Before exchange

Contact for organizational matters

For organizational matters beyond the academic program like enrolment, language course, receiving a Student-ID or accommodation, please contact

ERASMUS Incoming Office

Ms. Alexandra Braye

Seminarstr. 2

69117 Heidelberg

Tel. +49 6221 54-12731

E-mail: erasmus-koordinierung@zuv.uni-heidelberg.de & incoming-erasmus@zuv.uni-heidelberg.de

Further important information can also be found in the infopackage sent to you by the International Office or in the IPW Fact Sheet. Please also visit the International Office's Webpage.

Contact at the IPW

If you are sent to the Institute of Political Science (IPW) by your home institution, our Erasmus team provides guidance with regard to the academic part of your stay abroad. Our team consists of the Erasmus Departmental Coordinator, Dr. Delia Dumitrescu and our Erasmus assistants, Emily Burkhart & Jonas Birkholz.

In case of questions regarding the academic part of your stay, please contact:

Emily Burkhart & Jonas Birkholz

Erasmus Assistants

Room 03.023

Bergheimer Str. 58

69115 Heidelberg

E-mail: erasmus@ipw.uni-heidelberg.de

Online and In-Person Appointments can be arranged via e-mail

Learning Agreements

The Learning Agreement, which has already been signed by the coordinator at your home university, is transferred to the coordinator here in Heidelberg via the Online Learning Agreement System. The agreement will then also be approved and signed by the Institute of Political Science.

If this process via the Online Learning Agreement is not possible for any reason, please send an email to the Erasmus coordinator Dr Delia Dumitrescu. Please note, however, that this should only be necessary in exceptional cases.

Course Selection

Course registration at the University Heidelberg in general should either be done online or in person in the first week of lectures, depending on the department. At our department, course selection is done online via the HeiCO-Online-System. If you do not yet have your Uni-ID and Passwort, you can already access HeiCo and check the course catalogue here.

You are free to choose courses from other faculties depending on the criteria of your home university.  If you would like to choose courses from other faculties, please be sure to inform on registration, ECTS-points, deadlines etc. on your own via the course catalogue or the lecturers. In case you still have questions, please contact us by the e-mail address listed above.

To enroll for courses online, you will need your Student-ID, which you should have received by the International Office. If this is not the case, please contact the International Office.

At the Institute for Political Science (IPW) courses can basically be chosen freely. The commented lecture calendar of the institute can be found on the HeiCO web page presumably from end of July for the following Autumn Semester and from mid of February for the following spring semester. Courses of the IPW are listed in the Department of Economics and Social Sciences.

For more information on Course Selection via HeiCo, please visit Course Enrollment at the IPW.

Course Structure at the IPW

Both at the undergraduate level and the graduate level, one full module consists of either one lecture and one seminar in the same field of study (e.g. International Relations) or two seminars in the same field of study.

Normally, Erasmus students are also free to attend only one section of the module. Some seminars (mainly those in the “Pflichtmodule” section at the undergraduate level) complement one another, so that it would be reasonable to attend both of them.

Please get in contact with your Home University for their criteria in which and how many courses / modules you should complete during your stay.

Credit System at the IPW

If not indicated else, for graded certifications the following ECTS-points are given by the Institute for Political Science:

Examination Registration 

You must register online (via HeiCO) not only for the courses but also for every examination. Presentations must be registered around the beginning of November (for the winter semester) resp. the beginning of May (for the summer semester), and term papers and essays by February resp. July the latest. Please be aware that these dates can change. For written examinations, the last chance to sign in/out is one week before the exam.

Course Requirements

Normally, no ECTS-points will be given for lectures or seminars without an examination. Examinations will either consist of presentations, a written or oral exam or a term paper. In most of the courses, you will be required to both holding a presentation and writing an exam or a term paper by the end of the semester. There might be some exceptions, where credits are given for regular attendance, please ensure to inform yourself on the credits obtained in the courses you have selected in the first weeks of the semester.

Grading System at the IPW

Grading is based on the following system:

Transcript of Records

For receiving a transcript of records after your stay, two steps are to be taken:

STEP 1: Fill in the “List of Courses” form

Please fill in the form “List of courses”

• by 31st July if your stay ends with the Summer Semester
• by 31st January if your stay ends with the Winter Semester

The form can also be found on our webpage in the “Documents” section and shall contain all the information as indicated on the form.

STEP 2: Hand in your certificates for courses visited at other departments than the political science department (Scheine)

All courses not attended at our department (IPW), will need to be certified by a written document, called “Schein”. Each institute or faculty has blank forms of written certificates, which can be received from their secretary’s office, online on their webpage or directly from the lecturer.

Please collect all these Scheine and send them to us in one e-mail at the end of your stay.

Important Information for receiving your Transcript of Records

• try to submit your term paper as early as possible
• let your teacher know at least one month before the end of the semester that you need your grade earlier or by a certain date.

Any further questions?

If you have any further questions this page could not answer, please do not hesitate to e-mail our Erasmus team. You can also arrange an in-person or online meeting if you’d rather like to talk to us face-to-face.

Further information on the Erasmus program of the Political Science Department can be found on this webpage.

Further information on the Political Science Department can be found here.