Courses, Credits, and Grades

Course Load

A course load for Copenhagen students is usually three courses, depending on the number of credits per course.  Dartmouth students will carry a similar course load.  Some departments may not allow you to take courses unless you have already had a course in their field prior to arriving in Copenhagen or if you have not fulfilled the prerequisites at Dartmouth.  For example, if you never took a sociology course before, the Department of Sociology at the University of Copenhagen may not let you register for their courses.  Also, some courses may be more advanced than their titles indicate.  This may be especially true for courses in the economics department.  If you are unsure about whether a course is too advanced for you, check with the international coordinators of each department.  Finally, because Danish university students normally complete their Bachelor’s degree in three years, first year Master’s level courses are sometimes equivalent in difficulty to fourth year Bachelor’s courses at Dartmouth.  Students from Dartmouth may take first year Master’s courses at Copenhagen University if they have the appropriate prerequisites.  But again students should be careful not to get in over their heads in such courses.

Transfer Credits

Students can receive up to three credits at Dartmouth for work completed successfully at Copenhagen. You will receive 1 credit at Dartmouth for every 7.5 ECTS worth of credits at Copenhagen. (ECTS is the way Danes count credits for courses.) If you take 22.5 ECTS worth of credits, you will recieve three credits at Dartmouth.

Obtaining Transfer Credit Approval

Dartmouth requires students to obtain written approval of courses they wish to take at other universities in order for them to receive transfer credit for these courses.  This includes the Dartmouth-Copenhagen exchange program. This must be done before the course is taken.  Do not wait until the last minute to do this.  It involves obtaining the appropriate transfer credit forms from the Registrar’s Office, and seeking permission for transfer credit from the relevant department.  Sociology courses are approved by the Sociology Department; government courses by the Government Department; and so on.  At the department’s discretion, students must often provide a copy of the course syllabus from Denmark and share it with the department from which transfer credit approval is being sought.  This may take weeks to do so do not wait until the last minute.  Grades received at Copenhagen are not recorded on the Dartmouth transcript.  Instead, Dartmouth only records transfer credits as TR.  Courses taken TR can be used for distributive credit at Dartmouth, if approved by the relevant department.

A partial list of courses offered in Copenhagen and approved in the past for transfer credit to Dartmouth includes the following. Not all courses are necessarily available every year:

Approving Dept.                      Course Title

Socy                Sociology of Human Rights
Socy                Conflict and Peacemaking in Divided Societies
Socy                Marginalization in Society
Socy                Danish Society: Sociological Perspectives
Socy                Media Sociology
Socy                Gender, Work and Organizations
Socy                Comparative Health Policy: Regulation and Management
Socy                Changing European Welfare Systems
Socy                Health, Health Care and Promotion
Socy                Flight, Migration and Transnationalism
Socy                Danish Culture
Socy                Comparative Welfare State Research
Socy                Danish Society and Policy
Socy                Doing Identity the European Way
Socy                Globalization and its Discontents
Socy                Health in Central and Eastern Europe
Socy                International Social Welfare

Govy               Europe and America
Govy               The European Union as an International Actor
Govy               Politics and Fear: Terrorism

Anth                Danish Cultural Heritage
Anth                Economic Anthropology
Anth                Religion, Youth and Society in Africa
Anth                Migration
Anth                Political Anthropology
Anth                Medical Anthropology

Psyc                 Social Psychology I
Psyc                 Social Psychology II
Psyc                 Work Related Stress
Psyc                 Psychological Job Stress

Econ                Corporate Governance
Econ                Contract Theory and Economic Organization
Econ                Theory of Finance
Econ                Economics of the European Union
Econ                Behavioral Economics and Finance
Econ                Games and Economic Behavior
Econ                The Danish Welfare Model
Econ                History of Economic Thought: International Trade

Grades

In order for a course credit at Copenhagen to be transferred for credit at Dartmouth you must receive no less than a grade of 4. A grade of 4 is equivalent to a C at Dartmouth. The Danish system of grading uses a 7 point scale with 12 being the highest grade—one achieved by only a small fraction of students. The Danish-U.S. equivalences and performance requirements as stipulated by the University of Copenhagen are as follows:

Transcripts and Reporting Grades to Dartmouth

Grades for courses taken at the University of Copenhagen on available on-line in late January.  Transcripts with these grades are sent to the Dartmouth Registrar by about mid-March.