What is the time line for the selection process?
How will my application be evaluated?
Should I contact faculty members before applying?
How many students do you admit per year?
The application form is a PDF that cannot be typed into with my software, what do I do?
Where should I send my TOEFL and/or GRE physics test scores - what are the MPS institution codes?
My TOEFL and/or GRE physics test results have expired, should I re-take the test(s)?
I do not have TOEFL and/or GRE physics test results, how will this affect my application?
What is the time line for the selection process?
Receipt of all applications is acknowledged by an e-mail. It is the applicant's responsibility to ensure that the application is complete and that all documents have been sent according to the instructions. The applications will be reviewed starting November 15 2013. Invitations for interview will be sent out in early February 2014 (after the institute move), but not all decisions are made on the same schedule. The majority of the interviews will take place during the week March 3-7 2014. All applicants will have received a notification about the status of their application by May 2014. Please understand that due to the large number of applications being processed, no additional e-mails or telephone inquiries about the status of your application can be answered.
The MPS precursor institutes have been located in Katlenburg-Lindau for well over 60 years (see also here). The street address there is
International Max Planck Research School
Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research
Max Planck Str. 2
37191 Katlenburg-Lindau
Germany
The institute is about to move to a new building located on the Göttingen Research Campus. Anyone applying in response to the current call will arrive after the institute has moved and will hence immediately start to work in the new building. The move will be concluded in February 2014, the street address will then be
International Max Planck Research School
Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research
Justus-von-Liebig-Weg 3
37077 Göttingen
Germany
Generally, the program is announced and students are admitted to the Research School once per year. Next application deadline is 15 November 2013 for a start in September 2014 or later, but other starting dates may also be negotiable.
Highly-qualified and well-motivated applications may be considered at any time of the year.
Applications are encouraged even if the required Master's degree has not yet but will soon be obtained.
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How will my application be evaluated?
Candidates will be pre-selected based on their academic qualifications and recommendations.
An admission committee that includes faculty members of the participating institutes reviews
the applications, selects them based on the students excellence as proven by their university
records and by letters of recommendation, and advises the potential supervisors about the candidates and their qualifications.
An important part of the selection procedure is a personal interview by faculty members for
which the applicants under consideration will be invited. This will give the opportunity
to meet the training faculty and to visit the participating scientific institutions.
The interview may be held at the MPS in Göttingen or at one of the partner institutes.
In rare cases, it may be conducted by phone.
Applicants who are invited for an interview will receive financial assistance for travel and accommodation expenses.
The final decision about the acceptance of a student rests with his/her potential supervisors.
Admission to the Program may be dependent on the fulfillment of certain requirements that need to be met
before the begin of the new academic year (e.g. completion of a degree, completion of credit courses,
participation in an English language course).
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Should I contact faculty members before applying?
While it is not mandatory to contact the members of our faculty before sending your application, your chances of getting accepted into the program may increase if you have gotten a particular potential advisor interested in working with you. Please do not send generic requests to all of them, but contact those whose fields you would like to discuss in more detail with specific questions. You can then refer to these previous discussions in the appropriate spot in your application form.
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How many students do you admit per year?
About 50 students are enrolled at any given time. Their funding comes from several sources.
This call for applications primarily addresses candidates applying for a scholarship,
but anyone hired on a project position and desiring to pursue work towards a PhD under the
roof of the IMPRS also needs to submit a filled application from. In some cases, applicants for
IMPRS PhD scholarships will also be redirected to open project positions suitable to pursue PhD work.
We grant about ten IMPRS PhD scholarships and admit of the order of 15 PhD students in total per year.
See also grants and contracts.
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Short answer: No (most IMPRS are PhD programmes only, see also here).
Long answer: Maybe. While it is true that the IMPRS currently can only accept candidates with a Masters's degree or equivalent for enrolment
and funding in the Solar System School PhD program, there are at least two options to collaborate with MPS scientists on your Master thesis topic.
As a Master student doing research at the MPS, you could still benefit from the local IMPRS infrastructure
(international office, lectures, retreats, social events),
the main difference is that Master students are not eligible to be funded by the IMPRS.
The University of Göttingen does offer a local M.Sc. Physics program which is open to international students.
General information for international students may be found starting from
here,
while information on how to enrol specifically into the M.Sc. Physics program may be obtained from
here.
While you have to take care of your housing and living expenses yourself,
you might still be able to support yourself through student research assistentships
or teaching assistentships. Ask the MPS supervisor you would be interested to study with
about possible options, or look for job offers for a "Studentische Hilfskraft"
posted by the university here.
The University of Göttingen also participates in the European program
Astromundus,
which, in contrast to the local university program, does provide funding for successful applicants.
If accepted into this program, you would ask to do your final year in Göttingen and would
choose to collaborate with an MPS supervisor on your Master's thesis topic.
In both cases, delivering an impressive Master's thesis made at the MPS and as a
consequence having a local supervisor support you will result in a high priority
for your application to proceed into the IMPRS PhD program.
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The application form is a PDF that cannot be typed into with my software, what do I do?
Yes, the form cannot be filled using Adobe Reader (acroread). Sorry about that, we are working on an alternative.
Either use different software or simply read the form as instructions when creating your own document:
It tells you which topics you need to address, and how much space is allowed to give the requested information.
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On Linux platforms, the following packages concatenate PDF files: pdftk, pdfunite, stapler, pdfedit, qpdf, imagemagick or gs (Ghostscript).
On Windows platforms, the following software products concatenate PDF files: Adobe Acrobat Pro, PDF Architect, pdf995.
Across platforms, the following software products create or concatenate PDF files: OpenOffice, Ghostscript+Free PDF XP, PDF Studio Pro by Qoppa Software.
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Where should I send my TOEFL and/or GRE physics test scores - what are the MPS institution codes?
ETS has assigned the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research an institutional code to receive your GRE scores from them directly.
The TOEFL code for institution "Max Planck Inst for Solar System Research" is 5480.
The GRE code for institution "Max Planck Inst for Solar System Research" is 0070.
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Please still send us your application by November 15.
Take care to note on your application the date at which you have taken the test(s),
as well as the date at which you expect the result(s) to become available. Then
please send us your TOEFL and/or GRE physics test results scores as soon as they are available.
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My TOEFL and/or GRE physics test results have expired, should I re-take the test(s)?
This is up to you, but test results indeed may not be very representative of your current skills if they are older than five years.
If you are submitting old test results, please take care to put them into context in your application
and explain how you think you have been able to maintain, or improved upon, the level documented by these results.
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This is entirely up to you, as reflected in ETS's "ScoreSelect Option" policy.
When considering the investment in time and money required to re-take a test,
you might want to factor in the information by ETS that test-takers often achieve similar results
when a test is repeated a short time interval after the previous one.
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I do not have TOEFL and/or GRE physics test results, how will this affect my application?
Candidates whose native language is not English or German are required to provide a certificate documenting proficiency
in English, for example TOEFL or IELTS or equivalent.
If no language test is available, the proficiency in English can be evaluated during a personal interview.
Applicants with university degrees obtained outside Europe who provide GRE physics test scores will be given preference
over those who do not provide test scores.
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