Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics
Student Report
Name of the University: Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP)
Exchange semester: Fall 2015, Bachelor
I. PRACTICAL INFORMATION
Before leaving Norway
I received the practical information needed in good time before the semester started in
Portugal. If I had any questions I could easily email BI or UCP to get an answer. I
found it challenging to fully understand the website of UCP and what I needed to do
about selecting courses.
Travel
There is no need to get a Visa for travelling to Portugal, a valid passport is enough. I
flew from Kjevik, Kristiansand, which was about 300 euros. I bought the tickets 10
days before leaving so you can usually find tickets from 150-300 euros, depending on
the date, place and time you are flying. TAP is the Portuguese airline, which I
recommend highly.
The metro system looks like the metro system in Oslo, only simpler. I have little
experience with bus/tram, but they seem to be quite easy to understand too. There is an
app to check buses if needed.
Housing
There is no student housing at Católica, but if needed they will help you find a place to
live. The Erasmus Office are also helpful, but be careful, the standard they showed us
is not to the requirements we has so we went on websites and found an apartment in
the city center on our own. For Erasmus students who rent for one semester is between
300-500 euros. I recommend going on Uniplaces.com or other webpages. We did not
book housing before we left so we spent 1 week at a hostel because we wanted to see
in person what we were renting.
We, a Swedish guy from BI and an American we met, rented an apartment in Rua
Garrett, a well-known touristy street in Baixa-Chiado. I higly recommend living in the
city center, its close to everything, except from the university. It takes 30-40 minutes
Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics
to get to the university. We paid 500 each with everything included, but it was worth
it. You can find cheaper places, but then you have to live with more people, smaller
apartments or not in the center of Baixa-Chiado.
Costs
Rent
Books
Food
Transport
Other
NOK 5000/month
NOK 0/month.
Two of my courses had mandatory books, but you can find them as PDFs.
Everything was at the university’s internet-platform.
NOK 2000-3000, depends on if you eat out a lot or cook yourself
NOK 350/month for metro card (bus,tram,train included)
It depends, activities and etc are cheap, but still a lot of money goes
towards this
Culture and language
Most people in Lisbon speak English very well, and they understand even more. You
will not have big language problems. The culture is in many ways not too far from the
Norwegian. People are nice and social, but students don’t automatically talk to you
just because you are an exchange student. People are very social ones you start talking
with them, but we quickly learned that they value family-time on the weekends so
don’t expect Portuguese to hang out with you on the weekends. They are also a fluidtime culture so if the say 2pm, its 2.30pm.
II. ABOUT THE SCHOOL
The university is located in Lisbon, a little outside the city center but it is easy to get
there by both metro and bus. The metro station is a 10 min walk from campus; you can
take the blue line or the yellow line (blue line; Laranjeiras and Jardin Zoologico, Yellow
line; Cidade Universitaria). All courses, as far as I am concerned, will be at the business
faculty. It is an older building with with a canteen, classrooms and auditoriums, and then
you have a second building with a library, book store, copy store etc.
Course registration
You will receive an email from UCP that explains how and when you are to register
for courses. Descriptions of all courses are to be found on their webpage, but be
careful to read about how the courses are graded. I do not recommend taking too many
courses with group work/presentations as it is so far from what we are used to. The
register process is all online. It’s first come first serve. You will most likely not get all
Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics
of your first choices as you will get mostly electives and they often overlap. I had 4
rounds of changing courses. The course electing process can get very frustrating.
There is an add/drop period for the first week of school, so you will be able to change
the courses to get a schedule that does not overlap. They are very kind and helpful at
the undergraduate office, and they encounter these problems every semester
Academic calendar
Arrival date:
First day of the semester:
Last day of classes:
Examination
period/midterms:
26.08 – Had to be present at the welcoming week which
started on the 27th
02.09 – most classes start this week, some the following
week
10.12
1st - End of October – first mid term, not all courses have
this
2nd – from December 10 -1 january 14th
You have 1 or 2 midterms that you need to pass in every
subject. If you are unhappy with the grade you can take the
final exam which is between January 14th to the 23rd
Arrival
I arrived a few days prior to the welcoming week to look for housing, get a sim-card,
metro card etc. The welcoming week is only mandatory for the first day. UCP arranges
trips, dinners, a waling-tour and etc. for you to get to know the city and other students.
It is recommended to be a part of these activities. I did not attend all, but the once I
attended were quite okay, some better than other. The most important thing is that you
get to know other students and see the city
The International Office
You find the international office/undergraduate office on the second floor. The people
who work there are very helpful and understanding. They have encountered all kinds
of problems, so your problems will be likely to be solved quickly. It is a bit hard to
understand the system fully and that can gets very frustrating, but it always works out
in the end.
Promoting BI and Norway
I stood on stand for BI with two other students. We stood from 10.00-15.00 talking
with students to promote BI.
Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics
Social activities
Portuguese students are nice and helpful, but you will probably not encounter in many
social activities outside of school with many of them. You will find many Erasmus
students to hang out with which have the same goals for the semester as you do. Many
Erasmus students do not need to take 30 ECTs, so you will find that they have a lot
more free time than you.
There are several organizations that are directed towards exchange students in Lisbon.
You have ELL and ESN who are the two biggest one. They arrange plenty of trips and
activities; you can find something on their calendar almost every day. They are also
present in social settings, at the clubs and in the bars, where you get discounts with
your Erasmus or ELL card.
