A Medical Study Place: the 2017 German Constitutional Court Ruling

What did the Federal Constitutional Court decide in 2017?

On 19 December 2017, in cases 1 BvL 3/14 and 1 BvL 4/14, the First Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the allocation of study places in human medicine partly violated the German Basic Law. The provisions in question infringed applicants’ right to equal access to state-provided study places. The legislature had to make corrections by 31 December 2019.

Why were the state quotas a problem?

In the top-grade quota, applicants competed essentially against people from the same federal state. School-leaving grades from different states are not readily comparable, however, and allocating by state contingents produced inequalities that a single quota did not balance out.

One example from the proceedings themselves shows the scale: for a university entrance qualification obtained in Hamburg, the cutoff in the top-grade quota was 1.1, and in the waiting-time quota it was twelve waiting half-years. Six years of waiting or a school-leaving grade of 1.1: those were the alternatives.

What did the court say about waiting time?

A waiting-time quota is constitutionally permissible but not required. It may not exceed the then-current share of 20 percent of study places, and the waiting time must be limited in duration. Waiting times of more than four years were classified in the professional debate as dysfunctional.

The legislature drew the furthest-reaching possible conclusion from this and scrapped the waiting-time quota altogether. Waiting today no longer improves your chances on its own.

How are places allocated today?

After the preliminary quotas have been deducted, study places are distributed across three quotas: 30 percent through the top-grade quota, 10 percent through the additional aptitude quota, in which the school-leaving grade plays no part, and 60 percent through the universities’ own selection procedures. Aptitude tests, prior education and work experience therefore carry more weight than they did before the ruling.

That is the real change: the route to a study place has become more varied, but it has not become wider. Around 10,000 study places in human medicine still face roughly 30,000 applications a year.

What has actually changed for applicants?

An approximate calculation of our own: with around 10,000 places and roughly 30,000 applications, some 20,000 applications a year are left without a place. Before the ruling, 20 percent of places could be reached through waiting time, a slow but predictable route. That route has been removed with nothing put in its place, and at 10 percent the additional aptitude quota covers only half as much.

This is not a criticism of the reform; the court had good reasons, and aptitude is a more sensible criterion than patience. But it is the calculation you should know before betting on any one procedure.

What routes remain without top grades?

Three realistic ones: the additional aptitude quota via aptitude tests, the universities’ selection procedures with their faculty-specific criteria, and studying at a university elsewhere in Europe, whose degree is automatically recognised under Annex V of Directive 2005/36/EC.

I chose the third route in 2015, a year after it became clear to me that the first two would not work out for me. In hindsight it was not a fallback but the faster route. Which route is right in your case is something we are happy to look at together; you can arrange a free consultation.