Exams

To take an exam, you have to be registered usually a month and a half before the start of the Exam session, you will be informed about the registration process in due time.

There are 3 exam sessions over one academic year: January, June and August/September.

For the first term (September to January), the exams are held in January and, for the second term (February to June), they are held in June. Retake exam can only be done in August/September in Belgium. In some exceptional cases, and always with the professor's approval, students can take retake exams from their home university under certain conditions.

Please note that the official timetable for the exam session will be available one month before the start of the exam session. You may already see the exam dates in your timetable at the beginning of the semester. These dates are provisional. Please ignore them until one month before the start of the exam session. 

Each student has the right to take the same exam twice during the same academic year:
- First possibility, the regular exam session at the end of the semester the course is given
- Second possibility, the resit exam session (August-September).

Students eligible for resit exams are:
- Students with a grade below 10/20
- Students who could not attend the first session

Please note that if you register for a second exam session, the grade you received in the first session will be withdrawn. It is impossible to get it back, even if you got more points in the first session. By re-registering, you reset the counters to 0.

The UCLouvain does not allow the organization of exams outside the official exam session.

In order to take an exam or retake an exam you must be registered for it.
The EPL Exchange Students Coordinator will register you to your exams by default for the January and June exam sessions. You will be asked to check your registration online via your UCLouvain account and, if you want you will have the possibility to drop an exam by notifying the coordinator.
Students who did not take or failed one or more exams in January or June will receive an email in early July with instructions on how to register for the August-September retake exam session.
Be aware that, if you register to a course but choose to drop the exam, the course will still be listed on your Transcript of Records with the mention "NE" for "Not Evaluated".

Transcript of Records

All Transcript of Records will be issued after the end of your exchange period.

The official Transcript of Records will be sent to your UCLouvain e-mail address and to your home university before the end of February for the January exam session, before the end of July for the June exam session and before the end of September for the August/September retake exam session.

Grading system

The final assessment of a course will result in a mark on a scale from 0 to 20, the minimum pass mark being 10/20.
Marks followed by V or W are not included in the average mark.
NA = Not evaluated
T = Cheating
Abs. = Absence

UCLouvain uses an ECTS grading table based on the total number of successful grades obtained in all courses of the same study cycle on the same faculty over the last five academic years. It is reviewed each year.

You can find this ECTS grading table at the end of your official Transcript of Records.

For your information, here is the ECTS grading table for 2024-2025: