Efficent answers to prospective students's enquiries

Prospective students can send enquiries to higher education institutions in Germany via My GUIDE. If they have a specific question, it is forwarded to the contact address provided by the higher education institution (please see “How can prospective students contact higher education institutions directly, using My GUIDE”). Prospective students can also contact the higher education institution regarding a specific topic, without formulating their own enquiry. This option is called a general enquiry.
Higher education institutions can set up automated replies in My GUIDE to answer these general enquiries from prospective international students more quickly and efficiently. Prepared answers can be saved for selected topics. These answers are sent to the prospective students when they inquire about these topics.
Higher education institutions can set up automated replies for the following topics:

• Accommodation
• Admission requirements
• Application
• Course of study
• Financing
• Language skills
• Location and higher education institution
• Recognition of foreign educational certificates
• Study preparation
• Visas, entering Germany
• Other

The automated replies can be used by all higher education institutions that publish their courses of study in the Higher Education Compass (HSK) of the German Rectors‘ Conference (HRK). Only state-recognised higher education institutions can enter their degree programmes into the HSK. If your higher education institution is state recognised but you cannot find it in the list, please contact hochschulkompass@hrk.de.
Unfortunately, you will not be able to use the service if your higher education institution is not state recognised.

Prospective students who are interested in a degree programme and are logged in to My GUIDE can send a message to a higher education institution, using the contact form. They go about this by selecting a subject area, e.g. “Admission requirements” or a more general topic like “Accommodation”, and adding the necessary information about their educational background. Their message will reach you from the e-mail address that the prospective student is registered with on My GUIDE. The subject of the e-mail always begins with “My GUIDE | Enquiry from …” and states the name of the person interested in studying, their educational qualifications and the relevant degree programme. The e-mail text also refers directly to My GUIDE several times.
E-mails including the subject line will always be sent to you in the language that the prospective student has selected on My GUIDE (i.e. German or English). This can help you decide which language is best for you to reply in.

If you have any questions about the recipient address, please refer to the question “Which e-mail addresses have access to automated replies and how can these e-mail addresses be customised?”

If your e-mail address is registered as a point of contact for one or more topics, you can set up automated replies for the topic(s) in question. Please note that this does not apply to programme-specific e-mail addresses. These cannot access the automated replies. Please also see: “Which e-mail addresses have access to automated replies and how can these e-mail addresses be customised?”
To set up an automated reply, select your higher education institution from the list and enter the e-mail address in the corresponding field. You will receive an e-mail with a single-use confirmation code and a hyperlink to enter the code. Accordingly, you will be redirected to the home page for automated replies, where you can see the subject areas that you are authorised to access with your e-mail address. You can also see whether an automated reply is currently active for this topic/these topics. Following this, you can preview the automated reply, edit it and activate or deactivate it.
To leave the page, click on the person icon next to the name of your higher education institution at the top right – there you will find the logout button. Clicking on it will log you out and take you back to the “My GUIDE for Higher Education Institutions” page. Alternatively, you can simply close the browser window. You will also be logged out automatically if you have been inactive for 30 minutes. You will then need to request a new confirmation code to be able to edit your automated replies again.

My GUIDE uses contact data from HRK’s Higher Education Compass. This provides three types of addresses (International Office, general student advisory service, programme-specific contacts). At the request of the higher education institution, these can be supplemented by My GUIDE-specific e-mail addresses for the institution or for individual topics. See also the answers to the questions “How can prospective students contact higher education institutions directly, using My GUIDE?” and “Register e-mail addresses for select topics in My GUIDE”.
If your e-mail address is registered as the authorised contact for one or more topics, you can use it to access the automated replies. However, this does not apply to programme-specific e-mail addresses. These cannot be used to set up institution-wide automatic replies.
The higher education institutions can change the e-mail addresses stored in the HSK. To do this, they log in with their account details on the HSK page for higher education institutions. The login data for keeping the courses of study up to date is managed by the higher education institutions and is usually held at the student advisory service or the marketing department. If you cannot locate the login data, please contact hochschulkompass@hrk.de.
If you are not sure whether your institution has registered e-mail addresses for My GUIDE or if you would like to change the e-mails you have registered, please contact myguide@daad.de.
If you change the e-mail address, the new e-mail address will be given access to the automated replies. Existing content is neither deleted nor deactivated, only the access authorisation changes.

Have you already set up automated replies and want to check or edit them? There are several ways to reach the login page:

• Call up the “My GUIDE for Higher Education Institutions” page and click on the “Get started now” button. You can now log in again.
• If you have logged in previously, you may still have e-mails with (now expired) confirmation codes. Simply click on the link contained in the e-mail; this will take you to the input mask for the code. The expired code will be pre-filled, then you must click on “Zu den automatisierten Antworten” (Go to automated replies) which will lead to the message “Der eingegebene Code ist abgelaufen oder ungültig.” (The code you entered has expired or is invalid.) On the same page, you will see the link “Einen neuen Code zusenden“ („Send a new code“). You can use this to request a new e-mail with a valid confirmation code to the corresponding e-mail address.
• If you receive individual enquiries from prospective students to your e-mail address, the following note is included at the end of these e-mails: “Tipp: Passen Sie Ihre automatisierten Antworten an” (Tip: Customise your automated replies). You can also use this link to access the automated replies service.

