Classes and Exams

List of courses

Saint-Louis exchange students have access to all the courses listed in this catalogue, regardless of their field of study (provided their home university agrees to it).

Students may not select courses on other campuses and students from other UCLouvain campuses do not have access to this course catalogue.

Before selecting courses:

1. Check with your home institution for any restrictions on equivalence or credits.
2. Check that the course is taught during your mobility period (academic year as well as semester).
3. Read the course description carefully to determine whether you have the prerequisites. Students have 3 weeks after the start of the semester to test their classes and amend the Learning Agreement if necessary.

Exams

For the duration of their mobility, incoming students are considered as UCLouvain students and therefore, exams in UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles must prevail over any other exams or imperatives set by the home institution. Therefore, students are required to be present throughout the duration of each of the formal examination periods.

Retake exam session:

If a student were to fail one or more exams in January and/or June, he or she has the possibility to sit them again in August, during the retake exam session. As the host institution, we do not require students to retake an exam if credits earned are deemed sufficient by the home institution.

• Academic regulations and procedures
• Exam policy set by the International Office

ECTS credits

The ECTS (European Credit Transfer System) is a key instrument of the Bologna process, whose objective is to increase the degree of compatibility among the different European national education systems. Created in 1989 as part of the Erasmus programme, the ECTS aims to facilitate student mobility and inter-university cooperation.

Each course in a Bachelor’s or Master programme carries a specific number of ECTS credits. Each credit is in fact a numerical value expressing the total workload a student is expected to accomplish in order to satisfy a course’s learning objectives.

A credit thus represents not only the number of class hours per week but also the applied exercise sessions, library research, hours spent studying and learning course material, laboratory work, etc.

A Bachelor programme comprises 180 credits, or 60 per year. Therefore, a student must obtain approximately 30 credits per term.

Full academic recognition is essential for the Erasmus exchanges to be viable. This means that a period of study abroad (courses and examinations) effectively replaces an equivalent period in a student’s sending university, even if the programmes of study are different.

Grades

The European Commission created the ECTS to help sending universities interpret grades achieved by their students in partner institutions.

Moreover, at Saint-Louis, as is the case for many partner universities, there is a single grading scale that is applied in all programmes of the different degree levels, and which aims to give complementary information on a grade achieved by an Erasmus student. This grading scale does not by any means replace the grading system applied in a student’s home university.

• Depending on the Faculty, courses are given over a term or over the entire academic year. In general, a course given 2 hours per week for one term is equivalent to 30 hours of class time and counts for 5 credits. Some courses with a heavier workload count for 6 credits.
• Most courses are graded on a scale of 20, and all courses have the same importance. A grade of 10 out of 20 is necessary to acquire the credits related to a course.