Forestry Scholarships: Every Deadline and What Each Costs

Every funded route on this page runs on DAAD EPOS, which stands for Development-Related Postgraduate Courses. People search for the EPOS deadline every day and find nothing, because there is no EPOS deadline and no EPOS application form. You never write to DAAD at all.

EPOS funds a list of selected courses at German universities. You apply to one of those universities, on that university’s form, by that university’s deadline, and you attach DAAD’s scholarship paperwork to the same file. DAAD then chooses who among that university’s applicants receives the money. That single structural fact explains everything odd about this field: Dresden closes on 30 October, Göttingen on 31 October, Freiburg on 15 October, and another EPOS course somewhere closes in March. None of those are DAAD’s dates. They belong to the universities, and DAAD lists them in a single PDF that names 41 EPOS courses with their deadlines.

So the question is never “when is the EPOS deadline”. It is “which course matches my work, and what is that course’s date”. Our DAAD EPOS guide covers the scheme itself, including the rule that ends more applications than any other: your bachelor’s should normally be no more than six years old.

What EPOS pays is the same whichever course admits you. €934 a month for master’s students and €1,300 for doctoral candidates, plus travel, insurance contributions, a rent subsidy and an allowance for family members who come with you. It also asks for at least two years of relevant work experience after your bachelor’s, documented with employment certificates, which makes this scheme unusually friendly to people already working in the sector and closed to fresh graduates. A reader finishing a BS in 2027 should diary EPOS for 2029 rather than giving up on it.

Read the fee row and the English row together, because they move in the same direction. Freiburg costs €6,000 and asks a band higher, so the scholarship matters more there than anywhere else in this group: without EPOS you are paying, with it you pay nothing. Dresden is the opposite case, where even a self-funded student pays no tuition and the English bar sits at IELTS 6.

One rule at Dresden opens the door wider than its title suggests. Applicants without a forestry degree may apply for the self-financed option if they hold relevant forestry-sector work experience. A project officer, a development worker or a plantation manager with a different degree is not automatically shut out. Note the limit though: Dresden states that scholarship selection follows the formal criteria strictly, so that flexibility belongs to the self-financed route rather than the funded one.

GloFor is the sentence worth remembering. Its non-EU window opens on 15 November, a fortnight after the EPOS dates shut, and it runs on the Erasmus Mundus model rather than DAAD’s. Our Erasmus Mundus scholarships page covers how that funding works and which other joint master’s share the calendar.

When is the DAAD EPOS deadline?

There is no EPOS deadline. Each university sets its own, and DAAD lists 41 EPOS courses with their dates in a single PDF. For forestry the dates are 30 October at Dresden, 31 October at Göttingen and 15 October at Freiburg, all of them roughly a year before teaching starts.

Do I really pay no tuition at TU Dresden?

Correct, and this is not a waiver you compete for. TU Dresden charges no tuition fees. You pay a semester contribution of about €304.50, which covers student services and a public transport ticket for the whole of Saxony. Your remaining cost is living, and that is the part the scholarship covers.

Can I apply as a fresh graduate?

Not for EPOS. The scheme asks for at least two years of relevant work experience after your bachelor’s, with employment certificates, and your degree should normally be no more than six years old. If you graduate in 2027, diary EPOS for 2029. In the meantime the Erasmus Mundus routes take fresh graduates.

Do I need IELTS?

Often not. Dresden accepts a certificate stating that English was the medium of instruction in your bachelor’s, issued and stamped by your university, and several EPOS courses do the same. For most Pakistani graduates that replaces the test entirely. Our MOI certificate generator produces the document in the format universities expect. Freiburg is the exception and wants IELTS 7.

What wins these applications?

The concept note. Two pages on a forestry problem you have actually worked on, with a question you could answer in a field semester. Not a literature review, not a statement of passion. If you have spent two years on watershed plantations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa or mangrove restoration near Karachi, that is your concept note, and nobody else can write it.

If you win a DAAD scholarship at Göttingen, you arrive in August, not October. Scholarship holders take a two-month German course starting in early August, so your notice period at work, your accommodation and your visa timeline all begin two months earlier than the course calendar suggests. Dresden’s own window opens on 1 September each year, which means next year’s cycle starts barely ten months from now if this one beats you. Confirm every date with the programme coordinator before you apply, because Göttingen’s own page does not print its deadline, which is precisely why people miss it.