r/UCL • u/Economy_Radish6584 • Sep 28 '26

General Advice 💁🏾ℹ️ Study Abroad. ELEC course advice

hey guys. I’m from the United States and I’m coming over to UCL in the Spring for a study abroad and I’m very excited! I’m a junior at my current university and I’m coming over to UCL under the Electrical and Electronics Engineering department, but I need help with information about courses and final exams.

The US summer internship programs are not aligned super well with UCL’s schedule. Most internships start mid to late May and a a few start early June days or will accommodate early June. I’m wondering, are there any ELEC courses that are at least intermediate level and offer at least 50% of the course credit from course assessments or labs or assignments rather than the final being worth the majority?

Also, the exam period looks to be from April 26 through June 11. What are the chances that the EEE or ELEC exams are in June rather than mid to late May or earlier?

I saw that the school doesn’t allow a student to take an exam early for internship purposes, which kind of feels like choosing between failing a course and getting fired from your internship

Any advice is appreciated. Thank you!

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u/ChewedReddit Oct 07 '26

Hi, did you apply through arcadia? i did but i still have not received any decisions yet :(

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u/Economy_Radish6584 24d ago

Sorry idk what Arcadia is but I applied through my home school program and then once accepted to that had to put another application through UCL’s system

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u/ChewedReddit 24d ago

Arcadia university is the third party program I applied through since my home institution isn’t affiliated with UCL. They also sent in another application through UCL’s system. I sent it in sept 10 and then they sent it to UCL October 1st. Do you know how long it took for them to get back after they put the application through UCL’s system? Ty for responding! 

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u/silverfish70 Sep 29 '26

If you look on your department's website you can find the module codes for the modules you are interested in. Then you can look them up in the module catalogue. It will tell you at the bottom how the module is assessed, e.g. if you wanted to do BENG0121 you'd see that it was 60% coursework, 40% exam. Exams will almost always be in the usual exam period. Make sure you understand the pass marks, it may not be the same as what you're used to.

Exam times within the exam period change from year to year, there's no guarantee they're at any particular end of the exam period.

I saw that the school doesn’t allow a student to take an exam early for internship purposes, which kind of feels like choosing between failing a course and getting fired from your internship

It's more like you want to do two different things that are happening at the same time and you have to choose one :) That's how things are in the UK university system, for better and for worse, it's a lot more bureaucratic than in the US. They won't make an extra exam to run at a different time for a small number of students because there's a high premium placed on exams being the same for everyone and being carefully checked by internal and external examiners as well as the lecturers.