M.SC. EXCHANGE IN AARHUS UNIVERSITY, DENMARK SPRING 2014

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1 M.SC. EXCHANGE IN AARHUS UNIVERSITY, DENMARK SPRING Preparing for the exchange All in all there are only a few things that you need to prepare before the exchange. These include the application process to the host university and applying for housing, selecting your courses and planning how you will travel to Aarhus. All other paper work is done during the introduction week in Aarhus and Nordic citizens get off very easy with it, because there is not a lot of paper work to be done. I received a first message from Aarhus University in the end of September concerning the application process to the university. The application process was very simple and easy and it was done through an online system. As you will apply to the university, you will also have the opportunity to apply for an apartment from the university at the same time. It is highly recommended to apply the apartment through the university, because it is very difficult to get an apartment on your own. The university gives you only one housing offer that you can either accept or reject. The sooner you apply for the housing, the faster you can receive an apartment offer. I received a confirmation of the application in mid-october and received a housing offer in the end of November. The course selections needed to be done by mid- November. At this point when you are selecting your courses at the host university, you should also get your Learning Agreement approved by Aalto. I travelled to Aarhus by taking a plane to Copenhagen after which I took a train from the airport to Aarhus. The train to Aarhus from the airport takes approximately 3,5-4 hours, depending on the train. Flying to Copenhagen is absolutely the cheapest way to get to Aarhus, since the flights straight to Aarhus are often quite expensive. There is also a possibility to take a bus to Aarhus from Copenhagen airport (read more in section 3.4). After arriving to Aarhus I went to the international center to pick up my keys, which I got very quickly. When I arrived to Aarhus, there was not anyone to pick me up from the train station, but I did not consider it to be even necessary. The university does not arrange any pick-up service, however, if you arrive during the weekend, it is possible to ask, if your tutor can pick up your keys. 1

2 2 Studies at Aarhus University I arrived to Aarhus 17 th of January and we had an orientation week from 20 th to 24 th of January. The semester is slightly longer in Aarhus than it is in Aalto, it begun in the end of January and lasted until the end of June. The teaching period is approximately from the end of January until mid-april depending on your course selections. After the teaching period ends there is a study period where you are supposed to prepare and study for your exams. The exam period begins approximately in mid-may and lasts until the end of June. It is good to be aware of the length of the semester, if you are planning to apply for summer jobs for example. However, most Bachelor-level students seemed to have their exams earlier than Master-level students. I studied in the department of business communication and took three 10 ECTS courses. In addition, I took a course in Danish at Lær Dansk language institute. Overall, I was very happy with my course selections and the quality of teaching was extremely good in the courses that I took. According to the instructions of the university, you are allowed to choose courses only from one program, because otherwise you may have overlaps both in lectures and exams. However, some people chose courses from more than one program, but it is everyone s own responsibility to make sure that you do not have any overlaps, because unfortunately the exam dates are not negotiable with the teachers. The amount of courses offered depends slightly on the program that you are studying in. When I was making my course selections I thought that there are not that much courses offered in my program, but luckily the courses that I chose turned out to be very good and interesting. It is also good to be aware of the fact that most of the students will get to know their exam dates very late. For example, I got to know my exam dates in the end of April. This practice applied to all the students except the Master-level students of business administration who got to know their exam dates very early on. All Bachelor-students and Master-students of business communication needed to wait the exam dates until the end of April. 2

3 I took the following courses at Aarhus University: U052 International Marketing Communication (10 ECTS / graduate) The course focused on how to prepare and execute marketing communication campaigns aimed at English-speaking markets in a competent manner and by applying relevant theory and knowledge of market conditions. We had lectures once a week, three hours per class and the course lasted 12 weeks in total. The classes consisted of the professor s lectures and various workshops and group exercises. As a final exam we had a home assignment that was presented and tested in an oral exam. As our final exam we got a case approximately one week before the oral exam where the case was presented individually. This course was very interesting and my favorite course too. The professor of this course was very good and even though we learned a lot of theory, the professor had a very practical touch on the subject and he focused a lot on how the theory can be applied in real life and with real-life cases U055 Public Relations (10 ECTS / graduate) The course dealt with topics such as how to plan and manage international public relations, CSR, corporate identity, corporate branding, crisis communication, media relations, etc. The course had a very practical approach where we practiced a lot of writing different kinds of public relations materials related to different kinds of communication situations. We had lectures twice a week, two hours per lecture and the course lasted 10 weeks in total. We had two kinds of classes: one of the classes was always a lecture focusing on a specific theme (e.g. CSR) and its theory, and in the second class we had always a tutorial that focused, for example, on writing CSR-related public relations texts. As a final exam we had a written home assignment and an oral exam that was based on our written assignments. Our task was to produce public relations material of our own choice to our chosen company or organization and to a specific communication situation. The home assignment consisted of the public relations material and a written paper that analyzed the project as a whole. The whole project was then presented later in the oral exam. 3

