Important information for enrolled students
Deadlines
March 1st: submission of thesis request to the Examinations Board (Prüfungsausschuss), for students who want to start their thesis in the fourth semester (or in a higher Summer Semester). Miss this deadline = be here a semester longer than you expected. Before your request can be approved, you must have passed all modules P1 through P9, and at least one module in the range WP1 - WP5 (Prüfungsordnung, Anlage 2).
April 15th: submission of general requests for Summer Semester to the Examination Board (Prüfungsausschuss). This includes all pre-emptive course substitution requests. If you request a substitution, you will need to register as per standard registration procedure for the course that you plan to replace. If your substitution request is granted, the course you originally registered for will be replaced. However, if the substitution is not granted, the course you originally registered for is the one that you must then take for credit. Therefore, think before you choose a random course to be substituted. Unless a substitution request is delivered at least 6 weeks in advance of the submission deadline, it is very unlikely that such request will be dealt with before April 30th, by when everyone must have already registered for courses. The default answer for any subsitution request is "denied", therefore never assume that your request has been approved, unless you have been explicitly informed of a positive outcome.
July 1st: submission of the written Master Thesis to the Examination Office (Prüfungsamt), for those students who started their thesis in the third semester (or in a higher Winter Semester). Submission of thesis carries with it automatic registration for thesis defense: please notify the Chair of the Examination Board upon thesis submission, so that your name can be added to the list of planned thesis defenses. Miss this deadline = fail the written thesis, unless you can prove that you were seriously ill for many weeks.
September 15th: submission of thesis request to the Examinations Board (Prüfungsausschuss), for students who want to start their thesis in the third semester (or in a higher Winter Semester). Miss this deadline = be here a semester longer than you expected. Please be aware that before your thesis request can be approved, you must have passed all modules P1 through P9, and at least one module in the range WP1 - WP5 (Prüfungsordnung, Anlage 2). The only exception is when a course takes place too late for a grade to be produced before your 3rd semester starts (i.e. no fault of your own, it usually applies to modules containing a field course that happens in October).
September 15th: submission of general requests for Winter Semester to the Examination Board (Prüfungsausschuss). This includes all pre-emptive course substitution requests. The default answer for any subsitution request is "denied", therefore never assume that your request has been approved, unless you have been explicitly informed of a positive outcome. If you have no positive answer by the time the registration deadline for WiSe courses arrives, you will have to register for a regular course, rather than the one you asked for as a substitute.
December 1st: submission of the written Master Thesis to the Examination Office (Prüfungsamt), for those students who started their thesis in the fourth semester (or in a higher Summer Semester). Submission of thesis carries with it automatic registration for thesis defense: please notify the Chair of the Examination Board upon thesis submission, so that your name can be added to the list of planned thesis defenses. Miss this deadline = fail the written thesis, unless you can prove that you were seriously ill for many weeks.
How to prepare a thesis request
These are the basic steps that you are all expected to perform, regardless of who your thesis advisor is:
1) You fill in the student-only part/s of the form/s and sign it. In the case that you did not find an advisor in time, and you want to ask the Prüfungsausschuss to assign you an advisor as they see fit, skip step 2 and go go step 3 "scan and submit" part directly. Before you do anything, read all the information and get additional forms needed here.
2) You give the form/s to your advisor to complete the advisor-only part of the form (however, it may not be a bad idea to help speed things along by suggesting to your advisor some text for the "topic" box).
3) You get the form back, signed, from your advisor, scan it first, and then submit the completed form, in both electronic and hardcopy form, to the Prüfungsausschuss, following the proper procedure (see here and here for submission deadlines and procedures). Do not submit a form that lacks the signature of your advisor, for example, expecting someone else to get that for you. If your advisor happens to be the Chair of the Prüfungsausschuss, you are still required to follow the same steps above, there are no shortcuts.
If you wait until the last minute to get your advisor's signature, you may be out of luck if the person for example is traveling.
Mandatory course registration
Important: the procedure below pertains exclusively to the crediting of courses by LMU, it does in no way replace any other required registration with individual instructors for course capacity or exam organization purposes. If the course you wish to take is taught by the TUM, you need to sign up through the TUM online system in addition to registering with the LMU Module Coordinators, or you will not be able to take the course and sit the exam.
