Immunology:
Immunology was my favorite course in Leiden. It was quite a long course and there was a lot to learn, but students received a lot of support and guidance throughout the course.
Exchange students and a few others, received a tutor for this course. Our tutor had three meetings with the tutoring group where she gave us advice and showed us some example questions to prepare us for the exam. Additionally, we had a "mock exam" a week before the exam to test our knowledge.
Of all of the courses I did at Leiden, this one was probably the most different from what I was used to at KI. The lectures were mostly meant to prepare students for the chapter we would read in the course book, and at the end of the course we basically had to know everything that was in the course book. However, if you had studied well then the exam was not a problem, especially since it was an open book exam.
In Immunology, we also had the most workgroups which is another aspect of studies at Leiden that made it very different from KI. Workgroups consists of about twelve students and one teacher. Before the workgroup you should have read a part of the book and prepared an answer to all of the workgroup questions. It definitely came as a shock to me when our Immunology tutor told us on the first day of the semester that we would have to prepare for 6 - 8 hours before each workgroup. I was told this at 4 pm in the afternoon and had a workgroup at 9 am the following day! However, after attending a few workgroups I realized that far from everyone prepared that much before every workgroup, especially when we had three workgroups in one week. Nevertheless, I would still advice anyone that takes the course to prepare well before the workgroups.
Infectious Agents and Immunity:
Compared to Immunology, this course was more similar to courses at KI since it was lecture-based and the workload was not as high due to less workgroups. The course was basically a continuation of Immunology but focused on parasites, viruses, bacteria and related diseases. The course also included two projects (one group presentation and a week of lab work).
The main problem with this course was that the course coordinators/main teachers were new and very inexperienced. This was obvious when grading the exam since they first posted the wrong grade for many people which was not noticed until weeks later. Additonally, I was very unhappy with the exam since it consisted of only 30 multiple choice questions that were not representative of what I had learnt. However, since this was the first year that these teachers had the course I hope that your experience will be different.
Introduction to the Neurosciences:
This course was very demanding. Fortunately, exchange students received lessons with the tutor again during this course which was very helpful.
The workload was very high during this course due to the large number of lectures. I will never forget the first week of Neuroscience when we had 27 anatomy lectures, 2 research lectures and 1 seminar. After the week of anatomy lectures we got the chance to dissect a brain which was actually a lot more helpful for learning the anatomy than I had initially thought.
The high workload continued throughout this 4-week course and on the same day as the last exam, we also had 5 project/lab report deadlines. Fortunately, I felt that the exam was representative of what we had learnt during the course.
Be prepared to work hard during this course, but know that you will feel extremely proud of yourself when it is over.
Design and Analysis of Biomedical Studies:
The students at Leiden had already completed a biostatistics course which we had not done so the teachers had realized that exchange students were not well prepared for this course. Therefore the teachers instead told us exchange students to complete two online courses (massive open online courses = MOOCs). Each course took about a week and a half to complete. I was able to do it completely online and each course ended with an online exam that you could do whenever you wanted and you were allowed to take the exam several times and pick the best score. The course may have been easy, but I still think I learnt a lot about statistics and programming in R.
Since I was able to take this last course online, there was no reason for me to be in Leiden in January so I actually left Leiden for good before christmas. I was very lucky to be able to leave Leiden before christmas since they also went into lockdown two days before I went back to Sweden.
Communication in Science for Exchange Students:
This was a small course that continued throughout my semester in Leiden. Instead of handing in lab reports to the teachers for the course in Immunology or Neuroscience, the lab report was sent to the teachers of Communication in Science (CIS). They actually gave very valuable feedback since they focused more on your academic English than the content of your report. We also had a presentation in Communication in Science which was about a scientific paper we read. However, since the teacher who graded us had a PhD in Literature and did not know much about biomedicine, she mainly gave feedback on our presentation skills. I believe that most students from KI are more experienced in giving presentations and writing reports in English compared to the dutch students and may have an advantage here.
Be aware that if you go in the third semester, you will have to complete Tissue Biology at KI when you come back to Sweden (I did not do the exam until in May). You can ask the Tissue Biology teacher to get access to the course's canvas in advance if you want to start studying early.