Exam Law in Medicine at Charité Berlin: Attempts, Deadlines, Past Papers

The Nationwide Rules First: What the ÄAppO Sets for Everyone

The overall framework is the same at every German faculty. The Approbationsordnung für Ärzte (ÄAppO), Germany's medical licensing regulation, governs the state examinations:

• Three attempts per part: "The individual parts of the First and Second Part of the Medical Examination may be resat twice." The same applies to the Third Part.
• Nationwide effect: A final fail counts across all of Germany — switching universities changes nothing.
• No restart: Starting a medicine degree again does not create a new attempt.
• Automatic summons: The State Examination Office itself schedules the resit; the next date is usually six months later.
• No re-sitting to improve a grade: A part of the exam you have already passed may not be resat.

Everything before that point — module exams, station exams, coursework, attendance — is regulated by each faculty individually. And this is exactly where Charité is a special case.

Berlin's Distinctive Feature: No Physikum, but the Modellstudiengang Medizin

Charité uses the model-programme clause under Section 41 of the ÄAppO. In practice, this means: there is no Physikum and no First Part of the Medical Examination. In their place are the university's own module and end-of-semester exams, which under Section 41(2) No. 3 of the ÄAppO must test students "in a manner equivalent to the standard programme."

The programme is structured as follows:

• 10 semesters of study plus a Practical Year, roughly six years and three months in total.
• 300 ECTS credits (30 per semester), spread across 46 compulsory modules and 3 elective modules.
• Around 3,580 teaching units across ten semesters, plus 1,920 teaching units during the Practical Year.
• No M1. The M2 is taken in semester 10, followed by the Practical Year and M3.
• At the start of each semester, students sit the Progress Test Medizin (PTM), a benchmarking test that does not count toward grades.

The functional equivalent of the Physikum sits within the end-of-semester exam in semester 5: alongside the module content, it includes at least 40 additional questions from the foundational subjects of physics, chemistry, biology and behavioural science. It is no coincidence that this exam also carries the stricter resit rule.

How Many Exam Attempts Do You Get at Charité?

Charité distinguishes between two groups. The official exam information states, word for word: "The station exam (semesters 2 and 4), the written end-of-semester exam in semester 5, and the coursework (semester 6) may only be resat twice. All other exams may be resat up to five times in total."

For comparison: at most German faculties, three attempts per exam is the maximum. Six attempts at a single end-of-semester exam is rare in this form almost anywhere else.

One practical point worth knowing: from the third attempt onward, online registration alone is no longer enough. A signed form must be sent by email to the exam office. Anyone who overlooks this ends up without a valid registration — and in the worst case loses an entire exam cycle.

If you are not sure how many attempts you have left in your own case, we can look at it together — book a free consultation here.

Which Exams Await You, Semester by Semester

At Charité, there is typically one major end-of-semester exam per semester rather than many small module exams. Questions are multiple choice (Type A), with at least 20 questions set per module.

This structure is the real reason many Berlin students take the generous resit rules with a grain of salt: if you fail one exam, you do not have to retake a single subject — you have to demonstrate mastery of an entire semester's material all over again. One student put it this way in a public review: "if you're weak on part of the material and fail, you have to relearn the whole semester's content."

How Do Exams at Charité Actually Work?

The written exams take place after each semester and use a multiple-choice format, question type A (single-best-answer). A pass requires at least a grade of 4 ("sufficient").

On the exact pass mark as a percentage, an honest clarification is worthwhile: for the predecessor reform programme, an absolute threshold of 60% with a sliding scale is documented — "should the mean minus one standard deviation fall below 60%, that value applies as the pass mark instead." For the current Modellstudiengang, Charité does not publish a percentage figure on its exam pages. Anyone who wants exact figures for their own cohort should consult the current exam regulations in the university's Official Gazette or ask the Vice Dean's office directly — rather than relying on numbers from forums.

Registration and Deregistration

• Registration takes place online via the university's information system (HIS), within fixed registration windows before each semester.
• Within the registration window, registration can be cancelled electronically without giving a reason.
• Keep the registration confirmation, saved or printed — it is your only proof in case of a dispute.
• Registration for the coursework in Module 23 already takes place at the end of semester 5.

