Introduction
After a little shorter summer vacation, since in Belgium the academic year only starts at the end of September, on September 5th, I had my first classes. In this post, I will try to explain some differences between KU Leuven and Columbia, however I must admit, after a couple of weeks, I still sometimes get puzzled by how things work here.
The First Two Weeks
After the orientation sessions and receiving the Columbia ID last week, we had access to the buildings where we needed to be. Since everyone had an advising session and there had been open labs, we also did discover the campus enough to find our way around. Therefore, everyone reached their classrooms in one piece and even on time for the first classes.
The first two weeks are referred to as the shopping period here, since during this time it is allowed to take more than four classes, which is considered to be a full load. The point is to figure out which classes you actually want to do for the entire semester, since there are so many options. I was pretty sure which ones I wanted to take already, but still followed six courses for the first time to be certain. In the end, my final choices became:
- System-On-Chip Platforms by prof. Luca Carloni
- Millimeter-Wave IC Design by prof. Harish Krishnaswamy
- Principles of RF and Microwave Measurement by prof. Shahriar Shahramian
- Topics in VLSI Systems Design: Modern Power Management IC’s by prof. Xin Zhang
I am very happy with these choices, even though after a couple of classes they seem pretty challenging. Of course that’s a good thing, since I am here to learn. In the RF and Microwave Measurement class for example, we already started designing a bandpass filter at 2.5 GHz, which we will have to build on a PCB and fully measure later this semester.
We also received the electrical engineering department orientation day picture, as you can see, there’s a lot of students, since these are only the new starters:
Have you found me? Hint: I am close to the middle and click on the picture for a higher resolution.
The Educational System
The biggest differences between the courses at Columbia University and KU Leuven is the way they are graded. At KU Leuven most courses are only based on a single large exam in the end, and even if there are graded projects, they will mostly be worth 10% to 20% of the total grade (50% is very rare).
At Columbia most courses have homework assignments, a project and a final exam. Most courses also add a midterm exam, which takes place towards the end of October. This results in a workload that is more distributed over the full semester, because everything gets graded mostly equally, which results in you earning most of your total grade before the final exam. During the first class, we already got some small homework assigned and after the second week, there were already quite big assignments to do.
A couple of paragraphs earlier, I briefly mentioned we had an advising session. This was also a new concept for me: everyone gets a department professor assigned to be your advisor. This is then a person we can talk to, to help us determine which courses would be best to take or how to get in some classes. That is because some classes here require permission from the professor to register. I am happy to say that I got in every class I wanted to take.
This concludes my first experiences with classes at Columbia, since this post was a little school focused, next one will be more about activities in the city. Here’s a sneak peek of the Empire State Building at night, after going to a bar with some friends:
