The Freshmen - Jacobs University

How is the grading system in the university?

the grading system is in a scale of 1 to 5 where 1.0 is the best grade you can get and then decreasing by 0.33 until 2.0 and so on until you reach 5 which is the worse grade you can get. Nevertheless in some subjects your grades are percentages (specially in the engineering school) but at the very end they will be transformed to the 1 to 5 grading system.

What is the grade to fail?

The grade or percentage in some cases to fail an exam of a certain class is determined by the professor of the class itself but the general failing grade is anything less than 4.33 e.g. 4.67 and 5.

What happens if I fail one subject?

Well it really depends. For some courses you have pre-requisite courses that you need to previously approve in order to be able to take the course so if you fail you would have to either not take the next course or get a pre-requisite waver in the registrar’s or take an exam at the beginning of the semester to prove that you can take the following course. If the course you failed is not a pre-requisite for any other course then you just take it in the next fall or spring semester depending on which semester it is offered.

How do I know which courses to take?

There is a recommended plan of courses for every major in the university though you should know that it is not mandatory is just a recommended way in which you should take your courses. Nevertheless in some engineering majors its really good to follow the plan because the courses are build upon the previous one so it would be very hard and in some cases even not possible to take a course if another one is not approved first. In the first year you shouldn’t take too many courses because it is way harder than you think it is so just take the necessary courses and then see how good you can deal with those first.

What is the other school elective that I am meant to take and those USCs?

Jacobs University has a transdiciplinary approach which means that you need to have a certain amount of courses from the other school (if you are in the social one then from the engineering and vice versa) in order to graduate at the end of your major. Nevertheless you should consider that in each school some courses are harder than others and if your major is already hard you shouldn’t complicate your life taking a really hard course and you should take something you like because otherwise you wouldn’t be interested in working for it. A USC is a university study course, a course that involves many subjects and that will teach you to work with students from different majors and learn things from the other majors that you normally wouldn’t. Again you need a certain amount of USCs to graduate at the end of your major.