Designing your Curriculum

A UCU education is characterized by its broad and interdisciplinary nature. As a student, therefore, you design your own curriculum. This means that the curriculum does not have a fixed structure; instead you combine different courses to assemble a personal study program. The full three year program has six semesters of four courses each, so by the end your curriculum consists of at least 24 courses (180 ECTS). Once you’ve completed the program a Bachelor of Arts (BA) or a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree is issued.

During the first year you explore the academic world and the various academic disciplines. You take general academic skills courses that help develop writing, presentation and methodological skills, and you start learning a foreign language. You take courses at the introductory 1-level in at least two of the three departments - Science, Social Science and Humanities. By the end of your UCU program you must have taken at least one course in all departments.

The second - or junior - year is aimed at expanding knowledge and skills. Before the start of this year you declare a major in one of the three departments, or possibly an interdepartmental major. You take courses at the intermediate 2- and advanced 3-level.

During the third - or senior - year efforts are focused on finalizing the program by gaining sufficient disciplinary knowledge to apply for a Master’s program or a job. This culminates in the research thesis, a sizeable academic paper on a topic of your own choice.

Support

To guide you in your decisions and to safeguard a certain level of coherence in your curriculum, every UCU student has a personal tutor. Your tutor monitors progress and signals possible obstacles.

Options

You can enrich your program with the following options:

• study abroad for a semester
• do an (international) internship
• take off-campus courses
• take a minor, four related courses in a department other than your major
• write an honors thesis

Sample

A typical curriculum may have the following distribution: