on your transcript or the converted GPA uni-assist provided, we will use this best 140 credits GPA when assessing your application. If the best 140 credit GPA is worse than what is on your transcript, normally due to input errors, we will not penalize the applicant and instead use the GPA from the transcript or the converted GPA uni-assist provides. This extra GPA is only available for applicants with a transcript that uses the ECTS. 

For all GPAs, we only use one decimal point with no rounding. For example, if you have a 2,19, this would be a 2,1.

Table 3: Point allocation of GMAT percentile rankings

• Additional points for the GMAT are considered only in the first stage of the assessment procedure.
• Applicants must ensure that they give TUM the right to verify GMAT scores. Unverifiable GMAT scores cannot be considered.
• The GMAT may award the applicant additional points in the assessment process. It cannot be used in lieu of a missing prerequisite.
• We do not consider the GRE in any way. It cannot be used as a replacement for the GMAT.

The results of Stage 1 either lead to:

• Rejection - if the application reaches 34 points or less
• Direct admission - if the application reaches 45 points or more
• Continuing to Stage 2 - if the application reaches between 35-44 points

Stage 2: Points from Stage 1 (without GMAT) + Admissions Test

If an applicant continues onto Stage 2, the applicant will be invited to take an admission test. Applicants will be informed of the admissions test date and time at least one week before the admission test. The admissions test is available on campus and off campus. 

• For the summer semester admissions period, there is a main admissions test and a make-up test for those who are sick on the first test date. We aim for the main admissions test to be at the end of January or the beginning of February, and the make-up test for the end of February or beginning of March. Due to fluctuating availability of lecture halls, we are unable to give out further information before sending out the official invitations.
• Applicants will be invited to a specific admissions test, and when we invite an applicant to a specific admissions test date, we expect the applicant to make the test appointment on the specified date. 
• We are unable to consider personal travel plans or work schedules as a reason to partake in a make-up test. We suggest applicants make no travel plans that cannot be changed during the summer that would preclude applicants from taking the admissions test.

The admissions test consists of 40 to 50 questions and has a maximum score of 40 points. Each section has a possible 10 points that may be earned. The text field for the mini-essay has a maximum of 400 words.

Table 4: Admissions test sections

Please note, the admissions test is structured to ascertain if certain competencies were met in an applicant’s undergraduate studies. We do not provide applicants with preparation materials or practice questions.

The final result in Stage 2 consists of the combined points from Stage 1 (GMAT not being considered in Stage 2) and the total points achieved in the test. If the combined total is 70 points or more, the application will be admitted. If the total score is 69 points or less, the application will be rejected.

Admissions & Rejections

If you receive admission to the program, congratulations! At the point that you are admitted, the TUM SOM admissions team is no longer your point of contact. After you accept a seat in the program, our academic advising department will be your point of contact. Academic advising will contact all admitted students before the beginning of the semester to provide valuable resources and information to make sure you can be successful in your studies. A central university office, the TUM Center for Study and Teaching will be your point of contact for many functions such as enrollment and tuition.

If you are rejected, you will first receive an automated e-mail from TUMonline. If you would like information about the decision, such as your point breakdown for the admissions test, please send us an e-mail to admission@mgt.tum.de. The TUM SOM admissions team only communicates information regarding rejections via e-mail. 

We carefully assess each application before issuing an admission decision. Once we have completed the assessment of an application and issued the admission decision, we do not reassess the application or admissions test upon request.

Introduction

Please note that the information provided below is for general guidance only. It does not constitute a legally binding or preliminary evaluation of eligibility. The only legally binding document is the official statute (FPSO) in its most current version.

In accordance with annex 2 of the examination and study regulations for the Master’s in Management & Technology degree program, the assessment committee uses a curricular analysis to assess your eligibility and aptitude. This documentation is intended to help applicants fill out the curricular analysis.

Which Credit System To Use

• If your university does not use the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS), please do not convert your credits to the ECTS. The admissions team will do this.
• Some universities generate transcripts with the local credit system and the ECTS in a separate column, in this instance, please use the ECTS.
• The transcript is the authoritative document which communicates how many credits you earned for a module/course, and which credit system the university decided to award the credits in, not the module/course catalog.

Entering Grades

• The curricular analysis system auto calculates a 140 best ECTS credit GPA based on your entries. The calculation will take only the necessary number of courses/modules to reach, or get past, 140 credits.
• If a course has a passing grade on the transcript you are submitting in your application, we are expecting that you include it in the curricular analysis.
• There is no way to convert a non-numerical grade into a numerical grade. If you have a pass-fail type grade for a module, please enter 0. This will take the course out of the calculation of the 140 best ECTS credit GPA.
• Do not convert your grades if you have a different grade system. If any conversions are necessary, this will be done by TUM.
• If your university uses non-numerical grades, e.g. letter grades, and your university has an official conversion table, please use this table to convert your grades to numerical grades. Make sure to also upload this table to your application in TUMonline.

Other

• Enter your coursework exactly as it appear on your transcript of records. If you are applying with a translated copy of your transcript, please use the translations.
• Do not self translate course titles into English if your transcript is in German.  If you do translate module titles yourself that do not exist in the module catalog or transcript, we will be unable to map your coursework.
• It is in the best interest of applicant's to ensure that the module catalog and transcript are both in the same language. If, for example, your university supplied your transcript in English but the module catalog in German, please enter both the German title and the English title into the same row into the curricular analysis. Otherwise, we are unable to map your coursework from the transcript to the curricular analysis.

How to Categorize Modules

The curricular analysis is a self-assessment in which applicants indicate which courses/modules they believe fulfill the prerequisite requirements based on the applicant's categorization. The TUM SOM admissions team cannot advise students on how to categorize their specific courses/modules. In this scope, the Admissions Team respects the categorization of the applicant and will not recategorize modules on the behalf of applicants.

Every university may change the contents of their modules at any time. At the same time, the assessment committee may adjust the assessment criteria for prerequisites from semester to semester. Because of this, it is not possible to reliably evaluate modules in advance. As the Master’s in Management and Technology is a consecutive degree, we use the module catalog from the Bachelor’s in Management and Technology to compare the course content and learning objectives. In this scope, applicants can do their own initial precheck with the TUM BMT module catalog.  The more that course content and learning objectives match between your module description and one of our module descriptions, the more likely that a module will be accepted for a prerequisite. 

The TUM SOM admissions team is unable to offer prechecks.

Please keep in mind:

• The TUM Example Reference Modules are examples and not a comprehensive list. 
• The assessment committee uses the course contents and learning objectives in course/module descriptions to make decisions on course/module applicability.
• As a rule of thumb, the more a module is applied to a business setting, the more that the course looks like a business module.
• Mixed modules (Economics & Law, Business & Economics) often have very different learning objectives to undergraduate modules the TUM School Of Management offers and may fall outside the requirements for prerequisites.
• Credits from an individual module cannot be split.

• A single module can only be used for one category. For example, do not put down Intro to Business into both Business management modules and Fundamental subjects in economics.