Week 17: My Academic Experience at UC3M
Finals are in full swing, making it a great time to share and reflect on my academic experience at UC3M.
In all honesty, I wouldn't recommend doing this program unless you're willing to put in serious effort for your classes. UC3M is hard, and people aren't lying when they say it's equivalent to UMich. In my experience the teaching quality wasn't great, and the content in my classes was pretty difficult. It's not uncommon for students, whether local or international, to fail. It might be better if you can avoid core classes as much as possible and focus on electives, but that unfortunately wasn't possible for me.
I’m currently a junior studying Industrial and Operations Engineering, and I used this semester to take my tech electives and finish humanities. I took Basic Spanish I, Industrial Organization, Financial Management, and Intro to Engineering Management. Everything except Spanish counted as an upper division course.
Spanish was very participation based with two big homeworks and two exams. Financial Management and Engineering Management both had a large project, a few midterms, and a final. Industrial Organization was mostly exam based.
The workload for my courses really varied, and was very different compared to UMich. At home we have constant assignments and deadlines we need to keep track of, whereas here learning is a bit more self disciplined. There was usually one homework assignment every 1-2 weeks, and it either counted for a very small portion of the grade or not at all.
Again this varied by class. Spanish was through the international school, which has a very strict attendance policy. You’re allowed 3 unexcused absences which will reduce your grade, and an automatic fail on the 4th. This doesn’t include excused absences however, which need to be justified with documentation.
For Industrial Organization, attendance was required and was a small portion of the grade. Attendance was taken on two random days throughout the semester for lecture, and every week for discussion.
For Engineering Management, while attendance wasn’t strictly required, there was a participation grade which was mostly obtained through interactions with the professor and being present.
Attendance was not required for Financial Management.
There’s obviously some leeway with missing a few classes here and there and having documentation with excused absences, but the attendance policy totally depends on the class.
All classes will have a few midterms that aren’t worth too much, but final exams worth 50-60%. Grades are split up into two categories here: Continuous Evaluation which is homeworks, midterms, projects, attendance, and Final Exam. Some courses may require you to have a minimum CE grade (usually 35%) to even sit for the final exam, and some have required minimum grades on the final exam (usually 40%) to pass the course.
Personally, exams are not my strong suit, so this gave me a lot of anxiety. Most of my midterms went fine with some being really bad, but I just took my first exam a few days ago and I’m still awaiting the results.
The UC3M grading scale goes from 0-10. A 5 is considered passing, which is what UMich requires you to have as well. All of my courses this semester were pass/fail, so my only concern was getting a grade of 5.
To my knowledge the transfer system is essentially pass/no record, so if you get 5+ the course will show up on your transcript as a T, and if you fail it won’t show up at all.
The scheduling process at UC3M absolutely SUCKS, especially as an international student. We get the last day for registration, and you’re fighting with hundreds of other study abroad students to get the classes you need/want. It’s very similar to backpacking in Wolverine Access, but arguably worse because the website just crashes and there’s nothing you can do about it. This unfortunately happened to me and almost all the sections I wanted got filled while I couldn’t even access the website. This is why it’s really important to have lots and lots of backup options when choosing your courses.
Somehow I got the last couple seats in a few classes, and reached out to professors directly to get my schedule switched around a little bit. If this doesn’t work out, you’re encouraged to still attend the class you want for a few weeks, and hope the professor will fill out an override request to keep you in it.
You have the option to take courses taught in English or Spanish, but I wouldn’t recommend the latter unless you’re absolutely fluent. The English classes have students from all over the world however, which I found to be really cool. The majority are American, but there’s lots of Erasmus and other international students. I met people from South Korea, Morocco, Italy, France, etc.
Schedules can really vary by person. UC3M offers classes Monday through Friday, though most students try to opt for 3-4 days/week. I personally got lucky and got my classes to be Monday-Thursday.
Since most of you are probably engineering, you’ll be taking courses on two campuses, similar to UMich. Getafe is the main campus which has more of the humanities related majors, and Leganes is the engineering campus. I’d highly recommend scheduling classes on the same campus at the same time of day. For example, I took my Getafe classes in the morning, and Leganes class in the afternoon with a lunch break in between. There’s a bus that connects the two campuses, but that commute is also like 30-40 minutes and would be really annoying to keep going back and forth.
Similar to UMich, the main lecture is taught by a professor and the discussion is led by some sort of TA. They also hold regular office hours.
In my experience, Spanish instructors are a lot more blunt and sometimes mean. Two of my professors would lock you out of class if you’re more than 10 minutes late, and call you out in front of everyone. One professor publicly called a girl lazy for not paying attention during lecture. During our final finance presentations, the TA straight up told a group their project and presentation sucked. Not saying this to scare anyone, but the fear of embarrassment definitely forced me to lock in a little more. One of my TAs was really nice though, and I enjoyed talking to him and getting help during office hours.
The Commute:
In all honesty, this was probably one of my least favorite parts of UC3M. It’s located in Getafe/Leganes, which is well outside the Madrid city center. CEA CAPA apartments are typically in very popular areas like Sol, Malasana, etc., so the commute turns out to be 40-60 minutes depending on the day. I live in Bilbao, so I take the metro to Sol or Atocha, and then switch to the Cercanias (suburban railway). It becomes muscle memory, but it’s still annoying when I’m used to a quick commute in Ann Arbor. I usually leave at least an hour before my class starts.
While the majority of my classes were on Getafe, I still spent equal time on Leganes and preferred it. Buildings on both are labeled by numbers, but they’re not in order so it gets really confusing when trying to find your classes. Luckily there are maps on campus and online.
The Getafe campus is much bigger, which sometimes made the commute more annoying because it added a 15 minute walk to my already long commute. Buildings are very renovated however, and there’s lots of nice cafes, libraries, and study spaces.
Leganes was a lot easier to figure out because it’s a bit smaller. I enjoyed studying in the library during my lunch break, and would spend lots of time in the main cafe. They have an amazing deal where you can get coffee and a pastry or churros for 1.80, and I took advantage of it like twice a week. They supposedly also have great lunch food, but I never tried it since I don’t eat meat.
Balancing School and Fun:
This is something I really struggled with. Obviously when you come abroad you wanna explore the city, do fun things, travel a bunch, and whatever else, but unfortunately you’re here to do school. I’m not a morning person and skip class very often at home, so I was constantly exhausted from early classes and the commute.
I think it’s important to prioritize your rest, as much as you want to do everything. Travelling is really exhausting, so it’s ok to have a few lazy days here and there. I also wouldn’t let myself do anything fun until really important assignments were completed. With studying, I would hold myself accountable the week of the midterm and it usually ended up being fine. I would also study/work on assignments in the airport, on trains, etc. As long as you hold yourself accountable and meet deadlines, balancing the two isn’t that difficult.
This was obviously a very long post, but I hope it helps someone out there with their course planning. As always, feel free to reach out with any questions!
Industrial and Operations Engineering
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
