UW-Madison is a public research university with a multi-billion annual budget and an excellent reputation in academic area. It comprises 20 schools which enroll more than 40,000 students in total.

As an engineering exchange student, you can theoretically enroll in any class you wish: it does not matter whether the class is taught by Business School, or by Engineering Department.

In reality, the things are a little bit more complicated than that. There are several things you might want to consider.

If you are pursuing an undergraduate degree in your home university (student bakalarske etapy) then you are required to take at least 12 credits per semester.

Now, the american credits differ quite a lot from european ones - almost all the classes worth 3 credits. Some easy discussion classes may worth 1 credit, and huge classes with labs may worth 4. So, in general, 12 credits mean that you are required to take 4 ordinary classes per semester.

If you are a grad student (student magisterske etapy), then you are required to take at least 8 credits (slackers!).

Since the Engineering Department is paying for your programme, it is reasonable that they have something to say to your study plan: in particular, they require that at least 50% or your credits must be embodied in the classes taught by Engineering Department. The bad news is that almost all Computer Science classes are not considered Engineering classes. So, be ready to take some hard-core electrical engineering stuff, like „circuits“ and „signals and systems“.

Well, it's not as bad as it sounds, really.

Every classs in UW-Madison has a code associated with it. For example, Advanced Machine Learning class is called CS-761.

Now, the number really matters. The lower the number is, the easier the class is supposed to be. Also, all the classes with the number under 699 are considered undergraduate classes, and all the classes above 700 - are graduate school classes.

From my personal experience, they don't really mind if all the classes you chose are graduate school classes even if you are an undergraduate student. But you might want to think twice about it, since grad engineering / comp sci classes are usually tough as hell.

The thing you may not be familiar with is the „class capacity problem“. The problem is that almost all the classes in UW-Madison have a limited capacity and usually the amount of students who want to take the class is bigger, than the capacity of the class. So, here is a little how-to on how to (duh?) enroll successfully:

• Make sure beforehand that you meet all the requirements to enroll in the class you choose. It usually means that you have to ask a secretary of the department and read the „requirements“ part at Student Center.

• Find out when your enrollment date is. Say, it is April 12, 5PM. Then enroll in your classes on April 12, 5:01PM. The earlier you enroll, the bigger is the chance that there is still a spot for you.

• If there are no free spots left, sign up for Wait List using Student Center and as an optional message say that you are an exchange student and it is your only chance to take that class, and you heard that the class is awesome, and the professor is cute and blah blah blah. Make it happen!

• If wait list didn't help, then go directly to a classroom on the first day of school and tell the professor the same thing you said in an optional message from the previous bullet.

• If you are still not enrolled, then wait for a week or two, because people here drop the classes quite often, and then there will be a spot for ya to try.

After you try all those 5 things, I am 97% sure that you will be enrolled in the class of your choice. From my personal experience, I ended up in all the classes I wished to be in, even though everyone (including engineering department folks) was telling me that it is not possible.

The first thing that really surprised me was that there is usually no such thing as lab (cviceni) here. The whole concept of education is based on lectures and office hours of professors and teaching assistants. That basically means that you have to practice to solve the problems by yourself, since the lectures will only provide you the theoretical background.

Another surprise for me was the „homeworks“ business. The thing is that your course will probably be very heavy on homeworks (one homework per week or two), and your homework grades will comprise a big fraction of your final grade (usually 50% or more). So be prepared to spend your weekends sitting over homeworks with cup of coffee in the library. Also, homework problems are usually more challenging than the ones you encounter on your final exam, so mastering those problems will usually mean a straight A in a class.

It seems a little bit nonsense but UWM is actually an abbreviation for UW Milwaukee. So when people from US ask you where you study, answer either Madison or UW Madison. I could have saved myself so many explanations by saying it the right way from the very beginning!