Message from Christina Plieschounig, the course coordinator for incoming exchange students:

You can reach me and my assistant Gernot Kubik via coursesinenglish@wu.ac.at. We would like to inform you about essential aspects regarding courses and course registration at WU.

You receive this email on the email address you provided us with, but please note that from now on, I will only contact you via your WU email address. Please familiarize yourself with your WU email account, as you are going to need it during your entire semester in Vienna. Go to https://webapp.wu.ac.at and login with the account information indicated on your nomination letter: your WU username (=”h”+WU student ID number) and your password. For further information, please refer to our tools and online services webpage.

The following information is crucial for a successful course registration at WU. Please read this email very carefully!

1. On our website, you can find all relevant information on course registration, attendance, grading, language requirements and academic life at WU.
2. Our course catalog displays courses available to exchange students. Please select summer semester 2019 to see a preliminary list of courses. Select level, language & topic to get a list of specific courses. When you click on a course, you will find a brief overview of the most essential information like ECTS credits, as well as a short description. The link to the syllabus, which includes the schedule, will be available as of January 15, 2019. Thus, you can check now which courses will be offered and you will be able to create your timetable once the syllabi are online mid-January.
3. The link to the syllabi will lead you to LEARN@WU, our central learning platform for students. Again, contents will be available as of January 15, 2019. I strongly recommend that you familiarize yourself with this platform.

You are free to choose from all the courses listed in our course catalog according to your level (bachelor/master). Thus, you are responsible for creating your own individual timetable. Our course registration system LPIS cannot avoid course time conflicts, so it is your responsibility to only register for courses that do not overlap. Since this is a huge challenge for many students, you need some flexibility regarding courses!

1. Students register for courses online, through WU’s course registration system LPIS. Course registration starts on January 24, 2019 at exactly 2 p.m. - 14:00 Vienna time and ends on February 10, 2019 at midnight. After that, it is no longer possible to register or deregister courses via LPIS on your own and you will have to contact us via coursesinenglish@wu.ac.at if you want to make any changes.
2. Watch our video tutorial on course registration at https://www.wu.ac.at/io/academics. Get familiar with LPIS and try to log in before course registration starts.
3. Course registration is based on the first-come, first-served principle. It is crucial to register punctually, since places are limited and popular courses will fill up within seconds! Therefore, I strongly advise you to consider at least 1-2 alternatives for each course.
4. The registration period for you as exchange students starts before the registration period for regular WU students. Therefore, the registration period indicated in the syllabi is not relevant to you - registration for all courses starts on the same day! A few courses are offered exclusively to exchange students, but most courses have specific quotas reserved for incomings.
5. Please note that we cannot guarantee a spot in a specific course. If you have particular requirements from your home university, please contact us as soon as possible!
6. WU has no minimum requirement for the amount of ECTS credits taken. Please make sure, however, that you fulfil the requirements of your home university. You can register for courses worth a maximum of 36 ECTS credits, excluding language courses.
7. If you decide to drop a course that you have signed up for, please deregister as soon as possible. If you are not able to deregister via LPIS anymore (after February 10), please contact us via coursesinenglish@wu.ac.at. Please note that it is only possible to deregister as long as the course has not yet started.

WU’s Business Language Center offers German language courses at all levels. These courses will take place during the semester and are open to everyone.

• All but complete beginners have to take a placement test. Registration will begin in February 2019.
• These courses are fee-based and independent from other courses here at WU. Upon completion, you will receive a certificate stating ECTS credits, but please note that these courses do not show up on your transcript.
• Please find further information as well as the provisional schedule at https://www.wu.ac.at/en/blc/ 
• I kindly ask you to send all questions regarding German language courses to blc@wu.ac.at.

1. Students are pre-enrolled in University of Vienna (Universität Wien, in short: UW) where one can take a large variety of classes in the liberal arts and social sciences, for example in German literature, political science, molecular biology, history etc.. Our pre-enrollment work will cause some automatic emails from the University of Vienna to your Illinois student accounts. You do NOT need to take any action, simply forward the emails to Alexandra Pfefferle.
2. We will accompany you to a Matriculation/Information session on Monday, February 11, 2019 at 2pm in the University of Vienna International Office. Matriculation will be followed by a course registration tutoring meeting with program assistant Kyle Schmude.
3. The course offerings for spring 2019 will be published in January 2019. As a pre-departure preparatory task, we recommend to browse the course directory from spring 2018 to get a first impression: https://ufind.univie.ac.at/en/vvz.html?semester=2018S You can also search for course titles and courses offered in English – see detailed instructions below.

University of Vienna: Course search instructions

• Search for course titles, using key words here: https://ufind.univie.ac.at/en/index.html
• When searching for courses offered in English with key words, please add "lang:en" to the keyword you enter in the search field.
• As you will notice, the listings differ from those at Illinois. Here is an example with some explanation:

 100006 VO Austrian Studies (2018S)

1. This is a lecture course (VO) and is offered in English.

2. Follow this link to an explanation of course types at the Universität Wien: We recommend that students select from these types: VO, PS, PÜ or Ü and KU.  Seminars (SE) are for students with advanced knowledge on the course topic.  We will discuss this type more on-site in Vienna.

3. When one clicks on the course link for 100006, one sees the following: 4.00 ECTS (2.00SWS). 2.00 SWS indicates that it is a two-hour course. That is the norm at the University of Vienna. Illinois students who successfully complete such courses receive 3 hours of Illinois credit.