III. ACADEMICS
In the classroom
The course structure is very different from BI. There are approximately 30-40 people
in each class. This means that you get to know your professors and classmates in a
whole different way. You are graded on attendance, being active in class, group work,
presentations etc. Teaching style varies from course to course, but most use power
points and discuss the topics with you in class. Many courses have both theoretical and
practical classes. In the theoretical you mostly sit and listen, some interaction, to the
professor explaining the theories and things you need to learn. In the practical classes
you do case studies, presentations, group work, discussions etc. The work load varies
from course to course, but most courses are very demanding. There is always
something that needs to be prepared for class. Your total grade is not based on one
final exam. You are graded on everything you do in class and the midterm(s).
Almost all courses have mandatory attendance and you can only miss a certain amount
of classes before you fail, so be aware of that. Since we do not even have books in the
many of the courses, the midterms are often based on the lectures.
The grading system is very different too. They have a system of 0-20, where 0-9,5 is a
fail and above this is a pass. You are allowed to take the final exam (which can be
Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics
looked on as a “make-up” exam) if you get an 8 or above, or if you want to improve
your grade. The final exam will then count for 100% of the grade.
Exams
- The exam is mostly based on the lectures and material provided to you by the teacher
- The course evaluation depends on which course you take but in general you have;
o Final exam, not mandatory, only to improve grades
o Mid-term exam, 1 or 2 in every course
o In-class quizzes throughout semester in a few courses
o Small assignments and/or papers in many courses
o Presentations in most courses
o Group work in most courses
o Class attendance in close to all courses
o Class participation/debates in most courses
Library and technology
There is a library on campus and computer rooms.
Description of courses
The description of the courses may be changed from one year to another, so I recommend you
to read the syllabus carefully.
Strategy 6 ECT:
I chose strategy as it was mandatory from BI to have a strategy couse. In this course you have
both practical and theoretical classes; one theoretical and two practical. The teacher for the
theoretical class is a German who is very good at explaining the theories and interacting, this
is not mandatory to attend but you should. It will help you in the end.
I did not like the practical classes too much, we had to read one case of 15-20 pages for each
class and discuss it. It was very hard to understand what the teacher was asking for.
You have two group presentations and one group project to do in this course.
Portuguese Language Course 4,5 ECT:
Two classes a week, altogether 4,5 hours per week. You are graded 40% on participation,
homework, small tests, being active and then you have two mid-terms. I highly recommend to
take Portuguese, but the teacher go through the stuff very quickly due to the fact that there
often are many Spanish/French/Italian in the class who because of their native language
understand a lot already.
Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics
Bank Management 5 ECT:
This was my finance class that I was required to take. The teacher is very nice, but
unfortunately he was in the middle of getting a new position at his regular job so we had to
skip many classes and make up the classes by having double classes on some days. Bank
Management is nothing like what we have had at BI, and many of the other students have had
this type of course previously so you easily fall behind. The good thing is that there is not
group work or assignments to do.
Product and Costumer Management 5 ECT:
This is a marketing course. We only had a 30 page assignment, it varies each semester. The
professor’s slides in class are supposed to be enough to pass the course. The assignment were
interesting, but unfortunately I was in a group with only Portuguese so it was difficult to get
started and hand in a good project. The professor is very nice, and as long as you pay attention
and sometimes ask him questions after class he will like you. The workload was manageable
and I recommend this course.
Global Marketing 5 ECT:
This is the best course I had this semester due to the fact that the professor was very
interacting and if your answer was wrong he still appreciated your effort. There are reading to
be done for every class, it takes approximately one hour to due the reading and take notes. He
gives “surprise” tests sometimes to check if you have done the readings. We had one debate
where you are divided into groups. You are not graded on this, it counts as participation. It is
an easy and good course compared to many of the other, as long as you pay attention and try
to participate.
Information Management ERA 5 ECT:
I ended up with this subject after changing courses for the fourth time. The two professors
teaching this course are very nice and understanding. I had no experience with IT/IS, which is
what the course is mainly about. The thing that made me dislike the course is all the group
works that had to be done for each class, because I was in a group with only Portuguese girls
who never did anything until the deadline, so neither could you.
Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics
Sum up the exchange experience
I LOVE LISBON. The city is so beautiful, people are nice and the prices are good. It is a very
safe city and you can walk everywhere without being afraid of being pick-pocketed, except
from in the very touristy areas. There is a lot of cultural things to see and do, many nice cities
and it is fairly cheap to travel around in Portugal.
You get to know a lot of people, mostly exchange students, and you do a lot of stuff together.
The weather is very nice compared to the cold winters in Norway.
Unfortunately, the school proved to be too demanding. The system and structure made it hard
to enjoy the experience as much as I wanted. My schedule was very bad. I had classes from
early in the morning to around 8 at night, many hours between classes so I could always go
home, which I did in the beginning, but towards the end there was simply too much school
work to be done so I stayed at school most of the time. Since exchange students usually take
the elective courses they are very spread in terms of time. Also, I had 6 courses to get the 30
ECTs so it made it very demanding. All the professors make you present the final projects in
the same week or the same day, there is no collaboration at all. And when it is group work
then you are dependent on other people to do their part, which they do not always do.
The good thing though, is that you learn a lot about yourself and many of the problems I have
had here are problems I will encounter later on when I start working for a company. Also,
since our grades do not go onto our GPA it is “less” stressful. It is a good indicator for how
demanding my masters will be.