Studies in general
The education system is completely different
from here at KI, they have very few lectures, which are more like question time
sessions with some overview of what you need to know and then there is a lot of
self studying and reading. I think I have not read as much as I did over at
Leiden. In my opinion, there is a lot of things to study and know for the
workgroups which is unnecessary and will not come up on the test. I did not
really like their grading system since it is 0-10, with decimals and 0-4,9 is
fail, so they have 50 grades for fail… During the workgroups, you have to be
participating and some teacher also put you on the spot. If you do not know the
answer, they will make you feel very stupid which was not pleasant and made the
atmosphere quite competitive in a negative way that I did not like either.
However, you got to learn a lot from the sessions, or at least if you had a
good teacher. The lecturers and workgroup teachers were very good at explaining
things and seemed genuinely interested in their topics and had well structured
and rehearsed material, something I cannot say about a lot of teachers at KI
have had, which was a pleasant surprise. The overall tests and knowledge were
the same as at KI, however, the passing grade is a bit higher than at KI. Since
the daily workload is higher, I would only recommend you doing the exchange if
you find it easy at KI with a lot of time for other things, because during the
first week of the first course, I studied more than I do during a whole course
at KI due to the different structure.