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Electives

Electives are your opportunity to shape your education according to your academic and professional interests.

We have put together some packages of  recommended electives, which are useful if you want to specialise in a specific research area.

Read more about the specialisation profiles

In addition to the recommended electives from the specialisation profiles, there are a number of additional courses that you can freely choose as electives. You can see a list of these courses further down this page, and they also appear on the registration form in the Student Self-Service.

Please note that even though all courses on the list are freely available as electives, you should still consider whether you meet any academic preconditions mentioned in the course description before you register.

If you wish to follow an elective course which is offered by the Faculty of Science, but which doesn't appear on your registration form in the Student Self-Service, you have to submit a form to the student counsellors at the Faculty of Science.

Here you must justify why you would like to follow the course, and describe your academic preconditions for taking the course. You can also indicate if a teacher has recommended the course to you, or if the student counsellors have already instructed you on the rules regarding elective courses.

The student counsellors at the Faculty of Science will then review the submitted form and consider whether the registration appears to be on an informed basis, or whether they should offer you counselling regarding academic preconsiditions and the rules for registering for electives.

The student counsellors cannot assess whether you or not should follow an elective. The purpose of the form and any subsequent counselling session is solely to ensure that you have had the opportunity to obtain relevant information before you make your choice regarding electives that are offered by the Faculty of Science, but don't appear on the registration form by default.

You can also apply to take courses offered by another faculty or university. This requires that you find a course which is academically relevant to your degree programme and which fits into your course of study.

Additionally, you must send an application to your study board for pre-approval of credit transfer. If the study board approves the course, you must attach the pre-approval letter when you register for the course at the faculty/university offering the course. Once you have passed the course, you must contact Educational Law and Registration via SPOC so that they can register the course as a passed elective on your programme.

A few electives offered by the Faculty of Science have a capped number of participants.

Procedure for courses with a waiting list

You must have registered for the course in time.

Additionally, you must meet any entry requirements.

We assess all timely registered students when we allocate places for courses with a capped number of participants in case the number of registered students exceeds the number of students places on the course.

The two most commonly used prioritisation methods are the following:

  • The timely registered students are prioritised administratively, according to when they registered for the course.

  • The timely registered students are prioritised by the relevant academic environment at the Faculty of Science on the basis of a number of criteria, which are stated in the course description.

The specific method used for prioritisation is stated in the comments field in the course description.

At any time, PhD students are given first priority for PhD-level courses.

You will be notified by e-mail if you are not admitted to the course. In such case, you will be placed on a waiting list.

If you have been admitted to a course with a waiting list, you must attend the first lesson in order to keep your place on the course or otherwise notify the teacher that you wish to keep your place. This also applies if you are absent due to illness.

If you fail to attend the first lesson without notifying the teacher beforehand, you will be deregistered from the course.

Even if you have been placed on a waiting list for a course due to capacity issues, you should attend the first lesson anyway.

If you have been admitted for a course with a waiting list, but fail to attend the first lesson, you lose your place on the course. Any vacant places will be allocated to students on the waiting list, according to their placement order in the waiting list. Only students attending the first lesson will be considered for a place in the course.

Once teaching has started, the waiting list is annulled.


As a Master's degree student, you can take Bachelor-level courses as electives, as long as they are outside your primary field of study.

Courses that overlap with constituent subject elements, or which overlap with already passed subject elements, cannot be approved as electives.

3 exam attempts

You have 3 exam attempts to pass each elective. As a general rule, if you do not pass within the 3 attempts, you will be discharged from your programme. Therefore, it it important that you carefully consider which electives to take before you register.

Substitution of electives 

If certain criteria are met, you can substitute one elective for another until three weeks after the semester has started.

Read more on how to substitute electives

Any questions?

The student counsellors at the Faculty of Science are ready to help you with your study-related questions.

Contact the student counsellors at the Faculty of Science

Last Updated 18.06.2024