Subject-Related Preparation
At RWTH you can find excellent students, good lectures and difficult exams. And of course an impressive richness and variety in resources, as for example hardware and software, professors and cooperations.
Ruirui Zhang
Studies or an Internship/Final Paper?
Do you want to take courses and exams during your stay at RWTH Aachen? Or would you prefer to conduct a project or internship or write your final paper under a professor at our university? You should ask yourself these basic questions before applying. You can also combine both options. We recommend doing this over a stay for two-semesters.
Preparing Your Study Visit: Useful Information for Course Selection
If you would like to take courses at RWTH, you must create a Learning Agreement for your application. Here you will enter the courses you want to attend while studying at the University. The Learning Agreement does not mean you have bindingly registered for the courses – you will only do so when you are in Aachen. However, the courses must meet your subject and language requirements. Please find out about the language requirements for exchange students in advance.
Some Master's courses of study at RWTH are taught entirely in English, but the majority of the Bachelor's programs are offered in German. Almost all faculties offer some modules in English. The modules are rotated, meaning they are repeated every summer or winter semester. Please note that we reserve the right to make changes.
A prerequisite for participating in the modules you have selected is that they are offered by the faculty that your home university has an exchange agreement with. Students from partner universities that have a university-wide agreement with us are not bound by this regulation.
To find out whether there is an English-language offer for your discipline at RWTH Aachen University, you can find the courses offered in your course of study at RWTH Aachen University according to our instructions and filter the results according to the language of instruction.
How to Find Courses and Modules - and Filter According to Different Teaching Languages
1. Access the Course Catalog
Go to RWTHonline, continue without logging in, and click on Courses.
2. Choosing the Right Semester
Select the semester in which you are expected to study at RWTH Aachen University - if this is not yet possible, please select the previous winter or summer semester, depending on whether you are coming in the winter or summer semester.
3. Finding the Right Course Catalogue for Your Course of Study
Select your course of study under Curriculum. Several options will be displayed, so please select either the corresponding "Bachelor 1 subject" or "Master 1 subject". Exception: Medicine – here Medicine Staatsexamen, Model Course of Study, with the most recent year, which is indicated in square brackets.
4. Finding Courses in Your Desired Language of Instruction
The courses can be filtered by language of instruction using the filter function. Some courses have the same name, but different course numbers - these courses belong to the same module. The second line indicates the type of course. The most common course types are VL (lecture), UE (exercise), or SE (seminar). The results can also be filtered by course type.
5. Information on Individual Courses and Modules
By clicking on a course you can find more information, e.g. description, information about ETCS, etc. Scroll down to Status within Curriculum and search for your course of study. Next to the course of study you will find a blue year which you can click on. A list appears in which the selected course is highlighted. The heading that is marked with an orange cross is the name of the module the course belongs to - in the same row you will find a symbol that looks like an open book and will take you to a description of the module by clicking on it.
Project Work or Final Paper
You have the possibility to write your final paper or work on a project under the supervision of a RWTH Aachen professor. To do so, it is important you find an Academic Supervisor at our university early on. This means you need to find a supervisor before you submit your application. In Germany, students typically find a supervisor on their own.
When we receive your application, we check and see if your supervisor is at RWTH Aachen. If you are completing a project work or internship, you must also submit a Learning Agreement, which must be signed by your faculty and your international office or a Training Agreement, which must be signed by your supervisor at RWTH Aachen directly.
If you are working on a project and are not part of an exchange or mobility program but rather have independently sought out a supervisor for your project without a partnership agreement with RWTH, please apply as a Visiting Project Student.