Reviewing Results and Objections

• Marking takes around 14 days after the final exam week.
• A scan of your own answer sheet can be accessed for up to 14 days after the final result is published in your HIS account.
• Objections to individual exam questions can be filed within three working days of the end of the exam week via an online form. This deadline is extremely short and is regularly missed.

Station Exams and OSCE: The Practical Assessments

Alongside written exams, Charité also assesses students practically — and these are the formats where the stricter three-attempts rule applies.

• Station exam part 1, at the end of semester 2: four stations, two oral and two practical.
• Station exam part 2, at the end of semester 4: oral, four stations.
• Station exam part 3, also in semester 4, run as an OSCE with four stations.
• OSCE in semester 9: assessed via checklists plus global ratings for communication skills.
• For station exam parts I and III, and the semester 9 OSCE, students receive personal written feedback as a PDF, including a comparison against the semester cohort.
• In semester 3, a 3D-MC exam is added: 20 questions based on models, specimens and histological sections.

The Coursework in Semester 6

This is a format many faculties lack, and Berlin takes it seriously under exam law: in Module 23, students write an academic paper of 3,000 to 5,000 words, with six weeks to complete it. A public presentation follows afterwards.

The coursework is one of three assessments with only two resits allowed. Anyone who fails it three times has failed it definitively — with the same consequences as any other definitively failed exam.

{{cta}}

When Are You Expelled from Charité?

The short answer: as soon as a mandatory exam component is definitively failed. At that point, deregistration is not a discretionary decision by the university — it is required by law.

The governing provision is Section 15(3) of the Berlin Higher Education Act (BerlHG). Under it, students must be deregistered if they "have passed the final examination or have definitively failed a required assessment" (No. 3), or if they are no longer permitted to continue studying in any degree programme (No. 1). The law provides for a two-month transitional period — but no discretion on the substance of the decision.

{{callout}}

In practice, this means: switching to another German university does not solve the problem. Anyone who definitively fails a required exam in Berlin cannot enrol in the same degree programme in Munich, Hamburg or Leipzig either — the higher education laws of every other federal state contain the same bar.

Why the M2 State Exam Is the Real Hurdle at Charité

This is the point where Berlin's exam logic differs from almost everywhere else — and it is consistently underestimated.

Because there is no M1 in Berlin, and internal exams allow up to six attempts, there is barely a point of exclusion in the first nine semesters. One student summed it up in a public review from August 2026: "because there are so few intermediate exams, almost everyone makes it to semester 10" — and continues: "from then on, the second state exam is what filters people out."

At the M2, Charité's own rules no longer apply — the ÄAppO takes over: two resits, three attempts, nationwide effect. Anyone who fails there has no safety net left after nine years of build-up — school-leaving exams, the selection process, ten semesters of study. And because the M2 at Charité falls only in semester 10, this reckoning comes later than at faculties where the Physikum already creates clarity after four semesters.

The sober conclusion for your own planning: the generous resit rules in the pre-clinical years are a genuine gift — but they are not an indicator of how the state exam will go. Anyone who regularly needs a fourth or fifth attempt in their semester exams should read that as an early warning sign, not as reassurance.

Deadlines You Cannot Afford to Miss at Charité

What a Medical Certificate Must Include

• Charité recognises "one's own illness, illness of one's own children, or other rare cases of hardship" as valid grounds for withdrawal.
• The doctor must be seen no later than the day of the exam — a backdated certificate does not help.
• The certificate must be submitted scanned or photographed, with your student ID number, the name of the exam, and the date.
• Without a valid withdrawal, the exam counts as failed — the attempt is used up.

Accommodations: the Entitlement Most Often Left on the Table

The application must be submitted at least four weeks before the start of the first exam cycle. A current specialist medical certificate with a specific accommodation recommendation is required, tied to the specific exam and exam format. Anything that touches the exam's core competency being tested will not be accommodated.

This matters especially for ADHD, an autism spectrum diagnosis or an isolated reading difficulty: multiple-choice exams with 80 to 120 questions under time pressure penalise slower reading speed more harshly than any gap in knowledge. A written exam cannot be salvaged retroactively once it is done. Anyone who suspects this applies to them should get assessed before their final attempt, not after.

Where Can You Find Past Exam Papers and Student Notes for Charité?

