Courses

You are required to maintain a full-time course load through your time in New Zealand. A full-time course load as defined by Arcadia University is 12-16 U.S. credits per semester. Courses can be found on Victoria University Wellington’s website. Engineering courses are listed here.

• Please review your courses with your academic or study abroad advisor to ensure they will transfer back to your home school and that you are following your home school’s policies.
• Please be flexible – we can’t guarantee specific courses. If your participation in the program depends on a particular course, be sure to make a note on your online course form.
• Please indicate 7-10 courses, including alternates, on your academic preferences form that you are pre-approved for and can take while abroad. In the event of scheduling changes, time conflicts, prerequisites or cancellations, this ensures that you will be prepared to finalize your courses once overseas.

Course and Department Restrictions

Carefully review the list of course restrictions to see what courses are not available to study abroad students.

Limited Entry Courses

Some courses are defined as Limited Entry and/or require supplemental application materials that must be submitted by December in the year prior to enrollment. Most commonly, courses designated as CREW, WRIT and some FILM and THEA courses are Limited Entry. Please view the list of course restrictions linked above to see which courses in particular are Limited Entry.

• CREW and WRIT courses are highly competitive and require a writing sample.
• Please note: CREW courses are not graded. Students receive an ungraded pass or ungraded fail. Students should be aware of this and check that it is acceptable with their home university before selecting CREW courses. Arcadia does not recommend students take more than one CREW course per term.

Choosing Your Courses

A full-time course load is equivalent to three or four courses and 55 or 60 points at Victoria depending on how many New Zealand points each course you have chosen is worth.

In the Victoria course catalog,

• Choose a subject from the drop-down menu or use the search function with a keyword.
• In the "Narrow Your Search" column, be sure to select the relevant trimester, year and course level.
  • Spring students should look at Trimester 1 (labeled as ⅓ in the course catalog)
    Fall students should look at Trimester 2 courses (labeled ⅔ in the course catalog)
  • 100, 200 and 300 levels are undergraduate courses and open to study abroad students. 100 level courses are introductory while 200 and 300 level courses are advanced and often suitable for upper division credit transfer.
  • 400 level and above are not open to study abroad students.
• Make sure that your form includes all of the courses you are interested in or have been approved to take by your homeschool.

Special Nomenclature

Enrollment Process

The faculty will review your transcript for pre-requisites to determine your course approvals. Once your courses have been reviewed your program manager will email you with the outcome. If you have 3 courses or more that are approved you must respond to your program manager with the courses you want to enroll in within 48 hours. If you have 3 courses approved Victoria will not review you for any more until you arrive on campus. If you do not have 3 courses approved you must send your program manager additional courses to be considered for approval.

Once your program manager has the courses you want to enroll in they will complete your online enrollment. Once the online enrollment is complete nothing can be changed until you arrive on campus.

Course enrollments will not be finalized until students are on campus. The academic preferences form students submit to Arcadia prior to departure does not guarantee approval or enrollment in those courses. There is an add/drop period at the beginning of each semester that allows students to make changes to course enrollments. If you make any changes it is your responsibility to inform your home institution.

Miscellaneous

Possible additional fees for courses that include laboratory work, field excursions or theater trips. Many fine art or production courses will include a supplemental fee for the materials used in the class. Please refer to the online course description.

For studio art, graphic art, media production, drama, dance or music courses, submit a portfolio or audition tape on slides or a CD. Submit between 8-12 examples of your work. Portfolio is non-returnable. Some fine arts courses are year-long and begin in February.

Grade Scale

The following information is vetted and provided by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) on the Electronic Database for Global Education (EDGE).

Intellectual property copyright AACRAO EDGE.