If your higher education institution has changed the e-mail addresses in the Higher Education Compass or new e-mail addresses have been reported to the DAAD for My GUIDE as contacts, it is possible that your e-mail address has had its access rights revoked. Please contact myguide@daad.de to find out which e-mail address is currently registered or if it should be changed.

You can store a standardised reply with the e-mail address registered for the specific topic. A reply always consists of a text block plus a heading. To improve readability, you can use bold text and list elements as formatting options. You can also insert links into the text. One image is required per topic. If you do not upload your own image, you can select a file from the DAAD image pool.
In addition to the thematically relevant information, you can also fill in a marketing section to present your higher education institution. Here, too, you can upload an image or choose one from an image pool and create one or more text blocks. You can use this section to share information about your institution or location that is of particular interest to the international target group or make your degree programmes stand out from the crowd.
All texts are available in two language versions (German and English).
If you need support setting up the reply, you can use the Guided Tour function. Once you have logged in to edit the automated reply, you can navigate to the Guided Tour at any time using the question mark icon. It explains briefly and concisely how to edit, activate or deactivate automated replies.

To facilitate the initial setup of an automated reply, the DAAD embedded the ChatGPT language model. The AI uses the higher education institution’s website to create an informative first draft for the individual topics. After logging in, you can check and edit this draft and activate the reply. Edits and any necessary updates always need to be carried out by the institutions, not by the AI. The AI only provides support with the initial entry.
For individual topics, it is possible that the AI cannot find any information on the higher education institution’s website. In this case, no draft can be created. If you call up such a reply for editing, you will be informed accordingly.

My GUIDE uses data from the Higher Education Compass (HSK) by the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK).
The higher education institutions enter the information on their degree programmes into the Higher Education Compass themselves. This information can also be updated there throughout the year. Once a week, My GUIDE checks for changes in the German-language version of the programmes in the HSK and imports them.
The English translation of the Higher Education Compass data is created on behalf of the DAAD, several times a year. As such, it is not currently possible to update the English language profile at short notice. Unfortunately, there is no option to save English-language landing pages for the degree programmes in the Higher Education Compass.
In order to keep the information on courses of study up to date, higher education institutions can log in to the HSK page for higher education institutions. Login details are usually managed by the advisory services or marketing departments of the higher education institutions. If you cannot find the login data, please contact hochschulkompass@hrk.de.

On My GUIDE, prospective international students can find out about courses of study at higher education institutions in Germany. Whilst logged in, they can write directly to the institution and enquire about a specific degree programme, for example. My GUIDE does not offer the recipients’ e-mail address but rather asks prospective students to select a topic for their enquiry (e.g., “financing” or “admission requirements”). My GUIDE is then able to direct the enquiry to the relevant point of contact at the higher education institution.
My GUIDE uses data from the HRK’s Higher Education Compass to identify the relevant contact details at the higher education institution. The HRK usually offers three types of e-mail addresses: one for the International Office, one for general student advisory services, and also addresses that are categorised as programme-specific contacts.
For each topic available to prospective students, one of these addresses has previously been designated as a primary contact, a secondary contact or a tertiary contact. This specific e-mailing system was developed in a joint effort with numerous representatives of DAAD-affiliated higher education institutions. For most topics, the International Office is contacted first, as long as this information is available in the HSK. Otherwise, the second or third address is contacted.
At the higher education institution’s request, these e-mail addresses can also be replaced by ones specific for the My GUIDE platform. E-mail addresses can be saved as respective points of contact for single or multiple topics. If you would like to use this option, please contact myguide@daad.de.
Please also refer to the section: “Register e-mail addresses for select topics in My GUIDE”.

In My GUIDE, each higher education institution can assign e-mail addresses to receive inquiries from prospective students. These can be registered as a contact for one or more topics.
Please let us know the respective target e-mail addresses. If you would like to register topic-specific email addresses, you can choose from the following topics:

• Accommodation
• Admission requirements
• Application
• Course of study
• Financing
• Language skills
• Location and higher education institution
• Recognition of foreign educational certificates
• Study preparation
• Visas, entering Germany
• Other

Please contact myguide@daad.de if you wish to change the e-mail addresses you have previously registered.
Please also note that My GUIDE uses information from the HRK Higher Education Compass. If you haven’t already, also update your e-mail address there.

Degree programmes are alphabetically organised when filters are applied to a search. During free-text search, however, the results are listed according to relevance.

The database on admission requirements, which was developed in collaboration with uni-assist and has been operated by the DAAD for several years, is integrated into My GUIDE. Individualised information about access to the German higher education system is based on the recommendations by the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the federal states, which are published in the anabin database of the Central Office for Foreign Education (ZAB).

The International Programmes in Germany database lists select study programmes at higher education institutions in Germany that are explicitly aimed towards international students. There are currently around 2,400 entries from higher education institutions and research institutions in Germany. Entries include degree programmes, graduate schools, language courses, short courses and preparatory courses. These entries are currently not integrated into My GUIDE.
The International Programmes in Germany database is an offer of GATE-Germany. If you have any requests for changes or any questions about how to list programmes, please contact the external service provider Content5: i-p@content5.de.