You should submit your application immediately after you have received a notice of admission and you have decided to study in Berlin.

It is important that you submit your application for educational support funding as early as possible (6-8 weeks before the semester starts). You should submit your application immediately after you have received a notice of admission and you have decided to study in Berlin.

It is very important to observe the deadlines: educational support funding is provided from the beginning of the month in which the course of study is started; no earlier, however, than the start of the month in which you applied.

If, for example, you started your studies in April and did not make an application until May, you will only receive educational support funding from May 2017. You will have lost any claim to financial support for the month of April.

Applying via BAföG-Digital:

Use the new application assistant, which guides you comfortably, easily and quickly through the system and helps you with the application.

First of all, you decide whether you want to use your identity card / electronic residence permit with eID function for authentication and whether you want to submit the application completely digitally and without paper. To do this, you need a laptop / tablet, your ID card + PIN, NFC-enabled smartphone, the AusweisApp2 and you can use this to register with the federal portal.

You don't want to use your ID but rather print out the application and sign it personally? Then you register with your name and email at BAföG-Digital.

Once you have created the application, print it out, sign it, scan it and upload it to your BAföG-Digital user area and send it to the BAföG office. The date of the successful transfer is considered the application date. You will keep the print out.

You don't have access to a scanner? Then you can also send the signed application to the BAföG office by post. Important: Only when this signed paper application is received by your responsible BAföG office it counts as an effective application submitted within the deadline. In this case, only the receipt stamp of the office applies.

You don't manage to submit the application to the office on time (e.g. 31 October for BAföG from October)? Then send us a short letter stating that you are applying for BAföG, sign it and send it by fax or sas a scan by e-mail. You must then submit the signed forms (by post or your user area in BAFöG-Digital).

BAföG-Digital also offers you the opportunity to inform your parents or your partner via email about their necessary participation in the application process. With the email they can fill out form 3 via BAföG-Digital and optionally authenticate with their ID.

As a rule, a decision on BAföG is made for one year (approval period), unless the training ends before the end of one year, the application was only submitted in the current semester, the proof of performance is due beforehand, you are going abroad, or you have received semester on leave.

You should then submit a new funding application two months before the end of the approval period. If you fail to meet this deadline, you will not lose your entitlement to funding, but there will be an (avoidable) interruption in payment.