Exchange to Göttingen gives students the chance to get insight
in german academic culture and society. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 Pandemic
has overshadowed most other experiences of my exchange. However, the course
options are quite broad and you choose fun things. Also, Göttingen is located
very central in germany so travelling to other european countries is easy,
especially by train or bus, if saftey measure where not taken due to the
pandemic.
Depending on your status as an exchange student, you might not
be able to take the classes you want and in comparison to NMBU, the admission
regulations are less flexible when it comes to choosing your courses. Since I
have fulfilled all mandetory courses at NMBU already, I technically had free
choice on which courses I would like to take. However since the program was
bound to exchange only in siviculture and forest ecology faculty, the choice of
courses was limited.
Because the amount of credits one should obtain is 30, it is
quiet hard to find enough courses that match, since most of them are 3 credits
or 6 credits. For exchange students it
can be quite confusing to find a matching schedule.
After a long period of planning and a lot of emails I found out
tht only 50% of all credits need to be obtained from the facultuty which is of
agreement on the exchange agreement (I´m not sure if this applies to everyone).
Thus I was able to enroll for some biology courses aswell. However, some are
listed as possible courses for exchange students but since the number of seats
was full already I could not take them after all. Also, once the program opens
for students to enroll it´s first come first serve so you have to fast when
cooosing courses. In addition, the is 2 website you have to register. If you
only register for one (StudIP) and not the other (FLEXNOW) you will not be able
to take the exam. Make sure you can take the course before you plan on taking
it and you should have a Plan B in case the courses you wanted to take are full
or not accessibale for you.
I would also advise you
to check out courses you are intrested in in advance, e-mail the professor and “Prüfungsamt”
(which is different in every faculty), so they can open your account up for
applying to the course.
All courses were organized
very professionally and academically
challenging. However, the bureaucracy and time planning is confusing so
take your time to organize everythin throuougly. You might have to mail and
call different people several times to get the information you need.
Another point which might be important is that the semster in
germany (at least at Göttingen) start in April (for me April 12) and might end
as late as the end of august. So make sure your studies in NMBU align with
that.
A tip I can give to incoming students is to make friends with
the poeple that take the same courses with you and get involved in your student
body of faculty. Not only will make socializing easier but they also have a lot
of tips and information on how classes work and especially exams (sometimes
they can provide with previouse exams)!! Also, websites like StudyDrive are
very helpful to know of BEFORE you start studying.
ERASMUS grant was very well organised. And also the support I
have gotton from NMBU was very helpfuI. In Göttingen, I am still not quiet sure
who was responsible for what because there is an Erasmus coordinator in
general, and then every faculty has their own. But I am sure, once studies
continue in person, a lot of these misunderstandings can be solved quiet
easily.
Germany/Georg-Albrecht-Universität
Göttingen/Göttingen/Master/Forest Ecology
Comments
Post a Comment