The information given on this page is thought for exchange students who already arrived at RWTH Aachen University. It is a short version of what we demonstrate during the introductory meeting..
If you need advises, please contact us (by e-mail) so that we can try to selve problems by e-mail or if necessary arrage a (Zoom) meeting.
Choosing Courses
You can search for courses with RWTHonline. A general introduction to RWTHonline is available here. Information on how to search and filter for courses is given on the subpage Selecting Courses. When browsing course lists, you wil notice that most courses have assigned an information like "LE | 3 SWS". You can ignore the "3 SWS". It is a German-specific measure for course load and means "three presence hours per week". More interesting is the "LE" or other characters. The meaning is:
- L: Lecture
- E: Exercise
- TU: Exercise groups
- SE: Seminar
- LA: lab / practical
Mostly, you will attend regular coursework - that is lecture together with exercises. Often you wil find one "LE" entry in RWTHonline for such coursework. Sometimes you will find two entries, one L and one E. Don't care about that -- due to organizational reasons (mostly for time planning) two entries have been created by the teachers; but nevertheless both beong to the same class and you have to attend both. A small number of classes in addition offers exercise groups. But mostly this is done for the basic Bachelor courses which are taught in German.
In some cases you might participate in a seminar (writing a research paper, giving a presentation) or a lab/practical (larger programming projects). But, places in these types of courses have already been assigned in early February. You might contact the teachers to ask if there is room in a seminar or lab, but probably chances to join such a course in April are rather low.
To get an overview about all classes, you might have a look to short presentations of all our elecives on https://sc.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/en/wahlpflicht/.
You can also browse courses from other faculties/departments. For many courses, there are no limitations so that you can also attend them. If you have doubts on this, please contact me.
Registering for Courses
Have a look here for information how to register for courses. Most courses you can register via RWTHonline. If there is no registration procedure for a course available, this might have two reasons:
- The teachers have not yet configured the registration. Please try again when lectures start.
- The teachers organize the whole course on their own web pages. Have a look to the web pages or visit the first lecture to learn on course organization. (Very unlikely today.)
Sometimes a registration is available, but you cannot register. In this case the teachers have configured the registration only for certain student groups, so that exchange students cannot use them. In this case pease contact the teachers - tell them that you are an exchange student and cannot use the registration procedure, and ask them for manual registration.
The effect of a course registration is that you are booked into the Moodle room for this class. you now have access to all learning materials. We recommend that you register for all courses which might be interesting for you. So you can get an impreession of several courses and finally can decide after some weeks which courses you really want to take.
For most courses you can register till July - but don't take this for sure! Teachers might configure their registrations differently. So have a close look at the registration interval to not miss it.
Registrering for Exams
You can register for as many classes as you like - the effect is that you get access to all learing materials and can participate in a course. But, you have to register a second time - if you want to attend the examination of a course, you have to do a second registration for the corresponding exam. Have a look to the RWTHonline documentation to get an intoduction how to register for exams.
Important: only the courses for which you register an exam, later on will appear on your Transcript of Records. You don't need to care about all your course registrations, but think about which courses you want to register an exam for.
Deadline for exam registeration usually is January 15 in winter semester and June 30 in summer semester. But as above: don't take this for sure! Have a close look to registration deadlines of all exams you are interested in, and try to register early.
If you are interested in registering exams of other faculties/departments, please contact me - some faculties have extra procedures for registration.
Note that for most classes two examination dates are offered. In case you miss or fail the first examination, you can take the second one. But you have to register for this second exam date again with RWTHonline! Deadline for doing so is seven days before the second exam date.
In case you decide to not attend an exam, please deregister from it. You can do so till three work days before an exam date.
Note that teachers might decide on exam admission criteria! They might decide that you have to solve exercieses during the semester, participate in a midterm exam or work on e-tests during the semster to get permission to atted the exam. Please attend the first lecture or have a close look to the material of the first lecture date - teachers will inform you in the first lectrue on how to get exam admission.
In case an exam date here at RWTH Aachen is too late for you, please contact the teachers early. Maybe they can offer you a special, earlier examination date. Or they might agree to a distance exam so that you could write the exam after being back at your home university. But, the teachers always have to agree, so please contact them early.
Changing the Learning Agreement
You are not bound to the coures you initially wrote in your learning agreement. You are free to change your whole set of courses. Only make sure with your home university that your changes are accepted.
We recommend that you register for all interesting courses in the beginning of the semester. After a few weeks decide which courses you really want to take, and only for these courses register the exam. Please then adapt your learning agreement. Just send me a scan for signature, or make an appointment to get a signature.
Getting the Transcript of Records
At the end of your stay you receive a Trancript of Records contaning your results in all courses you registered exams for. We can read out your results from RWTHonline and will notify you when all results are available and we can print your transcript.
Note that courses from our language center are not integrated in RWTHonline! We do not receive any results from language center. If you participated in a language course and want to get it listed on your Transcript of Records, please send us your results as soon as possible. You get a certificate from language center - sending us a scan is enough.
In the exam registration sheet which we will send to you, please list language courses so that we know that we can expect some results outside from RWTHonline later on. The same holds if you participate in any other course in which you do not need to register an exam. Include them in the registration sheet so that we know about all results that we need to consider when printing your transcript.
When your trancript is ready, you get a notification from us. If you are still in Aachen, you could visit us to get it; otherwise please give us a postal adress to which we can send it.
Termination of the Enrollment at RWTH Aachen University
When finishing your stay at RWTH Aachen University, you get your trancript from us. If you need a certification on your stay duration (most universities demand their students to hand in such a certification), please contact International Office. They are issuing this kind of certification.
Remember to cancel your rental agreement, bank account, cell phone contract, et cetera on time.
You also have to terminate your enrollment at RWTH Aachen University.
In case of any questions, contact us.