Failed your VWU exam

The Ergänzungsprüfung is an extra exam that a university assigns you at admission, and VWU, the preparatory department shared by Vienna's universities, is the one that administers it. Failing it on your first try is normal: you get five attempts at the written and oral parts each, the first attempt plus four retakes. What usually runs tight is time: the courses last four semesters, and your residence permit only gets extended if you're succeeding at your studies.^1·2

What to do right now

1. Look at your marked paper. The certificate appears in the VWU student portal, and you're told when you can view your paper both at the exam and in the grade letter. In EPD (German), EPM (mathematics), and EPE (English) there's a separate minimum for each section of the written part, and your paper shows exactly which section fell short. A retake still means the whole written part, and you need the minimum in every section again.^1·3–6
2. Pick a sitting and register. Registration runs through the student portal portal.vwu.at, and it closes at 12:00 on the last day. Which sitting fits your case is below.³
3. If you're taking a German course at VWU itself, ask your teacher about bonus points for coursework: these can sometimes be credited in place of the written part.
4. Ask VWU's secretariat what will count as proof of study success for your residence permit extension, and check that date against your retake date.

Prepare first for the section that cost you points, but don't drop the others. Section minimums are covered in our article on the EPD and our article on the EPM. Test whether you're ready with a full paper under a timer. The papers are open with no registration and a worked answer to every task: past years' exams for EPM, and official VWU models plus practice papers for EPD.

What gets repeated

The written and oral parts are counted separately: if you fail the oral, you only retake the oral. You're only admitted to the oral once you've passed the written part, so if you fail the written part, you don't sit the oral that same sitting.^2·4

VWU's statute doesn't have a sixth, "commission" attempt: there are four retakes, full stop. This often gets confused with bonus points: if you're taking a German course at VWU itself, the statute lets your coursework be credited in place of the written part of the EPD, and then you only sit the oral. Your course teacher explains how many bonus points that takes.^2·7

If you have a new admission decision from a different university, or attempts in both Vienna and Graz, ask the secretariat how those get counted.

Which sitting to register for

There are six sittings a year, and any of them works for a retake. Your last exam can only be taken at four of them. The April and November sittings fall outside the admission window, the period when a university admits students to its regular programme for that semester. If your last exam is at one of those two, you won't move into the university that same semester.³

Say you failed the EPD in September, and it was your last exam. The November sitting doesn't work for moving on, so the next one that does is January, and you'd start in the summer semester.

An attempt costs €66 for German, English, and mathematics, and €46 for the other subjects. If you change your mind about sitting it, cancel your registration by email to vwu@vwu.at no later than a week before the first exam day of that part in that sitting, and the fee carries over to your next attempt. The exact time is on your registration confirmation. If you're sick, write to the same address before the exam starts and send a doctor's note. Writing in after the exam has started means the fee is gone. So if you're not going, cancel.^1·3

How much time you have

Attempts are counted per exam, but semesters are shared across all of them. You can attend courses for four semesters; a fifth is only granted on a written application with good cause, and the application window is late June to early July. Uni Wien gives you the same four semesters to sit the exams themselves. If you apply for a fifth semester of courses, ask whether that deadline is extended along with it. Every failed last exam pushes your move to the university to the next sitting that qualifies, and with two or three subjects still open, your margin runs out fast.^1·8

What happens to your residence permit

You can only extend a student residence permit by showing you're succeeding at your studies. MA 35, Vienna's immigration authority, handles the extension. It gives examples of what counts: 16 ECTS, meaning credits from courses you've passed, or 8 hours a week of coursework, Semesterwochenstunden, over the past academic year, or admission to a regular degree programme. You can apply for the extension no earlier than three months before your card expires and no later than its last valid day. For the preparatory course there's also a legal deadline: you must show admission to a regular programme within two years. Without that success, the law allows an extension only when you were held back by reasons beyond your control that you couldn't have foreseen.^9·10

