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TU Dresden

in Dresden · official site · International Office

A founding TU9 member and the only one of the nine located in eastern Germany's new federal states - the largest university in Saxony, with roughly 29,000-32,000 students across 17 faculties. TU Dresden is one of Germany's Universities of Excellence, funded under the national Excellence Strategy - placing it among the country's most research-intensive institutions; the title was confirmed in 2012, 2019 and again in 2026, and it is one of very few institutions holding both the Excellence label and TU9 membership. Its defining practical advantage is location: Dresden is the heart of Silicon Saxony, Europe's largest microelectronics cluster (Infineon, GlobalFoundries, Bosch and the new TSMC/ESMC fab), giving semiconductor, nanoelectronics and embedded-systems students an industry pipeline no other university on this platform can match, alongside the DRESDEN-concept research alliance (Fraunhofer, Max Planck, Leibniz, Helmholtz). Dresden itself is culturally exceptional for a technical-university city - the Zwinger palace complex, the Semperoper, the rebuilt Frauenkirche and the Grünes Gewölbe treasury all sit within walking distance in the Altstadt. Saxony charges no general tuition, including for non-EU students, and Dresden has among the lowest living costs of any leading German tech-university city.

Master's programmes here

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Services for international students

Your first stop for almost everything is the International Office: admission letters, visa questions, enrolment, and orientation weeks all run through it.

  • International Office

    Applications, arrival, orientation and ongoing support for international students. Based at Helmholtzstr. 10; contact studium.international@tu-dresden.de. The Studentenwerk's "Welcome Tutoren" programme runs alongside it specifically for international newcomers. Official page

  • SLUB — Sächsische Landesbibliothek, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek

    Saxony's state library and TU Dresden's university library in a single institution — one of Germany's most significant research collections, open to all TU Dresden students. Long opening hours and extensive study space make it the default work location for much of the student body, and its combined state/university role gives access well beyond a normal university library's holdings. Official page

  • ZIH — Centre for Information Services and High Performance Computing

    TU Dresden's computing centre, praised by name in student reviews for high-performance computing and network services that genuinely supported coursework and research. Relevant for any computational, simulation or data-heavy master's here. Official page

  • DRESDEN-concept

    A dense research alliance linking TU Dresden with more than ten Fraunhofer institutes plus Max Planck, Leibniz and Helmholtz centres. Together with Silicon Saxony (Infineon, GlobalFoundries, Bosch and the new TSMC/ESMC fab) it is the genuine career asset here: an internship, thesis and research pipeline unmatched on this platform for microelectronics and the life sciences. Official page

  • TUDIAS — language training

    Language courses in 17 languages, including German at every level. Course enrolment runs through OPAL, examinations through selma — the same split that applies to your degree programme. Official page

  • Career Service

    Career orientation, applications and employer contacts, feeding into the DRESDEN-concept and Silicon Saxony employer networks. dresden|exists provides startup and entrepreneurship support alongside it. Official page

Scholarship directory

  • Deutschlandstipendium at TU Dresden

    €300/month under the standard national model, half federally funded and half from private sponsors. TU Dresden participates; the exact application window and the number of awards made here were not confirmed in this research pass — check the university page before planning around it. Official page

  • Landesstipendium Sachsen — status unconfirmed

    Whether Saxony operates a state scholarship open to incoming international students at TU Dresden was NOT confirmed in this research pass, and nothing is asserted here. This matters because the pattern has gone both ways elsewhere: the Baden-Württemberg-Stipendium turned out to be outgoing-students-only at Stuttgart, while the Landesstipendium Niedersachsen does exist at TU Braunschweig. Verify directly with the university before relying on it. Official page

  • DAAD scholarship database & Stipendium Plus

    The standard external routes for international-student funding in Germany. Official page

Amounts, windows and eligibility rules change every cycle; verify on the official pages before planning your budget around any of them.

Campus systems you'll actually use (selma · OPAL · HISQIS)

German universities split "one student portal" into several systems, and nobody tells internationals which is which. At TU Dresden:

selma
Short for SELbstMAnagement (selma.tu-dresden.de) — the central student portal: applications, personal documents and certificates, course and examination registration, results, and formal applications such as leave of absence or a change of programme. This is the primary system for examination management, and applicants holding a German degree apply through it directly rather than via uni-assist. Unusually for this platform, the portal draws praise rather than complaint: a student review singles selma out by name for putting courses, timetable, documents, transcripts and new applications in one place. Non-EU applicants with a foreign degree, however, do not start here — they apply through uni-assist, and for most programmes must also register separately on the programme's own aptitude portal first, entering that submission ID into the uni-assist application. selma.tu-dresden.de
OPAL
The Online Platform for Academic Teaching and Learning — the learning-management system shared across all Saxon universities rather than built in-house, which is distinctive: course enrolment, teaching materials, e-learning and forums all run here, and a Saxon student moving between institutions in the state meets the same system. The exam trap, confirmed: enrolling in an OPAL course registers you for the COURSE, not the examination. Examination registration is a separate step in selma, and you must register for the module in selma first. TU Dresden states plainly that registration deadlines are set and that after the deadline expires, registration is no longer possible. This is the seventh university on this platform with a hard exam-registration cut-off, and the OPAL/selma split makes it a textbook "course is not the exam" gotcha. bildungsportal.sachsen.de
HISQIS
The older examination portal, still used by degree programmes that have not yet migrated to selma. (Medicine uses its own ePortal.) Which examination system applies depends on your programme — check with your examination office rather than assuming selma covers you. A perk while you are setting things up: Microsoft Office is free for all students under a Saxony-wide state licence agreement. tu-dresden.de