Besides a potential employment, a PhD in the University of Vienna requires registration as a student. This is required in order to register to courses and you will also need to have been registered for at least three years when you graduate. If you are under 26 this is also a requirement to get the discounted student ticket for the public transport.

If your are an EU/EEA citizen, it would be best to take care of this soon, preferably before your arrival. Otherwise, in order to be exempt from a ~€700 tution fee, you will need to already have your researcher’s residence permit at the time of applying, or to have been employed for at least 90 days at the university in the previous semester.

  • Fill in the form described here as soon as this applies for you and send it within the deadline.

This regulation has actually already been changed — officially you are also exempt if you are simply currently employed by the university — but the website has not yet been updated (as of May 2022), so it is unclear whether it is the case in practice.

The website — and more importantly, the actual admission application form — provide a list of required documents, which we will clarify here:

  • Letter of motivation and CV — nothing special, you can use the same ones from your actual application to your group.
  • Indication of Willingness to Supervise a Doctoral/PhD Candidate and Description of the intended doctoral project — these are a document your advisor will need to sign and a short description of the intended project, respectively. The latter seems, from our experience, to be a purely formal requirement, and you can ask your advisor for some existing document such as a relevant grant application to base it on. It is not your research proposal, it is not binding and it is likely that nobody is going to read it.
  • (If you studied at another university) Bachelor’s degree, Master’s degree, School leaving certificate — these should be in German/English or translated into one of them, and possibly legalised in addition, a procedure which is done in your home country (may also be possible through the embassy in Vienna).
  • (If you studied at another university) Your passport
  • The language requirements are — as listed — optional and probably unnecessary.

You will need to submit those documents through u:space after you open an account (which will serve you during your studies + employment). After that, it usually takes a few days for it to get approved. Then the only thing’s left is to

  • pay about €20 (student’s union fee, ÖH Beitrag)

After paying you are officially a student and can order/revalidate your u:card to show it.