Not everyone studies German at VWU itself. If you're assigned only German, or if you have other subjects too but missed the score you needed on the onSET placement test, you study with one of VWU's three partner language schools. At the end of the semester, these partners send MA 35 a certificate of course attendance. At the Sprachenzentrum, the University of Vienna's language centre, that certificate notes whether you completed the course successfully, attended regularly but didn't pass, or didn't manage it at all. Ask the secretariat directly: "What kind of proof of study success will I get if I failed the EPD but I'm attending the course?" — and do it ahead of time, before you apply for the extension.^1·11·12

A last exam in November or April is a trap. On the day you sit it, you lose your status as an außerordentlicher Studierender, a non-degree student, which is what everyone at VWU is registered as. You won't get any more certificates of study for that semester, and you won't move into the university that semester either. Only pick one of these sittings for your last exam once you've checked it against your extension date. How the extension itself works is covered in our article on the extension.³

Separately from this status, you can also enrol at the university as an auditor of individual courses. For your extension, that only counts in one case: all your VWU exams are already passed, and your entrance exam at the university is next semester. While retakes are still open, a course like this won't count toward your extension.¹³

If your fifth attempt also fails

The law doesn't let you dispute the grade itself. But if there was a serious problem with how the exam was run, you can, within four weeks of the grade being announced, file an application to have that attempt annulled and explain what went wrong. An annulled attempt doesn't count against you. This applies to any attempt, not just the fifth.¹⁴

After a fifth failure, Uni Wien's rule kicks in: preparatory-course attempts count toward your regular studies, and if all of them are failed, you can no longer study that particular degree at Uni Wien. The rule names that specific degree and that specific university. Ask the admissions office of the institution you actually want whether you can apply for a different degree or a different university afterwards.¹⁵

What to ask VWU's secretariat

VWU's own pages don't answer these questions, and your deadlines depend on the answers. Ask them all at once:

1. What proof of study success will I get for my residence permit extension if I haven't passed the exam but I'm attending the course.
2. Does the attempt count restart with an admission decision from a different university, and do attempts in Vienna and Graz add up together.
3. Does an attempt count as used if I registered for it and didn't show up.
4. Does the deadline for sitting the exams get extended if I was granted a fifth semester of courses.
5. How long does a passed written part stay valid if the oral hasn't been passed yet.

Sources

· 15 checked 25.09.2026

1. 1FAQ — Vorstudienlehrgang der Wiener Universitäten · checked 20.09.2026
2. 2Statut des Vorstudienlehrganges der Wiener Universitäten (VWU) · checked 25.09.2026
3. 3Ergänzungsprüfungen — Vorstudienlehrgang der Wiener Universitäten · checked 23.09.2026
4. 4Modell Ergänzungsprüfung Deutsch (gültig ab Juni 2026) · checked 23.09.2026
5. 5Unterrichtsorganisation und Prüfungsregelung in Mathematik (WS 2026) · dated 13.09.2026, checked 18.09.2026
6. 6Modell Ergänzungsprüfung Englisch, Stand September 2024 (VWU) · checked 22.09.2026
7. 7Regeln am Vorstudienlehrgang der Wiener Universitäten · checked 22.09.2026
8. 8Zulassung zum VWU (BA) — Universität Wien · checked 25.09.2026
9. 9Aufenthaltsbewilligung Student — Stadt Wien, MA 35 · checked 23.09.2026
10. 10Niederlassungs- und Aufenthaltsgesetz, § 64 — Studierende · checked 23.09.2026
11. 11Erstanmeldung — Vorstudienlehrgang der Wiener Universitäten · checked 20.09.2026
12. 12Deutschkurse für den VWU — Sprachenzentrum der Universität Wien · checked 20.09.2026
13. 13Aufenthaltsbewilligung Student (kein Mobilitätsprogramm) — OeAD · checked 20.09.2026
14. 14Universitätsgesetz 2002, § 79 — Rechtsschutz bei Prüfungen · checked 25.09.2026
15. 15Nachholen von fachlichen Ergänzungsprüfungen aus dem Bachelorstudium — Universität Wien (Abschnitt „Konsequenzen eines außerordentlichen Studiums“) · checked 25.09.2026