Before starting your thesis, you have to request an admission to the thesis examination. Please send an informal request via email or ahoi ticket to the Student Service Center. Based on your academic achievements recorded in ahoi, the examination office will check if the admission requirements are met.
If you meet the admission requirements, you will receive the registration form for your thesis from the examination office. Please approach the first and the second examiner of your thesis examination with this form in order to have the topic of your thesis as well as its date of registration and submission deadline confirmed.
After both examiners signed it, please submit the completed registration form to the Infothek immediately. Your thesis will then be registered in the ahoi portal by the examination office in the Student Service Center.
The processing time of your thesis starts on the day when the topic was assigned to you. The topic stated on your registration form will appear on your degree certificate. Please fill in the form legibly and check the information on your thesis examination in your ahoi account after the thesis registration was entered into the ahoi portal.
You are allowed to withdraw from the topic of your thesis only once and only within the first four weeks of the processing time.
Both examiners of your thesis should be HCU members and lecture in the study programme of your thesis examination. At least one of your chosen examiners needs to be a professor at the HCU and lecture in your attended study programme.
In exceptional cases, a person who is not a member of the HCU can become the second examiner of your thesis ('external examiner'), provided that he or she fulfils the relevant qualifications. In such a case, the examination board must agree to your chosen examiners. Please forward your thesis registration form to the respective member of the examination board of your study programme in order to obtain the required signature for official approval of your second examiner before submitting it to the examination office.
If you would like to request an extension of your thesis processing time, please submit the processing time extension request to the Infothek. In order to support your request, you need to give reasons and provide the respective evidence. In case of illness, the original sick note issued by a doctor (‘Arbeitsunfähigkeitsbescheinigung’) needs to be attached to this form. In case you do not receive a hard copy for the employer from your doctor please hand in the signed copy for the insured person (‘Ausfertigung für den Versicherten’) instead. Please make sure it carries the signature of your doctor because sometimes that copy is not signed. For data protection reasons you need to blank out your diagnosis that is listed on the document. In case you do not receive any kind of sick note from your doctor please ask for a medical certificate instead and attach it to the withdrawal form.
The filled and signed form and the evidence need to submit within three working days after emergence.
You receive an email from the Examination Office after the decision on your request was made and you will be informed about the new thesis deadline at the same time.
When submitting your thesis, you have to declare in a Declaration of Authorship that you completed your thesis independently and did not use any sources or resources other than those indicated.
The thesis must be submitted digitally to the Examination Office, together with the Declaration of Authorship, not later than on the last day of the processing period. If the thesis was not submitted to the Examinations Office in due time resp. the thesis is submitted after the processing time, it will be marked as 'failed' (5.0).
For the digital submission please save your work as PDF in the HCU-Cloud https://cloud.hcu-hamburg.de/ with the file name as following "Last name thesis BA or MA". Also note that your thesis must be submitted in one PDF file, not multiple files.
To submit your thesis, please send us the appropriate download link from your HCU email address to studierendenservice(at)vw.hcu-hamburg.de. Make sure that the file is not protected with a password.
If your thesis is not too extensive, you can also submit the PDF file as an attachment directly with your mail to studierendenservice(at)vw.hcu-hamburg.de.
Please ask your examiners individually to find out whether they need additional documents, like a printed version of your work or similar, in addition to the digital submission. The required additional documents have to be submitted directly to your examiners, not via the Examination Office.
