It takes a little effort to set up the right study plan when going abroad. It is important that you check the curriculum of your study programme (studieordning) to find out which courses you need to look for. If you have doubts a good idea could be to talk to your academic advisor and perhaps other key people at your department.
Ultimately it is up to your Study Board (Studienævn) to approve your study plan.
Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
Use the host university's webpage - although it may not be easy to find the courses and their descriptions. You will need to browse patiently.
Sometimes you will have to go to the separate webpages of each department; at other times there might be a collected curriculum.
Useful search terms could be 'exchange student', 'incoming exchange' or 'international students'. Under these headings it might be possible to navigate to the courses offered to exchange students. In other cases you may have to act as if you were already an enrolled student at the host university - e.g. looking under 'current students' for courses.
Please notice that if you wish to follow courses in the language of the host country, you might not have to use the portal for international students.
At a later stage you should make sure to check whether the upcoming courses are, in fact, similar to those you used in your pre-approval. It is perfectly fine to change your study plan if courses have changed. Just make sure to re-apply for a pre-approval from your Study Board.
When looking for courses, don't jump to the easy solution and contact the host university or SDU International to begin with. Make sure you check the webpage properly first, and have tried all of the approaches described above first, before you contact SDU International.
If the courses for next year are not online yet, you should use the available course lists of the current, or previous, academic year. In many cases the courses are similar from year to year, and you will be able to use this information to get your pre-approval from your study board.
HINT! As it can be difficult to locate courses, course descriptions and so on you should try using "short-cuts" to find the information you need. Through search engines, like Google, you can search the host university's name and its course list, and in many cases this will give you options leading directly to what you are looking for. Try different variations of what you are searching for if the first search you try does not pay off.
If you are going abroad overseas (outside Europe), it can be necessary to convert credits to ECTS. This is possible with the following document:
Please note that this list is only a guideline. Your Study Board makes the final decision.
Share the workload with your fellow students
If you are more students looking to go abroad, share the workload between each other. That way each of you won't have to search for courses at all relevant places, but can share the information between each other.
Still confused?
If you have tried all approaches described above and find it impossible to find courses for one or more of the universities that you wish to attend, then contact SDU International, and we will do our best to help you find the relevant information.