For information about where you can go for Study Abroad, please see the Where can I study? section of our webpages.
Unequivocally no. Students can only choose to study abroad at one our partner universities listed on the Go Abroad pages.
For information about the application process, please visit the Application process section of our Modern Languages and Cultures Year Abroad Webpages.
The deadline for applications to Study Abroad is mid-December. This is for those who wish to study abroad the following academic year. For more information about the application process, please visit the Application process section of our Modern Languages and Cultures Year Abroad Webpages.
The allocation of places at partner universities is decided solely based on first-year grade average. Where there is competition for places and students have exactly the same marks, another form of decision-making may be implemented (such as looking at how the students ranked their choices).
If all decisions are relatively simple, we will endeavour to get back to you by the end of January to inform you of your allocated placement. If there are any complexities, it may take a little longer.
If you are studying abroad for a year (not Russia), you will be put on the SML3020 module. If you are splitting your placement studying and working, you will be on SML3025. If you are working abroad for the whole year, or studying in Russia for the full year, you will be put on SML3010. Please also see the Modern Languages Year Abroad ELE page for more details.
Yes, although this will double the amount of paperwork required from you. You also need to check the term dates of the universities to be sure there is no clash, especially with exam periods.
Yes, Modern Languages and Cultures students can split the year studying for one semester and working for the other if they wish. However, it will be your responsibility to ensure that the dates of each placement do not clash if you go down this route.
Unfortunately, we are currently unable to offer support for students wanting to take part in placements over the summer, in terms of locating the placements. However, you can find information on summer schools on the Global Opportunities Outbound pages.
This depends where you study and how long for. Please see the What can I study? section for more details.
The modules that you choose should relate to your Modern Languages and Cultures degree at Exeter, be adequately stimulating and challenging, and should not be available at Exeter (therefore widening your knowledge of the subject area). That said, you may take up to 25% of your modules in an academic discipline outside of your home discipline, as long as the host university allows this and it is taught in the target language. Please see the What can I study? section for more details.
You should aim to take modules from level 2 and 3 programmes, but as long as you can clearly explain why any particular module will benefit/complement your degree programme you may be able to take level 1 modules too. Please see the What can I study? section for more details
No, the subject modules you take must be relevant to your Modern Languages and Cultures degree course at Exeter, i.e. they must deepen or broaden the subject that you are studying within your degree. That said, you can take up to 25% of your modules outside of your home discipline, as long as they are academic modules, taught in the target language and meet the requirements set out in the What can I study? section of these webpages.
If you fail a module abroad, it does not automatically mean that you fail the whole year abroad. We convert each module mark individually into their Exeter equivalent. We then total them and work out the average grade. As such, even if you "fail" a module according to the host institution, we will still count the grade. However, if the number of credits or mark does not appear on your transcript, then we will not be able to take it into consideration. As such, you will need to ensure that you obtain proof of the result or ensure that the transcript does reflect the mark and number of credits of the failed module.
We convert each module mark individually into their Exeter equivalent. We then total them and work out the average grade. This means that if you fail most or all of your modules this will result in an extremely low average for this assessment component of your Study Abroad module. The overall Study Abroad module mark may be brought up by the mark of other assessment components (please check the module descriptor for details). Please bear in mind that what some partner universities consider a "Fail" isn't necessarily converted as less than 40% (a fail at Exeter). If, despite all of this, you have failed the Study Abroad module as a whole then you would not be able to proceed onto the final year of a four-year programme. Instead, you would revert to a three-year degree programme, meaning that the Year Abroad would no longer be included in the calculation of your degree classification.
The answer will depend on what your host university abroad will allow you (as an exchange student) to do. If this is allowed and you can get an updated transcript with your new resit mark included, then we would accept this.
If you do not bring back the required number of credits, then the missing number of credits will be counted at a mark of zero and included in the overall average when we convert your host university marks into Exeter marks. This will affect your average and probably lower the mark you receive but it will not necessarily mean you will fail the year.
Other universities' grading systems are often wildly different from our own. This means that we have to use a conversion scale to convert grades in a standardised way. Also, for this reason, what one university calls a "fail" may not be classed as such at Exeter and, similarly, what one university calls 10/20 will not necessarily convert as 50%. The conversion chart can be found under the Assessment and Feedback section of the College Taught Student Handbook. Please note that we convert your highest-marked credits/modules of half of the full academic workload. For more information, please see the What can I study? page.
For those studying abroad for a year or for the second semester, there will be a Study Abroad Exam Board in November/December of your final year, at which point all marks will be ratified and then released. For those studying abroad for the first semester, the marks will go to the Summer Exam Board with the rest of the year's results. They will then be released as usual. If we are able to, we will release provisional marks before this point but they cannot be guaranteed. Sometimes transcripts and grades are a little more complicated to finalise, in which case the process may take slightly longer and we will ask for your patience in the matter.