Visa extension

After having settled down in Hamburg, you will have to extend to your student visa to get a residence permit. Extension is given up to one year. Please note that if your purpose of stay will not be given any more i.e. when you will decide (or will have) to leave the university your visa will expire and you will have to leave Germany within a short period of time.

The current fees are € 60.00 for a resident permit and € 15.00 for the permit extension. Students who receive a scholarship from a non-profit organisation are often exempted from fees if they can provide a written proof. Often scholarship holders also pay reduced or no fees for the student visa application at the German embassy or consulate in their home country. This has to be individually checked when applying.

To apply for a visa extension / residence permit the following documents have to be presented

• Original passport
• Copies of the first page of the passport and the visa page (“Aufenthaltstitel”)
• Adequate proof of financial support / regular monthly income (e.g. grant/parental support, etc.) of at least Euro 585 per month, examples would be:
  Scholarship certificate, bank statements showing money transfers, blocked account statements etc.
• Original „Semesterbescheinigung“ (Enrolment certificate)
• Copy of residence registration
• Application for a residence permit completely filled in with foto in hard copy attached to the form
• 2 passport fotos*

* Important note: You have to provide passport fotos that meet the new EU norm of biometric identification.

Due to long waiting periods at the Alien Registration Office in Hamburg-Harburg (university district), the authorities will take group appointments for students.

Kühne School will arrange such an appointment for the Kühne School students who reside in the district of Harburg.

Kühne School students residing outside Harburg will have to extend their visa at different Alien registration offices. Kühne School can offer support but no individual appointments!

Please check the contact details of your local district office (Bezirksamt, Ausländerangelegenheiten) and their office hours. The necessary documents are the same as listed above.

After your studies there might be certain options to extend your stay in Germany while looking for a job, doing traineeships or language courses. If necessary, Kühne School will advise you concerning open questions.

Student employment

Students from non-EU countries enrolled in a regular program of study are usually allowed to work 90 days or 180 half-days per year. There are no time limits on student jobs at universities and other academic institutions. This also applies to work performed not at universities or academic institutions but in an area related to the course of study and serving an educational purpose, such as:

• Supplementary subject-related internships recommended by the university, and
• University-related activities with university-related organizations such as Student Welfare Union (Deutsches Studentenwerk), university religious associations, student association (Allgemeiner Studierendenausschuss) and the World University Service.

For employment of any other kind you will need permission from the Aliens’ Office, which is subject to approval by the Employment Agency (Agentur für Arbeit), or if you are a citizen of the EU-states Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Rumania, Slovakia and Slovenia you will need an EU work permit (Arbeitserlaubnis) that you must apply for yourself at Employment Agency. Students from all other EU-countries including Liechtenstein, Norway, Iceland and Switzerland have the same employment privileges as German students.

Income Tax Card

Almost all jobs require you to have an income tax card (Lohnsteuerkarte). Exceptions are made for the so-called "400-Euro-jobs." If you earn less than 400 Euro per month, you do not need to pay any income tax. However, please note that you still must have an income tax card, in order to report your job.

Important note: Kühne School students will not be able to work during their studies. The MBA Program is a real full-time program (2 academic years are covered in 1).

Thus there is not much off-time and no holidays. Classes take place 5 days a week from 9 am - 5 pm plus additional work groups up to 8 or 9 pm every second day. Very often the weekends are blocked by seminars of external lecturers or assignments.

The program covers 1800 hours (1 ECTS = 30 hours), altogether 60 ECTS credits including a master thesis

Public Transportation

With your enrolment documents you will receive a “Semester Ticket” which permits you the use of all buses (excluding the express bus) and train services in Hamburg and the immediate surrounding areas. Most bus stops include extensive information on departure times and frequency as well as area maps for your orientation. The final destination mostly appears on the front of a bus or a train. In Hamburg you will find three different types of trains: subway (U-Bahn), suburban train (S-Bahn) and regional train (A-Bahn). Buses have numbers, which you will find in the transportation map including its routes. You can buy the complete train and bus schedule as a book at the major bus and train stations or look under www.hvv.de for the electronic version.

At http://www.geofox.de you will find an excellent multi-lingual electronic schedule for public transportation within the metropolitan area of Hamburg.