During Your Stay Receiving Credits

Since exchange students enjoy much more freedom regarding their choice of courses than degree candidates, and often attend courses in several departments, transcripts cannot be issued automatically in most cases. The information below will guide you through the procedure of receiving a Transcript.

As you complete your courses, you will either receive individual “Scheine” (course certificates), or a transcript from a specific department (which will only list the courses taken at this department), or both, depending on your course selection.

These documents signify that you have fulfilled the respective course requirements. The course title, the course requirement and the number of credits awarded will be mentioned, and often an additional grade.

Each course comes with a specific number of credits (LP = short for Leistungspunkte or ECTS),

1 LP corresponds to 30 hours of work (hours in the classroom, work before and after a course, homework, preparation of in-class presentations, papers, exams etc.). Thus, the amount of LP awarded for a course is an indicator of the workload that comes with it and may vary considerably from course to course.

The average workload for degree candidates is 30 LP per semester (this may be a good orientation for you when considering the number of courses you should choose per semester).

The grading scale ranges from 1.0 (very good) to 5.0 (fail).

Please note that grades are not automatically given. Especially lectures (Vorlesungen) may come with a certificate of attendance only. For other courses, you may only receive a “pass” grade.

If your home university only gives credits for graded courses, we recommend that you speak to the instructor(s) at the beginning of the semester and arrange to receive a graded Schein.

To help with the evaluation and transfer of credits, the International Relations Office will translate your individual achievements into one single transcript and send it to your home institution.

Here’s the procedure you need to follow:

Please collect your Scheine and/or departmental transcripts at the end of term, and present them to your exchange coordinator at the International Relations Office before leaving Heidelberg.

Should a Schein or transcript not be available by the time you need to leave, please arrange for these documents to be sent to your exchange coordinator by the respective faculty member or department as soon as they become available. In addition, please provide your exchange coordinator with an overview of the courses we should wait to receive grades for before sending out the transcript. 

Note: Heidelberg University does not keep record of the courses exchange students attend. Therefore, it is very complicated, if not impossible, to provide a transcript after you have left Heidelberg, unless you follow the procedure outlined above.