Students who fail to register for a course with the module coordinator will not get credit for that course.
Students who do not complete coursework and/or final exam for a course they registered will receive a failing grade for that course.
Registering for courses, regardless of semester of enrollment, is required. The deadline for registration, in every semester, is 14 days after the lecture start date of that semester (example: if classes start on October 15th, the deadline for registration will be October 29th). This means "lecture start date" as defined in the LMU academic calendar, not whenever it is the first time that a particular course meets.
Please read carefully below, as you are responsible for properly registering for classes.
Registration is done by sending an email to the coordinator of the module which you are registering for (see list of coordinators) containing all of the following information:
- Write "course registration" in the email subject
- Your full name
- Your matriculation number
- Your semester of enrollment
- Name of course and catalog number (both of them!), and name of course instructor/s. "Name of course" includes the prefix (e.g. "P2.0.1 - Rheology", not just "Rheology"). Please take the course names from the Module Handbook only. The catalog number can be found in the online course catalog (Vorlesungsverzeichnis) and is something like "10035". The instructor's name should also be listed in the Vorlesungsverzeichnis. The course names in the Vorlesungsverzeichnis however are at times incorrect or incomplete, so do not use those for course names. For project-type courses (e.g. those in P8 and P10), state the name of your project supervisor (you are the only person who has this information).
Remember that you cannot get more ECTS credited than those listed for each module, so if you want to take, for credit, extra courses that appear in a module for which you have maxed out the ECTS already, check whether those courses also appear in a different module (including modules in other semesters). If so, you should register for those courses under the other module. For example, course WP 3.0.1 - Industrial Minerals is also listed as WP 4.0.3 - Industrial Minerals. So if you have already reached the maximum number of ECTS allowed for module WP3, you can register for this course under module WP4. If you do not do that, any courses above the maximum number of ECTS will result in no credit given (no extra ECTS awarded, and the grade will not count for your final GPA). When more than the minimum number of courses are selected in a module in the same semester, the best result/s will be used to calculate the module grade, up to the maximum ECTS value of the module.
If you register for fewer than 30 ECTS total in any semester (and provided you have not collected extra ECTS for that same semester in the previous year), the earliest you will be able to make up for the missing ECTS is the following academic year, as none of the courses in our program are taught in both Winter and Summer semesters. ECTS cannot be swapped between winter and summer semesters, or between modules that do not contain the same courses.
If you have already gotten credit for a course in one module (e.g. "Rheology" in module P2), you cannot register and get credit for that course again in a different module, even if the course name appears again with a different prefix (e.g. P 2.0.1 - Rheology in module P2, and WP 7.0.1 - Rheology in module WP7). These exclusions are all listed in the Module Handbook and in Attachment 2 of the Study and Examination Regulations.
Also, you cannot register twice for the same course anywhere: for example, even if P9.0.3 is offered multiple times, by different instructors, you may only register for ONE instance of it for credit (by specifying instructor's name and any other information that allows unique identification of the specific course). You are of course allowed to take part in as many instances of P9.0.3 as you wish, but you will get credit only for the one that you have declared upfront as your "registered" course. The only time when you may pick another P9.0.3 for credit at a later time is when a planned course you had regularly registered for is canceled (i.e. no fault of your own).
It is not possible to retake passed courses or modules at a later date to improve your grade. This means also that it is not possible to take additional courses in a certain module at a later date, to replace one or more passed courses in that module to improve the module grade. For exams of courses or modules taken in different semesters, the earlier one always counts.
The ECTS points for modules and courses are all listed in the Module Handbook. The complete rules for crediting courses and grades are in the Prüfungsordnung.
Information for students who are pregnant or nursing
Courses that have a field or some types of laboratory component may present above-average risks for pregnant and nursing students. In the case of the required module P1, a substitution may be requested as explained in this document. All other courses with field components or laboratories with higher-than-average risks are not required by the Program, the student can always choose a different course. In all cases however the final decision on acceptable vs. unacceptable risks is up to the student herself, and she is advised to consult with her physician before registering for any classes where any activities other than sitting on a chair in a lecture hall may take place.
