Applying to KULeuven

Now that the harrowing process is indeed over, I feel it time to fill you all in as to what's been going on. For those who are faint of heart with excessive administration, skip to the bottom to see the end result.

Since I live in Leuven, and it has one of the better universities in Europe (so I've been told), I figured it would be good to try out for KULeuven -- Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (http://www.kuleuven.be/english/). I applied for two things: a credit contract for a single math course in abstract algebra (-ish) for the spring term of 2011 and additionally a masters program in physics starting in the fall of 2011.

Since I live in Leuven and I didn't see anything about non-EU residents being able to take a credit contract on the international admissions page (and it's only a short bike ride away) I went into the office to ask what I should do. I was directed to contact 'L' and the person I spoke to seemed to think that I was asking for something that would cause the world to end. This was the beginning of December. Second term didn't start until the middle of February, and the deadline for the masters application was the end of February. With this in mind, I immediately contacted L.

• Chunk of abstract algebra

To be fair, L didn't seem to think my quest was out of the ordinary -- at first. She said that the documents I would need to upload for the masters would be the same as for the credit contract and that as soon as I had them all they'd get rollin' on it. This was easier said than done.
After working with the registrar's offices at Kenyon and L, by the end of my vacation visiting home I had my orders for paperwork in. Somewhere in the 3rd week of January -- through the snowstorms of the mid-West -- my certified translated-Latin-to-English apostilled diploma and my normal transcripts arrived. A scan or two later, and they were ready to go.

My application document itself was another story. Besides it being an Adobe form that was too loaded down, it crashed without saving more times than I could count. On top of that, for 9 pages of relatively simple information that I needed to give, it was the most complex questionnaire I have ever taken. Even the Belgian with his knowledge of standard Dutch questions that can be translated into English and not have the same meaning was at a loss. Many hours were lost in trying to determine what an itelligent college educated person should be answering for these apparent trick questions.
Examples:

"Was all or part of your education in English?" (yes/no - bubble)
"If so, which part?" (secondary school, bachelors, masters - drop down single choice)
"How many years?" (free fill in)
Note: you must have all boxes filled in once the yes is clicked. How does one include that ALL into one of 3 choices? And how does one deal with the years? Just the degree you decided on, or all of it?

"Have you interrupted your studies?"
"If yes, for what reason?"
How does one define an interruption? What counts as an interruption? How long does a break need to be before it is an interruption?

So, after filling in the document and dealing with the failure of it to automatically upload as it should, the thing was in, and everything looked good... Until L realized what it was that I contacted her about in the first place: I'm not a Belgian, and I wanted to take a math course in Dutch.

Even with the fact I was taking Dutch courses AND our housemate took the course in Dutch, but did his masters in English and can explain all the terms in English AND the professor didn't care that I didn't speak the required amount of Dutch (it's MATH, right?), the international admissions office wasn't convinced and I was scheduled to go and have a meeting with the head of the department sometime in the second week of February.

The meeting with the department head was, in brief, an hour of waiting and 15 minutes of trauma that had me in tears for 2 hours afterwards -- with no clear juridical decision told to me. If you'd like more information, feel free to set up a skype date.

And then... there was limbo. I'm assuming that it was denied. Perhaps it's for the best...

• Masters in physics

Happily, the masters application process went on without a hitch. I already had all the documents, copied and pasted and only lost the saved copies of the application twice. The additional document explaining the grading system of Kenyon and the conversion into ECTS went well, and the list of nearly all the physics classes I took at Kenyon in a brief half-page description each. 12 pages of course descriptions and 75 euros later and the application was complete.


Best of all, as of today, the 9th of March 2011, I've been accepted for the masters program in physics at KUL. Hooray! I guess I'll take that math class in a few years when my Dutch is at an 'academically suitable level'...

I think I'll go and continue to make the shriek/squeal/giggle noise now.