By: Manan Mehta Semester: 6th Sem ( 3rd year spring)

application process:

University mappings + cpi based selection. One more person was selected apart from me.

Why this particular university/program?

This university allowed me to take a look into the scandinavian culture. Also, it is a well reputed university in terms of academics and compares almodt equally to iitb in qs rankings. I also considered epfl, and kth. The offer came in within a week or two after the submission deadlines

Was there a stipend or scholarship involved?

No

What expenses were covered?

Travel is supposed to be covered

Did you live on-campus or off-campus?:

Off-campus

How were courses different from IITB?

Structure- they differed in the sense they were more applied and the applications were generally better thought out than most project based courses at iitb.

Difficulty- similar in terms of content.

Grading- absolute grading. Hence it is necessary to get good marks, last moment studies could negatively affect graded and a continuous study based approach helps.

What was the language of instruction – was it an issue? How was the academic pressure compared to home?

No, everything was in english. There is not a lot of academic pressure, but it also varies course to course. Some courses were such that there was only an endsem for evaluations and that could be a deal breaker for some while good for others.

Overall, the coursework induced less academic pressure within me compared to iitb

Academics & Learning Style:

Some of them were 2 hours teaching followed by 2 hours of coding/ assignment discussion/ tutorials.

There were guest lectures and specially industrial lectures where people from industry visited to talk about the work being done and so on within classes.

I had taken a non mapping course- which took me to the seaside and the class manoeuvred autonomous marine robots.

Workload & Travel Balance:

4-5 hours of focussed weekly study is plenty. Plenty of time to travel: most of the classes have no attendance — you can plan trips accordingly. In the spring semester you have the easter break that allows you for more time to travel. But dtu is not as good for travelling since denmark is quite far away from most european countries.( it has only germany as the land border - you’ll have to take flights- meaning you’ll have to plan trips much in advance which is not possible coz of assignments and stuff. Apart from that travelling by train is an option- but it takes a large amount of time - 17 hours or so and it kind of eats up a day of travel.)

Campus Life & Cultural Experience:

Local students are pretty laxed in general. They are very welcoming. They even have an introduction week specially for exchange students to get everyone on board and explain the culture and stuff.

They are predominantly a christian country so no major celebratory festivals.

They have a lotta drinking parties and stuff going on throughout the semesters

Personal & Career Growth:

Personal growth and cultural sensitivity- learnt cooking, managing an entire solo household, learnt a lot about the local danish culture. Dtu is a lot more international in the sense, i rarely met a lot of danes but more of international students in the program i was in.

Did good quality rrsearch under some professors over there. Internships, jobs, further studies is yet to be seen.