u/calliope-cruze

This is to help applicants get some context on the timelines and process because it was difficult for me to find information when I was going through the process.

I submitted my application on July 30, 2026. I received my longlist mail on August 13. I then received my Coderbyte assessment link on August 22, which I completed by the next day. I received an interview invitation on September 3. The interview took place on September 4. After my interview, I had completely given up because I hadn't received any further communication. But on September 25, I received a mail for the final interview, which took place 2-3 days later. I was informed that a couple more applicants were also being interviewed along with me, and that I would come to know of the outcome a week or two later.

For context, I am a final year CS student interning at an IT company, and my workload is pretty high. I work from 10 AM - 8 PM on weekdays, sometimes even goes upto 11 PM some days depending on my workload. I passed A1 in February with 87 marks. I have since then tried to do one Duolingo lesson everyday to maintain the streak, but other than pretty much nothing. 10 days before the exam, I used to study for 8-12 hours on the weekends and around 1-2 hours during the weekdays. I wanted to start studying a month before the exam, but I kept procrastinating until the last minute. I would work my soul out on the weekdays and I wouldn't feel like studying on the weekends. And when I do feel like studying, some academic stuff from college would come up.

Here are my final scores:

Lesen - 18.75/25, Horen - 18.75/25, Schreiben - 21.25/25, Sprechen - 22/25

Centre: Max-Muller Bhavan, Chennai

This is what I did to prepare:

Once D-10 hit, I used 2-4 days to learn and revise all the grammar concepts. When you're doing targeted prep only to pass the A2 exam (not reach A2 fluency), this is actually a bad move.

Then, I worked backwards from the question paper. The first time I read the lesen sections, I couldn't understand anything and I couldn't make out anything from the horen sections. That's when the seriousness hit me. I went through all the horen and lesen sample test videos on YouTube and noted down every word which was new to me. Initially I noted them down, and kept revising them everyday. Later, for the horen sections, I put all of the sample mock test videos from YouTube to NoteBookLLM (Gemini Notebook), and asked for 200-300 most highly recurring words. Then I used AI to make flashcards out of them. This was of such great help to me! I couldn't use this feature for Lesen videos since they didn't have an audio transcript. This was of such great help to me!

For schreiben, I worked backwards again from the mock questions on YouTube. I studied and typed out the answers for each formal and informal question prompt. Then, I used AI to analyze all the questions for formal and informal and give me 8-10 questions for formal and informal which were repeated in the mock tests. I studied all of them. And I also had a spreadsheet of phrases to use for all scenarios - apologizing, cancelling, rescheduling, inviting, wanting to know information about something, asking someone to cover for me to attend an event/course, etc. This really helped me a ton.

For sprechen, I had practised for teil 1 and teil 2. For teil 3, I couldn't practice much. Teil 1 and 2, I used ChatGPT voice conversation mode to practice my speaking. For Teil 3 (discussing and making an appointment with someone), the schreiben phrase list I had made for different scenarios helped me.

FYI, the person who I was supposed to converse with for Sprechen i.e. another person taking the A2 exam did not show up. The examiner was the person whom I had to do my Teil 1 and Teil 3.

I listened to 'Learn German with Falk' podcast all throughout the day and tried to figure out all the words he was using and tried to incorporate into my sentences. I learned around 500-600 words from the Goethe official Worteliste.

Passing the Goethe German A2 Exam by this method doesn't mean you'll reach A2 level of fluency, this is just a shortcut to purely pass the exam. I would not recommend this method unless you're in a dire situation.

ALL THE BEST GUYS!!