Université de Liège, Belgium

I took all of my classes in Liege in French; outside of English literature there is a very limited selection of courses taught in English. My classes were History of Liege, International Political Relations, Physical Electronics, Control Systems, Electroacoustics, and Applied Electricity. Engineering classes frequently use English textbooks, and if you have trouble with the French most engineering assistants and professors speak English. The electrical engineering department is located in the Montefiore Institute at Sart-Tilman. Below, the Montefiore building, B28. The telephone tower next to Montefiore is an excellent landmark when you get lost in the woods on campus.

Classes at Liege vary by professor and department. General classes are large lectures, and third and fourth year students usually have smaller classes and seminars. Engineering classes are divided into a lecture, lab and excercises. Unlike at Illinois, where one class meets several times a week for short time periods, at Liege most classes meet once or at most twice a week, for 2-4 hours. My engineering classes had 2 hours of lecture with the professor followed by either 2 hours of excercises with an assistant or 2 hours of lab. Most professors give at least one break during a four-hour class, and many give a break every hour. There is hardly any work assigned outside of class, and it is your responsibility to understand the material for the final exam. Professors do not generally set office hours as they do at Illinois, but I found that most professors were happy to schedule time outside of class to answer my questions.

For almost all classes the final exam determines the grade in the class. Occaissonally there will be a large paper or a midterm that counts for a small part of the final grade. Grading is on a 20-point scale, where 10 is passing, 12 is satisfactory, 14 is good, 16 is excellent 18 is distinguished and 20 is highest distinction. Scores above 16 are not very common.

The Montefiore Institute, home of the electrical engineering department, and a landmark to get you there.

Final exams are either written, oral or both. Written exams are similar to exams at Illinois. Oral exams vary widely with professor. Some professors will give you the question and allow 10-15 minutes to prepare your response, others will ask you the question and you must answer immediately. Some exams are you and the professor at a table, others are 5 students at the chalkboard and the professor circulates giving questions and listening to explanations. As stressful as they sound, oral exams are often easier than written exams. They usually are shorter (as short as 20 minutes, while writtens are a minimum of 2 hours), and many professors will guide your answer if you make mistakes. However, if you really don't know the answer the exam can be a very uncomfortable situation, so study well in advance!

One of the best aspects of the Universtiy of Liege is its large international student community. Each year more than 300 European exchange students attend the ULG through the ERASMUS European university exchange program, as well as students from individual universities throughout the world. The university does not organize many formal activities for the exchange students, but we organized quite a few on our own. All of my friends hosted a dinner from their country; I made Thanksgiving dinner, and for my going away party we had a barbecue. I also went to Belgian, Italian, British, Austrian, Polish, Finnish and German dinners during the year. We also celebrated birthday parties almost every week! The easiest way to meet international students is to live in the dorms, which are filled with international students and first-year Belgians. The second easiest way is to enroll in French classes for foreigners. The university French department organizes intensive French classes in the summer and school year, and evening classes during the school year. I took the intensive 'stage preparatoire' class the 2 weeks before university classes began and many students from the class remained close friends throughout the year. I continued taking evening classes through the year which were very helpful, especially the conversation classes.

Courses begin in mid-September. Engineering courses are mostly one semester long. First semester ends at Christmas, and first semester exams are in January. Second semester begins in mid January and goes until mid May. Second semester exams begin mid May and go through the end of June. Some first semester courses will delay the exam until second semester. Then in August is "second session", for re-taking exams not passed the first time around. Second session exams are generally oral, and it is fairly common for students to have a few exams to re-take. Other courses may have modified schedules; some are full year, some are 3/4 year. The main vacations are Christmas (2 weeks), and Easter (2 weeks). Belgium has more holidays than the US; find out about them before you go to class and no one is there!

The main university building, at Place du 20 Aout.