Holders of certain vocational further and continuing education qualifications have the general higher education entrance qualification. In principle, this allows access to all degree programmes. There is no subject restriction. You can find out everything you need to know here.

A subject-related university entrance qualification can be acquired through the university entrance examination. This subject-related university entrance qualification is limited to certain subject-related degree programmes. You can find everything you need to know about the university entrance examination here.

This pathway allows access to the degree programme without a subject-related commitment or professional experience. You can find everything you need to know here.

Anja (36)

Already during my secondary school years I had the wish to attend a secondary school, to obtain the entrance qualification for a university of applied sciences and thus to enable me to go to university. However, I decided - also on the advice of my family - to first complete a "solid" training as a medical assistant. Although the training gave me a lot of pleasure and a certain financial independence, I often asked myself what my life and career would have been like with a school-leaving certificate and subsequent studies. This came to mind more and more often as it became clearer to me that working as a medical assistant was not completely fulfilling. After my children were born, however, I lost sight of the subject of studying for the time being and returned to my learned profession as a part-time employee after nursing and bringing up my children.

Then, by chance, a friend told me about the possibility of studying for "vocationally qualified" students. I then went to the website of Fulda University of Applied Sciences to find out about the admission requirements. However, at that time I had great difficulty finding a person responsible for "vocationally qualified" applicants (contact person today: Tim Feldermann, Central Student Advisory Service). Therefore, I was left alone with some unanswered questions.

I then enrolled as a guest student in the Department of Nursing and Health to find out whether the degree programme suited me. In the lectures, I met students who had taken the university entrance examination . This enabled me to learn something about the procedure and content of the exam for the first time. That helped me a lot and gave me courage. Of course, despite all the support, I was afraid of the exam, if only because it had been over 10 years since my last exam.

After the formalities had been clarified in the oral examination, I was asked questions about my motivation and my career plans after graduation. I was also asked personal questions, such as what my parents and my current boss thought of my future plans. These personal questions made me feel insecure, as I had not thought about them beforehand. Afterwards I was given a text (nurses in the Netherlands and their fields of activity) and 15 minutes to read it. I then had to reproduce the text in my own words and answer questions about it.

The questions in the written exam, which took place about 4 weeks later, were very general (but they were always about knowledge from my own professional field). The most difficult thing for me was to answer them adequately in the allotted time.

In the meantime, the third semester is over and my initial concern that I would not be able to cope with my studies as a non-graduate is now a thing of the past. However, the balancing act as a single mother between children, studying and financing my studies remains a challenge.