Provided that you study at a United States, Canadian, British or Irish university/college for more than 12 months at the application deadline, you are very welcome to apply. The application process is the same for U.S., Canadian, British or Irish citizens as for international students, so you do not need to submit any additional documents. However, you may need to obtain a visa for Germany and make sure that you will be allowed to re-enter the U.S., Canada, the UK or Ireland after the internship. For visa-related information, visit the website of the German Federal Foreign Office.

Attention German Citizenship holders: You are only eligible to apply if you can prove that you have been living outside of Germany for six years or more.

No. Applicants are required to have completed at least two years of an undergraduate degree program by the time of the internship.

No, you are not eligible to apply. You have to be enrolled at a college / university with a 4-years program.

No, unfortunately not. You need to retain undergraduate status throughout the duration of the internship. This is due to German labor law; we cannot obtain a work permit waiver for you if you are not an undergraduate. Thus, should you graduate in spring or summer 2026, you are not eligible for RISE Germany 2026, but for RISE Professional. All students who will graduate in winter 2026 or later are eligible to apply.

We encourage all recent graduates, Master’s and PhD students to apply for our RISE Professional program. Participants are matched with a German company, where they gain insight into the professional applications of science and engineering and develop their own practical skills. Just like RISE Germany, this program features a scholarship to cover living expenses.

No. Although you are eligible to apply for both programs, you must choose one. A parallel application for RISE Germany and RISE Professional is not possible. If you plan to do RISE Germany for the second time, please take care that you choose another internship offer/ city or provider as the year before. It is not possible to do the same internship twice.

Yes, you are. Explain your situation in the motivation letter which you upload in your online application. Pre-med students, who have already gotten their first B.A. degree, are not eligible for RISE Germany.

German language ability is not required unless otherwise noted in the individual project descriptions. Get in touch with the internship provider if you want to discuss language requirements. Basic knowledge of German will prove helpful in everyday life, but the working language will be English.

No, this is not possible. We are not able to support personal or institutional contacts that already exist and are not open to the general public. RISE Germany is a program that offers every applicant the possibility to apply for any internship in the program.

Do not restrict your search to a single field of study. Many projects treat aspects of, for instance, biology as well as chemistry. Because the internship providers have to choose a field of study when they submit their offers, you may miss some of them if you restrict your search to one particular field.

Yes. RISE offers also the possibility to do a virtual internship but  only for internships that mention explicitly this option. Please, read carefuly the internship description. Virtual internships got different scholarship rates.

You should carefully choose the projects you apply for and make sure that they are in line with your academic field of interest. Withdrawals cause considerable inconvenience for DAAD and the internship provider.

Once we receive your complete application, we will send you a confirmation via email. By the end of January, all internship providers submit a list of preference. They have the option to exclude undergraduates who they feel are unsuited, which rarely happens. We will then begin with the placement process and notify you of the outcome beginning of March. Note that we encourage the internship providers to contact applicants by phone or email in order to discuss the application.

We do our best to notify you by email if your application is incomplete. However, if we have not received everything online by November 30, 2025, your application cannot be considered.
It is the applicant’s responsibility to properly submit all requested application documents: working PDF documents, transcript, official certificate of enrollment and a reference letter including an official letterhead and the referee’s signature.

Yes. RISE Germany receives a large number of applications from North American / British / Irish undergraduates and from internship providers in Germany. Having a large pool of applications is one of the program’s strengths, but it requires that the placement process is carried out in a somewhat formalized way, as outlined below.

First of all, the internship providers send us their ranking of the applicants. This is the starting basis for all further decisions taken by DAAD. Afterwards, both the applying undergraduates and the project offers submitted by the internship providers are ranked as follows:

• Undergraduates are ranked in order of academic performance, as indicated by their grade point average
• Projects are ranked in order of demand, as indicated by the number of applications they have attracted.
  The two rankings are then used to match undergraduates and projects. Once a pair has been matched, it is removed from the process.
• The top ten projects are assigned one of the three applicants they have given highest priority (and who are still available at that time)
• The top ten students with the best academic performance are assigned one of the three projects they have applied for (and which are still available at that time)
• And so on – the placement process goes on in this alternating manner until all scholarships are awarded

Please note that this system is not absolute as we always try to make matches that please both undergraduates and internship providers. By designing the  placement process the way we do, we believe to achieve a high level of fairness and transparency. Undergraduate students with good grades, undergraduate students who provide applications convincing in other ways, internship providers who offer particularly attractive and interesting projects, and internship providers offering  projects that are exactly what at least one high-ranked student is looking for – they are all considered.

Please keep in mind that no individual feedback can be provided on your application – not by email nor by phone. It is the combination of your motivation letter, academic performance, letter of recommendation, practical experience and the internship providers’  ranking which serve as determinants of the placement.

Experience shows that internship providers tend to prefer applicants who have already completed their third year of study and have gained some practical experience so far. Nevertheless, we also welcome a considerable amount of students who have just finished their second year of study and might not have extensive work experience but stand out through excellent letters of recommendation and high academic grades. There is no single determinant for being awarded a RISE Germany scholarship in this highly competitive program but a combination of various factors.

European citizens do not need a VISA.
U.S. , Canadian and British citizens who stay for 90 days or less in Germany do not need a VISA either. Students who stay longer than 90 days have to apply for a VISA! Students without such citizenship are strongly advised to check with the German Federal Foreign Office or your embassy whether they require one (see www.auswaertiges-amt.de).

Yes, you will need a European bank account (use of the IBAN system) to receive your monthly stipend and also the travel stipends from DAAD. We recommend to use  an online bank account for easy access and registration and you better do this as soon as you arrived in Germany.

Your supervisor will help you to find reasonably-priced housing for the duration of the internship, which can be anything from a room in a student dormitory to a shared apartment. You can certainly also use your own contacts to find suitable accommodation. Depending on where you’re planning on moving to, it’s not always easy to find a place to live. Especially, in big cities like Munich or Berlin the rental market becomes more and more competitive.

Beware of fake advertisers: If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is! Rental scammers are looking for your money and data. Please check these offers carefully together with your internship provider and don’t pay any rents or rental deposits before.