4 410122U107 Web-communication and localization (10 ECTS / graduate) The course aimed at developing skills, for instance, in 1) analyzing and evaluating existing localized websites, 2) providing suitable solutions to localization problems, 3) identifying how websites could be improved using localization, and 4) using a translation tool to localize web content. We had lectures once a week for three hours and the course lasted 11 weeks in total. The classes consisted of lectures where each week s readings were discussed after which we usually had some kind of practical exercises / tutorials related to the lecture theme. In the course we had a mid-semester assignment that was optional as well as a final exam. The final exam of the course was a take-home assignment that consisted of two parts. For the assignment we needed to select a website in our own mother tongue that has never been translated before into any other language. The first part of the exam assignment was to translate and localize two pages of the selected website using a specific software. In my case I translated the website from Finnish into English. The second part of the exam assignment consisted of writing a paper that discussed the localization process of the selected website. The course and the professor of the course were both extremely good and the course had a good mixture of theory and practice. As all the courses that I took in Aarhus, this course was also very useful and I really liked the practical approach of the course and the fact that we had a very practical project as our final exam, which taught me a lot. As the course was 10 ECTS, the workload of the course was quite big. I had two individual oral exams in two of my courses in Aarhus, which is something that I have never had before in my studies (excluding oral presentations). Interestingly, oral exams are very common exam type in Denmark. I did not know what to expect from them beforehand, but they turned out to be a very good experience in my opinion. In my both oral exams there were two examiners and the exams were quite relaxed discussion sessions where you also got very good and constructive feedback of your work and presentation, which I considered to be very useful. I wish this exam type would be applied in Aalto too. 4

5 Danish course at Lær Dansk The university does not offer any Danish classes, but exchange students can study Danish for free at a language institute called Lær Dansk. If you are interested in studying Danish, I recommend applying to the Danish course at Lær Dansk as soon as possible, because the application process takes rather long time. However, you cannot apply to the course before you have received your Danish social security number (CPR number), which you will apply in the orientation week. You will receive information of how to apply to Lær Dansk during the orientation week. The Danish classes were two times a week, two hours at a time. I highly recommend the Danish course to everyone! I had the greatest language teacher that I have ever had in my life, which made my Danish studies a lot of fun, but it also makes your daily life in Denmark easier and nicer, if you speak even a little bit of Danish. The course also taught me more about the Danish culture, which I considered to be very interesting and useful too. If you speak Swedish, Danish is quite an easy language to learn the pronunciation is the most challenging part in studying Danish J 3 Living in Aarhus and free time 3.1 Cost of living Exchange students in Aarhus are quite spread and they live in different parts of the city in various student buildings, which there are a lot. I lived in a shared apartment together with one other person and my rent was approximately 400 euros a month, which I considered to be very reasonable. The rent included water, electricity, internet-connection and the free use of a laundry room. Our apartment located approximately 4 kilometers away from the university and 5 kilometers away from the city center. We had our own rooms and we shared a bathroom and a kitchen together. Overall the cost of living is slightly more expensive than it is in Helsinki. This can be seen, for instance, in food prices and in bars and restaurants. There are not any school fees but I bought a few books for my studies and course books are generally quite expensive. Fortunately there are very good libraries in Aarhus for students to use too. 5

6 3.2 Free time & getting to know other students Aarhus is a big student city and for this reason there are a lot of all kinds of activities arranged for students. The student house in Aarhus arranges also a lot of events and trips especially for exchange students throughout the semester. During the introduction week we were divided into tutor groups and we spent a lot of time with the group during the week. This was also a good way to get to know other students and also those students that were studying in different programs. 3.3 General information of the local area Aarhus is located in central Denmark (Midtjylland) and it is the second largest city in Denmark. It is a beautiful sea city and for that reason there is also quite windy throughout the year regardless of the season. The city center of Aarhus is rather small but in general there are many interesting places to explore in Aarhus, such as the Latin Quarter, Aros Museum, the Deer Park (Dyrehaven), the beautiful harbor area and Risskov beach, to name but a few. The best way to explore the city is by bike (read more about this in section 3.5). 3.4 Travelling in and outside of Denmark Travelling inside Denmark is easy, since it is a rather small country. Train might be the best way to travel, if you are interested in exploring Denmark. There is also a very good bus line (Abildskou, line 888) going from Aarhus and you can go with that bus, for example, to Copenhagen, Copenhagen Airport or even to Hamburg or Berlin very cheaply. The nearest airports to Aarhus are the Aarhus airport and Billund, which can be also worth looking, in addition to CPH Airport, when you are making travel plans. If you travel a lot by train, I recommend ordering a Wild Card from DSB to get discounts from the tickets, since train tickets are quite expensive in Denmark. When moving around in Aarhus and travelling in Denmark, I also recommend using the journey planner 6

7 3.5 Good to know Biking is definitely the best way to move around in Aarhus and you can bike pretty much round the year. The bike lanes in Aarhus are very good and biking is a very Danish way to move around! J Some parts of Aarhus are very hilly and the weather is not always a cyclist s friend, because it is often very windy and rainy, which is good to be aware of. If you wish to have a bike during your exchange, I recommend being quick, because it might be challenging to find one when there are also many other exchange students looking for bikes. It might be even worth it to look for bikes prior to your arrival to Aarhus. You can also look at bikes from websites such as and there are also several FB-groups where people are selling their bikes. If you do not want to buy a bike, it is possible to rent a bike quite cheaply, for example, from the student house (Studenterhus Aarhus) for the whole semester. These bikes go very fast, so I recommend renting one pretty much as soon as you arrive to Aarhus, even though the weather would not seem good for biking at that moment. 4 Final comments I can highly recommend Aarhus University to everyone. All in all, I was very happy with the quality of teaching and the courses that I took there. In addition, Aarhus is a very cute sea city and there are a lot of things to do round the year and it is an active student city, which means that there is always something happening. It was also an interesting experience to live in another city in Denmark besides the capital city, even though Copenhagen is an absolutely lovely city. If you are planning to go to study in Denmark, I highly recommend using the great chance of studying some Danish language and culture during your stay. I learned quite a lot of Danish in a short time and the Danes are very happy and appreciate it, if you try to speak even a little bit of Danish with them. I hope you will enjoy your stay in Denmark & Aarhus! 7