Exchange fall 2014: NTNU

March 3, 2015
General information This student report covers my exchange at the norges
teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet (NTNU). This university, also known as
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, is located in Trondheim, Nor-
way. My exchange lasted from the 8-th of August until the 23-th of December
in the year 2014.

Preperation After having heard that I was selected to go to Trondheim I

started filling out all applications and applying for housing. While I was some-
what worried about this at first, the process was actually pretty smooth. Ap-
plying for housing and for the university happens at once and only requires a
rather short form. On this form you have to fill out your personal details and
specify the courses you want to take. It should be noted here that the university
usually allows you to change any courses on arrival, as long as they are not on
a short list of courses that have special entry requirements. On this form you
also have to specify already if you would like to take a language course. As
these are very popular you are not always assigned one and if you want to take
one this is certainly the moment to apply. A second part is about housing and
asks you if you want to apply for housing through the student housing orga-
nization SiT (Studentsamskipnaden i Trondheim). This student housing is in
general certainly the best offer in town for an exchange student, as it is cheap
and through a very trustworthy organization. However, for European students
housing is not guaranteed, and an application is thus no guarantee for a place.
Hence, the university advices exchange students to already start looking for pri-
vate housing at this stage. For this they have a facebook page. However finding
private housing is in general far from easy, as most owners require tenants to
stay at least for one year. So while I did try to apply for some housing through
the private market, I did not yet immediately succeed. Luckily I heard at the
end of June that I was selected for one of the student villages of SiT. After
receiving such an offer there is still a choice to make, as you may select from
different student villages. I myself chose for Moholt, which is usually a good
choice for international students, as the vast majority of international students
live here too. In additional it is more central in the city compared to the other
option Steinan, which was an advantage in my opinion. In retrospect, I would
advice any other exchange students to wait before an offer is made to only then
start to look for alternatives in case one is not selected. The last step in the
application process was then to sent a hard-copy of the above mentioned file to
the NTNU, after which your application will be considered. In my case, I got
my letter of acceptance in the middle of June, so do expect this to take some
time.

Arrival Somewhere in the summer all international students will get an invi-
tation for a so-called orientation week. This is an introductory event that takes
place in the week before lectures start and allows you to do various activities to
get to know the city and university. This week is quite extensive, as events start
on Monday and last up to Sunday. It is needed to be quick here, as some of

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the nicest events can get booked out pretty quickly. This for example happened
for a canoe trip through the city. Other events have an unlimited capacity.
I decided to apply for this week and arrived in Trondheim about half a week
before the start of the orientation week. On arrival I could take the express bus
from the airport to the office of SiT where I picked up my key. The only thing
to arrange for this was to either take or buy any inventory for a student room,
as except the furniture and bed nothing is included. Luckily, Ikea is not far
away. The week after the orientation week started and I would certainly advice
everyone to join here. It is an excellent opportunity to meet other international
students and shows you around the city and campus. While I had already been
to Trondheim before, it was still a lot of fun. For example a hike in the moun-
tains was included, as well as canoeing trip in the city and many other options.
Also, the more standard information sessions are included, such that you should
easily flow into the lectures starting the week after.

Courses At NTNU I took four different courses. As an econometrics student I

wanted also to delve somewhat further in the mathematics and hence decided to
take the courses Calculus 4N and Linear methods. The first one is a second year
bachelor course taken by many of the technology students, while the latter one is
a third year course taken more specifically by the more math related students, as
well as by some mathematics students. My experience with both these courses
was good. The first one was not that difficult compared to courses at the ESE
and was about topics such as Fourier Analysis and Partial differential equations.
The second was in my opinion more challenging, but also the more interesting
one of the two, as it was more the type of extension of my own program I was
looking for. This course went into topics such as vector spaces, inner-Product
spaces and linear operators. The speed of this course was rather quick, but
doable compared to the courses taught in econometrics. In both courses I liked
the lecturers, in which one course however was far smaller than the other one
and naturally lead to a different kind of involvement of the lecturer. As a third
course I took Asset Pricing, which is a second-year master course in the Finance
master. This course was taught by two lecturers and unfortunately the two parts
of the course were not very well connected. In the first part the level was rather
high, but the content quite interesting, while the second part was in my opinion
even somewhat simpler than the Finance course at the ESE and not that well
explained. The fourth course I took was the short language course, which was
a lot of fun in my opinion. While for Dutch or German speakers Norwegian is
not that difficult to learn I guess, it was nice to at least get some basics of the
language and hence also some more cultural feeling. All of the courses that I
took where 7.5 ECTS and all of them I incorporated into my elective space.

Finances As is general known, Norway is indeed a very expensive county and

this is something that is definitely noticeable. An approximation of my monthly
expenses are given in the table below, but I do have to mention here that the
money you spent next to rent is quite variable. It depends on the fact how often

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you make trips, what kind of lifestyle you were having at home. Hence, I would
advice to see the below table as just a reference to the actual costs.

Cost in euro per month

Rent 350
Food 100-200
Transportation 80 once (bike)
Trips 50-150
Social Life 50-100

Daily life While moving to some other country always has its challenges,
moving to Norway should not be that difficult. What I noticed during my
exchange is that life in Norway is to a big extent quite similar to that here in
the Netherlands. Hence do not expect a culture shock if moving to Trondheim.
However, life is certainly somewhat different. A thing I personally really liked
in Trondheim was the outdoor experience and attitude. Just outside the city
are some small mountains and Norwegian and international students alike can
often be found here. It was for me an ideal way of spending a weekend. A
good initiative in this sense is the Studenterhytta, which is a cabin in those
mountains especially for students. But there are more options, such as the
huts in Norwegian nature owned by the sports organization. Hence, there are
many outdoor opportunities and this allows for perfect opportunities to explore
Norway and its nature. Maybe related to this, life in Norway is slightly more
relaxed in my opinion, also because Trondheim is only a rather small city. This
allows to get to know the whole city in a semester and makes that you feel at
home really quickly. To conclude, Trondheim was for me the perfect place to
spend my exchange.