Students' Role in Planning for Academics Abroad

You will receive academic credit for all courses taken on approved Penn State education abroad programs.
Please note that you will not receive Penn State credit for sport or physical activity courses (e.g. sailing, bowling, yoga) taken abroad unless the sport activity course is taught by a Penn State professor on a faculty-led program.
You must receive an A-F letter grade.  If a different grade scale is used by the host institution, Penn State will convert the grade to A-F scale before posting the grade to your transcript.  You may not take classes on a Pass/Fail or audit basis.
You must maintain the minimum full-time credit enrollment required by both Penn State and the institution abroad, whichever is higher.
You must consult with your academic department to ensure you will receive credit toward your degree plan for internships taken abroad.
If you are enrolling in courses at an international host institution, please note that you may not register for courses until you are abroad (in most cases).
If you will be on probation through the Office of Student Conduct during the time that you plan to study abroad, be advised that you may be required to attend a meeting with Education Abroad and Student Conduct prior to an admission decision being reached or prior to departing for the study abroad program.
Please see our Education Abroad Policies page for a more comprehensive outline of our policies.

As far as identifying courses to complete on the program, it is important to know that all courses you take on a Penn State education abroad program will be assigned Penn State course numbers, credit values, and grades.  This means that the courses you take will appear on your Penn State transcript and will factor into your cumulative GPA, so you should ensure that the courses you choose are ones that you are both interested in and qualified to take.

To find the catalogue of courses offered on your selected education abroad program, you can navigate to the "Academics" tab of your program's brochure page. There, you can also find the historical course list for your program, which shows the list of courses that Penn State students have recently taken on the program and what Penn State course numbers and credit values have been assigned to those courses. This can be a helpful resource when working with your academic adviser, but you are not limited to taking courses that appear on the program's historical course list.

If you are looking to fulfill specific degree requirements abroad, you will need to do more concentrated research on the course offerings for your selected program.  You will need to consult with your academic adviser to verify that the course(s) you are interested in will be a match for the requirements of your major.

It is important to work closely with your academic adviser to find courses abroad that will meet your particular degree requirements.  Some tips on how to approach those meetings with your academic adviser include:

As you review courses that you hope will fulfill general education or major degree requirements, save the course descriptions or tentative syllabi from the education abroad program provider's website.  That way, your academic adviser can see what each course covers so they can get a sense of how the courses might work toward your degree.
The Education Abroad office recommends that you take information for twice as many courses as you plan to take abroad to your academic adviser for review. This will give you some pre-approved alternate courses for when it comes time to register for classes abroad - just in case your top choices fill up.
Be sure to discuss which courses to take prior to and upon return from your academic term abroad as well so that you can stay on track for graduation.