For entry to the Master's program in Sociology, you need a previous subject-related education, which is specified in the subject-specific examination regulations under § 3.
The following requirements must be met:

1. A recognized university degree according to § 3 section 4 ÜPO
2. a bachelor thesis with a sociological topic
3. the completion of the following scientific modules or equivalent achievements in the extent of 38 CP:
    

• Theories of Sociology (4 CP),
• Classical Sociology (5 CP),
• Recent Topics in Sociology (5 CP),
• Methods of Empirical Social Research (8 CP),
• Data Analysis (8 CP),
• Basics of the Sociology of Technology (6 CP) und
• Socio-technical Transformation (2 CP).

If you have not already completed all of these coursework requirements, it is possible to make up some of them during the master's program. You will then be given conditions in the admission examination. However, admission is not possible if you have to make up for more than 18 CP

In case your enrollment was bound to meeting specific requirements, such as catching up on certain academic achievements (e.g. Sociology of Technology), these requirements have to be met before registering the Master's thesis.The modules defined as requirements can be found in your Curriculum Support in RWTH Online.

Registration for courses and exams takes place in the course of two separate phases and processes. At the beginning of the semester, you first register via RWTH Online for courses that you want to take in the semester in question. However, this registration does not yet result in the registration for examinations. The registration will be opened in RWTH Online (in the winter semester usually in November, in the summer semester usually in May) during the course of the semester. During this period, you must decide which exams you would like to take in the courses you have attended (graded exam, ungraded exam). According to your decision, you must register for the respective exam per course. Please pay attention to the deadlines, as a subsequent registration in case of late attendance is only possible in exceptional cases and by submitting an application to the central examination office. All this is particularly important, as you are not entitled to take an exam without registering for it.

The Master's Colloquium is set up to accompany your master's thesis and gives you the opportunity to present and thoroughly discuss the state of your thesis. Therefore, you should only attend the colloquium after you have started working on your thesis. Furthermore, you should attend the colloquium held by your thesis supervisor if possible. For this reason, you should contact your (prospective) supervisor in the inital planning stages of your thesis and ask about the possibility of attending his or her colloquium.

In principle, you are free to choose any topic you are interested in. Only in rare cases, theses are advertised and therefore predefined. Therefore, we advise you to learn about the research topics and issues of the department and to attend very diverse courses in the first year of your studies in order to identify your own interests. Since developing a research question can take some time, it is reasonable to already contact a potential supervisor at the beginning of year two. By planning your thesis early on, you can ensure that you can really start your work at the beginning of the fourth semester of your studies. Besides: The more care you put into formulating your research question, the easier it will be to actually write your thesis and the higher the quality will be.

If you are writing a paper in the Master of Sociology, you can basically orientate yourself on the FAQ for papers and theses of the institute, which is revised regularly and is available on the homepage. In general, it is always advisable to ask your lecturer about your wishes and requirements regarding the design of the assignment.

The members of the institute always strive to integrate master's students into the acivities. the central way of doing so is to adjust the courses to our current research in order to enable feedback between teaching and research. Furthermore, you are always invited to join the departmental colloquium, in which PhD and habiliation candidates or external researchers present their state of research, or interesting new books or projects are discussed.

• Late night thesis writing
• Support for your course of studies