Studying at Nova

For the past week or so, school has kept me surprisingly busy with group works and pressing deadlines. With the last one behind me and four exams approaching next week, I thought it would be a good time to write something about the actual reason I am in Lisbon currently - exchange studies at Universidade Nova de Lisboa, more precisely at Nova School of Business and Economics.  

The business school is located at Nova's Campolide campus, close to the metro station São Sebastião along the red and blue lines. From what I have heard, the building is a former monastery turned military building turned university, but it looks nice from the outside and has all the necessary equipment on the inside. Classrooms are quite ok, cafeterias serve simple and affordable food, wifi is available throughout the building and the print shop offers some very beneficial services. Some classrooms even have AC which is a great plus in the warm weather that Lisbon keeps having.

At NOVA, most Master's level courses last half a semester and are worth 3,5 ECTS while some last the whole semester  being worth 7 ECTS. It seems like quite a lot of school and work each course compared to the 6 ECTS I receive from half-semester courses back at Aalto University, but still I chose to do only half semester courses. The main reason was that none of the topics of whole semester courses really interested me, and as it turns out the workload is very do-able and comparable to the amount of ECTS the courses are worth (at least in the courses that I am taking... I have heard other versions from people taking many economics or finance courses).

The course selection process at NOVA is somewhat different from Aalto - selections are done on two given dates on a "first come, first serve" basis meaning that you have to reserve this specific time to be ready by the computer to rush through selections in order to get a place. Sounds kind of rough, but I actually prefer it compared to Aalto's lottery system in which you have to wait for weeks after which, depending on the amount of students and your luck, you may or may not get a place in the course. At NOVA you just have to be well prepared with a pre-planned schedule when the day of course selections comes. This year's selection was done in September after we had our first info session.

Quite a majestic scene on my walk home from school

In the selection, I got all but one of the courses that I wanted and was able to build a nice Tuesday to Thursday schedule meaning that I have long weekends throughout the semester. The majority of the courses I have had so far have been interesting and at a good level. Lecture attendance is quite often required and you can only skip a few classes but since I have long weekends it hasn't really been a problem. What has been hard to get used to is the late schedule - many of my courses start in the late afternoon and a few times I have left a lecture as late as 10 pm. Each of the courses has had pretty much the same evaluation structure: a groupwork/presentation, an individual assignment/class participation, and a written exam. Some professors seem to put a lot of emphasis on participation, sometimes up to 20%, which can be annoying mainly because local students are seeking good grades and therefore talk in class a lot, sometimes having something relevant to say and sometimes not so much. 

My exams start on Monday and last until Friday. After that I'll be able to write more specifically about each of the courses I took and tell a little more about the workload, lectures and assignments.