FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions (from 2026)
The following is a collection of questions frequently asked by students.
This should always be your first place to look if you have any questions. If your question is not answered here, nor in the study regulations, then please feel free to contact:
- your CMS mentor if your question is about which courses to choose, how to design your curriculum, or where to find a certain topic for a research project or Master’s thesis.
- the CMS administrator if your question is about admission into the program, late arrival, transfer of admission from previous years, the application procedure
- the TUD International Office if your questions are about visa or enrollment
- the examination office if your question is about exams, registration/deregistration for exams, grades/transcripts, certificates and confirmations.
- the responsible teacher of a module, if the question is about the contents or the organization of a specific module.
- the respective course web page or teacher if the question is about a specific course, its contents, its exam, or its organization.
Please make sure you only contact people if you really could not find your answer anywhere else (on these web pages, the study regulations, the mentor, etc.), and that you contact the correct person in charge.
General
The CMS study schedule provides an overview of the recommended distribution of modules by semester. The link to the schedule can be found on the Regulation website.
First semester:
- You select three COR-modules (in the scope of about 15 credit points)
- You study the Soft Skills module (2 credit points)
- You select modules of your track according to the study schedule (in the scope of about 15 credit points).
The recognition of study and examination achievements achievements must be applied for at the Examination Office after enrollment has been completed.
You are required to contact the examination office.
Please contact the examination office.
Please contact the Study Office. They run the SELMA system and can look into it.
All registration or de-registration for modules, courses (if requested), and exams is via the SELMA system of TU Dresden. Registration and admission via this portal is mandatory and a prerequisite for participation in every examination (incl. preliminary examination). Please consider the different deadlines!
The official, administrative registration on SELMA is always required, even if a course additionally also uses another platform provided by the professor.
More information is provided on the websites of the examination office.
You can find more information about the fast track to PhD option on the respective page of the CMS web site. Please read it carefully. If your question is not answered there, then please contact your mentor or the PhD program of interest.
CMS is an international master’s program, and we guarantee that the program can be completed without knowing German. Students who do know German, however, may find a larger selection of choices in the catalogue modules, as they can also take subject-relevant courses from other, German-language degree programs at TU Dresden. If you do not know German, then simply ignore these courses and make your selection from amongst the English-language ones.
This typically means one of two things: (1) the course is taught in English unless all students know German; then it is in German. (2) the lecture is in English but the slides in German, or vice versa. To find out which one applies, contact the lecturer or see the course web page.
If you contacted a lecturer or professor with a question and got no reply, it could mean that the answer to your question can be found on the web page of the course (see above), the CMS web pages (i.e., here), or the study regulations. Please go read these sources and try to find your answer before contacting anyone. It can also mean that they are not the right person to contact. Often students contact lecturers in cases where they should instead have contacted the study office, the examination office, their mentor, or cms-admin. Please check the information at the beginning of this page. If you contacted your mentor with a request for meeting, and you got no reply, please contact the secretary/office of your mentor and schedule an appointment. Professors often do not manage their calendars themselves, but their offices/secretaries schedule appointments. Also, every mentor has a Single Point of Contact (SPOC) student assigned (see “Mentoring” page for details) that you can contact as a relay. In the very worst case, if you do not get any reply even from the office and it is urgent, try calling them over phone.
Every course has a web page containing more information, slide decks, exercise sheets, and syllabus. You can find these pages by going to the web page of the teacher/professor or the respective research group and looking for the “Teaching” or “Education” sub-pages. Alternatively, perform a search on the TU Dresden web page or your favorite internet search engine. Sometimes, links to course web pages can also be found in SELMA. Always check the information on the course web page before contacting the lecturer with your question.
The CMS program cannot guarantee that there are no scheduling conflicts between modules. If the overlap involves non-mandatory courses/modules then you must choose a different course/module. Due to the large number of elective courses you can choose from, we cannot provide non-overlapping times for all possible combinations of them. The week simply does not have enough hours.
Research project modules
First, think about what your would like to do and where your scientific interests lie. Then, search the web pages of TU Dresden or talk with your mentor to find professors or research groups working in that area, and contact them to see if they have projects to offer. The process of thinking about your personal goals, researching the landscape, and contacting people is an important part of the learning experience and the skills you are expected to gain in this module.
Once you have found a professorship or research group that has a project you like, you start the project work. However, you must register for the module / the exam via SELMA before work on the project starts. This is possible at any time during the semester. In addition, you must communicate the examiner's name to the CMS Examinations Office by e-mail. After the exam, the examiner enters the grade in selma and releases it.
The supervisor of your project has to be a professor of TU Dresden who has the right of examination and grading. The daily mentoring on the project can be done by someone else (typically a scientist in the group of the professor, or a an external scientist if you do your project outside TU Dresden). The professor who is administratively responsible for the module (see module description) is not automatically the supervisor of any project. The supervisor needs to have deep academic expertise in the topic area of the project and is typically the person together with whom the project has been defined, or a TU Dresden professor from that scientific field.
Yes, you can. We actually encourage you to look for projects in non-university research institutes (e.g. Max Planck Institutes, Fraunhofer Institutes, Helmholtz Institutes, or Leibnitz Institutes), in other universities (in Germany or abroad), or in companies.
In addition to your project supervisor in the hosting institution, however, you then also additionally need a TU Dresden Professor as a grader. It is the student’s responsibility to find a professor who is willing to and has the knowledge to competently grade the project topic chosen. The professor needs to sign the project application form to confirm.
The exam is explained in the related module description (see "regulations").
The regular processing time for project work is explained in the module description (see "regulations").