Exams at CBS

Recently, I had 3 exams. Classes at CBS can vary in length; some can only last a quarter, while others last a full semester. In my case, I had 3 classes in the 3rd quarter, and I'm currently taking one 4th quarter class.

My quarter 3 classes were the following:

• Corporate Finance

• Contemporary Issues in International Business

• Business and Global Governance

Each of these classes had different exam formats, which I will explain now.

Starting with finance, that was a classic, sit-in exam. CBS has a designated exam hall located in Amager (it's actually across the street from the beach). On your designated examination day, you arrive at the exam hall and must use your student ID to check in. The administrators will direct you to your seat, and tell you what to do with bags, phones, etc. Your student ID must be displayed at all times during the exam, and the exam must be taken on the provided computers, not on a personal device. Check the course descriptions on the website carefully when choosing your CBS classes! It tells you what form the exam will be in for the class, and whether you are allowed physical/online aids (e.g. printed notes were allowed for my finance exam, and we had access to a pdf of the slides). Typically, sit-in exams last 4 hours.

As for my contemporary issues class, that one was more unique. Some CBS exams have two parts; in our case, we were assigned a group paper and then had an individual oral exam based on both our paper and class concepts. We had the first few weeks of class to form our groups for the written paper, so try to find a group early! For written papers, the allocated time to complete it can vary based on the class; we were given 72 hours to write a maximum of 15 pages. However, my oral exam wasn't for several days after the submission deadline, so I had plenty of time to study before the second part of the exam. On the date of the oral exam, make sure to get there early. The administrator will call you into the exam room, and check your student ID. From there, they will ask you to explain certain theories or concepts from the course, as well as making connections with the group paper. Since the oral exam was individual, they are only about 20 minutes. But, sometimes the oral exam will also be done as a group, depending on the course.

Lastly, for my governance class, that exam was also a paper. However, it did not require an oral exam. This paper was done individually, so it was open for longer (this one only had a maximum of 5 pages). We had a week to write and upload our paper; for this course we were given two possible documents to analyze and got to choose which we would prefer. One of the choices was an EU legislation, and the other was a mid-year progress report for a company. We had to identify 2 frameworks from the course, and 8 concepts within those frameworks in our paper. Be cautious of your formatting! Papers at CBS have a limit regarding the character count. The count (including spaces) must be 2,275 per page on average. So, an individual page can be over 2,275 but the total character count divided by your number of pages must be less than or equal to 2,275. It's honestly pretty annoying, I ended up cutting out some sections from my paper to fit this requirement.

The CBS online platform has a page called Digital Exam; this will let you find the dates and times of your examinations, and also let you know if your score has been released. To find the score itself, however, you need to go to the Online Student Service, and click "Results". The CBS examination scale is very different from UH. There are 7 possible scores you can get, 2 failing and the rest are passing. The lowest score is a -3, followed by a 00; these are the only failing scores. A 2 is the lowest passing grade, followed by 4, 7, 10, and finally 12. It's a pretty odd scale, and different schools have different requirements for their exchange students. I was told I only needed a 2 at CBS to get credit at UH, but for some other exchange students they needed a minimum of a 4. Make sure to double check with your advisors before your exams, so that you have the right information. It can take up to 3 weeks after your exam for your scores to be released.

If you do fail, CBS exams have a designated retake, since the exam score determines your grade for the entire course; it's the only thing you are graded on at CBS. If a student also fails the retake, then they must redo the course (that's what I heard from my CBS "buddy"). The fact that there are available retakes should indicate that some exams can be pretty tough, and some courses are definitely more intense than others. Tip: if a class is listed as a "3rd year course" in the description, this means it is essentially a senior-level course. Most of the local CBS students in those courses will be expecting to graduate that year. A bachelor's degree in many European universities takes only 3 years, and is really not that useful without a subsequent master's degree. So just an indicator that 3rd year courses might be a little tougher, or build off other CBS classes. Keep that in mind when deciding what to take!