Field courses
As general advice, you should get yourself private trip-cancellation insurance if you are worried about losing money in case of impossibility to participate (e.g. illness, or your own change of plans). Such coverage is usually an insignificant sum compared to the cost of your trip, especially when flights are involved.
Also, make sure that you have valid health coverage and a valid visa (if applicable) for all the locations covered by the trip. International students should verify always that all the countries visited in the trip are included in their student visa before signing up for any trip. For example, Ireland and the UK are not part of Schengen, and the UK may soon not be part of the EU any longer. This may have repercussions on the validity of your visa.
If the trip is outside of your country of residence, you should also have insurance for medical repatriation, and for flying a family member over to your location. Students are not covered by any kind of special accident insurance from the university during field activities either: search and rescue and helicopter rescues are expensive. Therefore having your own accident, personal and third party liability insurance is strongly advised as well, and if you rent a car, make sure you have enough insurance coverage.
In Germany, anyone 18 and older is legally an adult, and therefore carries full responsibility for his/her own actions, and makes his/her own decisions. The only duty on the part of University staff is to supply information about the field activity. University staff also cannot make any decisions (or even talk to medical personnel) on behalf of the student in case of illness or accident, so all students participating in field activities are strongly encouraged to supply adequate contact information to the activity leader/s for one or more family members who should be contacted in case of emergency.
Direct links to individual course or module webpages
Winter Semester Courses
P1.1 Field Seminar
P4.0.1 Modern Active Tectonics / WP7.0.3 Modern Active Tectonics
P6.0.3 Advanced Active Tectonics 1 / P12.0.3 Advanced Active Tectonics 3
P6.0.4 Advanced Earth Magnetism 1 / P12.0.4 Advanced Earth Magnetism 3 (course from the Geophysics Master program)
WP6.0.2 Earth Rotation and Solid Earth Physics (course from the Geophysics Master program)
The table below contains the list of courses in Geology that are taught by the Geo- and Paleobiology Master program. For descriptions, refer to the Geobiology and Paleobiology pages linked below. When you register for any of these courses, we will take the default corresponding Geobiology course from this list, unless you specify otherwise. These are courses for which our students have permission to participate by default: you do not need to ask for instructor's permission, nor ask for any course substitution.
You are allowed to make a different choice from the Geo- and Paleobiology Master program, as long as it has an equivalent number of ECTS and the course instructor accepts you. In this case, you must ask the instructor for permission yourself, and you should submit a pre-emptive course substitution request to the Examination Board specifying that you do have instructor's permission, and explaining why you need to replace one of the courses in the list below. Please be aware that the default answer to a substitution request is "no", therefore never assume that your request will be accepted, until you get a written answer. The exception to a substitution request is if you choose WP9.0.3 Geo- and Paleobiology: any combination of courses for 6 ECTS can be taken here, but the module name will not change (i.e. in your transcripts it will be "Geo- and Paleobiology" regardless of which actual courses you take to fill this module).
| Name of module or course in the Geology Master | Equivalent default module or course in the Geobiology and Paleobiology Master |
| WP 4.0.12 Geomicrobiology | WP 13 Geomicrobiology: Tutorial (now takes place in WiSe) |
| WP 9.0.1 Global Cycles tutorial | P 3.2 Global Cycles: tutorial |
| WP 9.0.3 Geo- and Paleobiology | P 1 Evolution of Life, lecture + tutorial |
| WP 9.0.4 Bioconstruction | None. "WP 6 Concepts of Biomineralization: lecture" can be requested as substitution. |
| WP 9.0.6 Global Cycles lecture | P 3.1 Global Cycles: lecture |
Summer Semester Courses
P1.2 Field Mapping and Exploration
P7.0.3 Advanced Active Tectonics 2 / P13.0.3 Advanced Active Tectonics 4
P7.0.4 Advanced Earth Magnetism 2 / P13.0.4 Advanced Earth Magnetism 4 (course from the Geophysics Master program)
Module P8 ("P8.1 Project Supervision" and "P8.2 Research Laboratory")
Module P14 ("P14.1 Scientific Writing" and "P14.2 Scientific Presentations")
Last updated: 1.10.2019