APS Certificate 2026 Complete Guide: India, China, Vietnam, Mongolia

If you are applying from India, China, Vietnam or Mongolia, the APS is the first thing you start and the thing most likely to cost you a semester. It sits in front of your university applications and your visa appointment, so every week it slips pushes both back with it. More for Indian applicants in the complete APS guide for India.

What the APS actually certifies

The Akademische Pruefstelle checks that your educational documents are genuine and that they meet the criteria the Kultusministerkonferenz sets for admission to a German first degree. The arrangement goes back to a KMK resolution of 17 March 2006, which also spells out the payoff: an applicant who presents the APS certificate together with a university's admission decision is issued a visa under a simplified procedure. The embassy is not re-checking your transcripts, because the APS already did.

The certificate does not expire. Both the Beijing and the Hanoi offices state that their certificates are valid for an unlimited period, so one you obtain now still works if you defer an intake by a year.

India runs a document check, not an interview

India is the outlier: there is no interview and no oral test in the standard procedure. You register online at aps-india.de, pay the fee, and courier a printed, signed application form with copies of your documents. The fee stated on the June 2026 leaflet for graduates is 18,000 INR, non-refundable once paid, and payable either by bank transfer or through the CCAvenue gateway during registration.

The checklist for a bachelor's or master's holder runs to thirteen items, from the signed form with a recent photo through Class X and Class XII marksheets, marksheets for every semester and the degree or a provisional certificate. APS India asks you to warn your college that verification queries are coming, and notes that schools have to reply from an official address, since gmail.com and similar domains are not accepted.

Two changes matter if you are applying now. From the summer semester 2027 intake, master's applicants whose previous degree is in engineering, in commerce, accounting, finance or economics, or in business or management have to sit the Digital Master Test (dMAT) and submit the certificate with their APS documents. The dMAT is run by g.a.s.t., not by APS India, the fee is EUR 150 at registration, and in the 2026 cycle registration ran from 29 June to 15 September, the test was on 26 September and certificates were issued on 12 October. You may send your APS documents first and add the dMAT certificate later.

And from winter semester 2026/27 APS India applies a minimum of 70 per cent on the Class XII certificate for the school-leaving routes into a German bachelor's; applications filed before 15 March 2026 were assessed on the old criteria. See the class XII threshold explained. One more warning from the same leaflet is worth repeating because it costs people visas: do not submit medium-of-instruction or exemption letters instead of a language certificate. The visa section will not consider them.

China charges per procedure and interviews you

The Beijing office publishes an actual price list, which makes it the easiest of the four to budget for. The regular China procedure, used if you have studied at a Chinese university and want a bachelor's or master's in Germany, costs 2,500 RMB with an interview, or the same if you take the TestAS route instead. The Gaokao procedure, for school leavers heading to a Studienkolleg or straight into a bachelor's, is also 2,500 RMB. The document review procedure, for scholarship holders, doctoral candidates and applicants married to an EU citizen, is 1,000 RMB and involves no interview. Exchange and partnership candidates pay 2,000 RMB.

If the interview goes badly, a repeat costs another 2,500 RMB and a re-examination 2,000 RMB. Withdrawal is not possible once you have started, and the fees exclude visa charges. Successful candidates are sent 10 certificates by registered mail, and a file number arrives roughly 14 days after submission.

Vietnam has two interview dates a year, and they are the whole timetable

Vietnam is where starting late is genuinely fatal, because the APS at the German Embassy in Hanoi only interviews twice a year, in May and November, in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Documents for the November sitting must reach the APS by the end of August; for the May sitting, by the end of February. Miss that post date and your next opportunity is six months away.

The standard procedure for postgraduate study costs 250 USD, paid in advance into the embassy's Vietcombank account with the receipt submitted alongside the documents; for undergraduate study it is 150 USD. The separate Deutschland-Verfahren, for applicants already in Germany on family reunification, is also 150 USD and produces five certificates, with another five for 20 USD.

The interview is about 15 minutes, in German or English at your choice, preceded by a written task on a subject named in your transcript. Calculator, ruler and pen are allowed, paper dictionaries are provided, electronic ones are not. It is not a language exam and not a quality test: the examiners are establishing that you really studied the courses in your Studienbuch, so re-read it beforehand. Turning up late, or not at all, is recorded as a fail. A failed interview can be repeated after six months with a fresh application and the full fee again, and you get at most two repeats.

Two Vietnam-specific rules catch people out. The APS does not check qualifications earned outside Vietnam, so a Vietnamese national with a foreign bachelor's applies to the German university directly. And for postgraduate admission the KMK rules in force since 15 March 2009 require a completed course of study of at least four years.

Mongolia goes through the embassy in Ulaanbaatar

Mongolia is the smallest of the four procedures and the least documented online. It is run by the Akademische Pruefstelle at the German Embassy in Ulaanbaatar rather than by an office with its own website, and the fee and interview arrangements sit on the embassy's own pages. We could not retrieve a current fee from that site while writing this, so we are not quoting one. Ask the APS there before you budget. Everything else here about sequencing applies to Mongolian applicants too.

Start it 6-12 months out

APS India says verification takes at least two weeks and gives no fixed maximum, because it depends on how fast your school, board or university answers its queries. Vietnam's calendar is fixed by the two interview dates. Beginning 6-12 months ahead of your intake is what keeps a slow queue from becoming a lost year. Line it up against the master's deadlines that close earlier than the national date.

Some universities want it at application, some at enrolment

This is the part most guides get wrong, and it moves your timetable by months. There is no single national rule, so read the page of the university you are applying to.

TUM treats the APS as an enrolment document rather than an application document for bachelor's and master's programmes: you upload the digitally signed certificate to TUMonline after you receive an offer, and if it has not arrived you may submit it up to five weeks after lectures start. Studienkolleg applicants at TUM must upload it before the application deadline instead.

WHU runs the other way and turns the APS into your real deadline: applicants who need one have to apply by 30 April for the September start, a month earlier than applicants who merely need a visa.

The APS also decides where you file the visa. The German missions in India route students who need an APS certificate for a German bachelor's or master's through VFS, while applicants heading to institutions awarding non-German degrees apply at the embassy or a consulate. You cannot choose, and booking the wrong category means your application is not accepted. See VPD, APS and direct application compared.

What goes wrong

Starting late is the big one, and it is fatal in a way people underestimate, because the APS sits at the head of a chain: a delay here ripples through the VPD, the offer letters and the visa appointment until an entire intake is gone. Start as soon as you decide on Germany, before you have finalised your university list, and treat any interview or test date as immovable once you have it. The other mistakes are cheaper but common: paying through unofficial agencies, which cannot issue anything, and losing the reference number, which you will need to match on your visa forms. More of them in the ten application mistakes to avoid.

A quieter one is applying at the wrong stage. APS India issues certificates on the basis of the qualifications completed and documented when your application is processed, so submitting halfway through your final year buys a certificate describing the wrong qualification, and a second evaluation means paying again.

After the certificate arrives

Finish your applications, then move to the visa and fund the 11,904 euros blocked account. See the German student visa process and what a blocked account costs.

Sources

• APS India
• APS China fee table
• APS Vietnam, German Embassy Hanoi
• TUM on the APS certificate
• DAAD

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