The situation has changed noticeably in recent years — several sources still recommended in older forums no longer exist. As of August 2026:

• Fachschaftsinitiative Medizin (fsi-charite.de): the best open source for the semester-by-semester exam structure — which modules, how many questions, which exam format. It does not maintain its own collection of past papers.
• ausarbeitungen.noblogs.org: a student-run collection covering semesters 1 to 9, SMPP, OSCE and the state exams. The past-papers and study-notes section is offline; the site states that Charité's exam office asked for the shared drive not to be linked publicly any more. The section on station exams and OSCE is still partly active. A caution worth noting: the site itself warns that some notes contain "outdated and incorrect teaching content," for example around basic life support.
• olmen.de (OLM): still cited as a central source for past papers in older FAQs — the domain has since expired and now leads to a parking page.
• AMBOSS: Charité does not provide a campus licence. Anyone who wants to use AMBOSS needs an individual subscription — a real cost factor that is easy to forget when budgeting for your studies.
• Blackboard and Moodle: Charité's official materials — virtual patient cases, examination videos, scripts, recorded lectures and knowledge tests. Everything runs through Moodle in the first semester, and through Blackboard from the second semester onward.
• Later-semester students: in practice, now the most important channel. Materials are shared through semester group chats and personal contacts rather than public links.

A point that costs students attempts every year: old student notes are a study aid, not a substitute for current teaching content. Anyone who prepares for a resit using last year's material risks learning the wrong version of the syllabus.

What Charité Students Say Themselves

On StudyCheck, Charité's Modellstudiengang Medizin scores 3.8 out of 5 from 369 reviews (as of August 2026). Three comments are particularly revealing on the topic of exams:

• "because there are so few intermediate exams, almost everyone makes it to semester 10" — after which, "the second state exam is what filters people out" (review from 2 August 2026).
• "the stress and pressure are much reduced" — the sense that the model programme eases the load compared with the traditional structure (review from 12 August 2026).
• "under the old model programme there were 4 exams per semester … now you only sit 1 exam per semester," and anyone who fails it has to "relearn the whole semester's material" (review from 12 July 2022).

Taken together, a consistent picture emerges: Charité distributes the pressure differently. It takes the pressure out of the pre-clinical years and concentrates it into one major exam per semester, and ultimately into the M2.

Timing Matters: What You Can Do Before Your Attempts Run Out

This is the most important lesson from more than 500 study places we have helped arrange: the options available when you still have "one attempt left" are completely different from those available once you have "definitively failed."

As long as you still have attempts left, you can:

• apply for accommodations — in good time, with a specialist medical certificate,
• withdraw validly in the case of a documented illness, rather than burning an attempt,
• raise a hardship application with the exam board,
• and — the point almost nobody checks in time — prepare a clean move to an EU university abroad while your exam entitlement is still intact.

After a definitive fail, exactly one reliable path to a German Approbation remains: a complete medicine degree within the EU, starting from the first semester, without any credit for prior German coursework. Recognition then runs via Directive 2005/36/EC. Anyone who instead has semesters credited is building on a foundation that is legally spent — and risks completing an entire degree for nothing.

And there is the option almost nobody thinks about by the third failed attempt: not getting into this situation in the first place. Anyone currently weighing up whether to spend another year fighting through aptitude tests, selection procedures and waiting periods can also start without a numerus clausus in the EU — with semester fees from 1,750 EUR, smaller cohorts, more oral and practical exam formats, and direct access to lecturers. At many of our partner locations, the sea is the next stop after class, not the library. That is not a compromise — for many students, it is the better route to the same qualification.

Which option is realistic in your case depends on where you currently stand — a first failed attempt, a last remaining attempt, or a decision letter already in hand. That is exactly what we work through together in a conversation. The consultation is free and non-binding: secure your appointment here.

{{cta}}

Sources: exam information from Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin (campusnet.charite.de, Modellstudiengang Medizin), the examination and study regulations for the Modellstudiengang Medizin published in Charité's Official Gazette, semester overviews from the Fachschaftsinitiative Medizin, the Berlin Higher Education Act (Sections 14, 15 BerlHG), the Approbationsordnung für Ärzte (Sections 20, 41 ÄAppO), and reviews on StudyCheck. As of: August 2026. The current version of the relevant regulations is always binding. This article is for general information purposes and does not constitute legal advice; for binding guidance, contact Charité's exam office or a lawyer specialising in administrative or higher education law.