Academic & Career Guide

The first semester of Year 3 (30 EC) is your elective space. You have several options:

1. Minor Program (30 EC)

A minor is a pre-packaged set of 5 courses of 6 EC each. You can follow a minor:

• Within your own faculty (Science)
• In another VU faculty
• At a different Dutch university (watch out for calendar differences, lecture and exam periods may not align; you register yourself as an external student, but you pay no extra tuition)

How to find a minor:

• Check the Year 3 study guide — select BSc AI and look at the pre-approved minor overview (no exam board approval needed)
• Visit minor.vu.nl for a broader list (approval may be needed)

Minors that need no examination board approval for BSc AI (TER 2026-2027): Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, Business Analytics & Data Science (take the "for Artificial Intelligence" variant), Educatieve minor Informatica, Situated AI, plus any university minor you are admissible for. Two exceptions: BSc AI students are excluded from the university minors Data Science (XB_MINDASC) and the new Basics of AI (XB_MINBAI). That last one is the AI-for-everyone minor introduced in 2026-2027; it would overlap your whole degree.

Registration for pre-approved minors goes through the registration module, tab "minor/specialization", via "pre-selected courses".

2. Free Minor (Custom Course Package)

You can create your own combination of courses (30 EC total) at VU or another university. Requirements:

• Courses must be at university level and cannot overlap with your curricular courses (so no statistics or linear algebra)
• Maximum 1 course (6 EC) at level 100, minimum 2 courses (12 EC) at level 300
• Submit your complete package (course names, codes, credits, levels, and study guide links) to the Examination Board for approval
• The package does not need to be coherent, you can mix and match
• Approval can take up to 30 days, so plan ahead

Some fine print worth knowing:

• The board approves exactly 5 x 6 EC. Extra courses land on your transcript as extracurricular and do not count towards the 30 EC.
• Fail one course of an approved package? You submit a new complete package of 5, including the courses you already passed.
• Free minor courses may run through the whole academic year, second semester included.
• A free minor puts no minor name on your diploma. That also happens when you deviate from a standard minor's curriculum: it then counts as a free minor, and the examination board cannot make exceptions.
• Studying abroad with individual courses? You may include at most one 6 EC course at master's level, and you cannot reuse it in a later master's degree.

3. Studying Abroad

You can study abroad during your elective space. Deadlines are early:

• Attend an info session in June (Year 1) or the mandatory Study Abroad Weeks in October/November (Year 2). Without the Study Abroad Weeks you cannot apply.
• Applications for the following academic year close around mid-January.
• You need about 30 EC of courses; a bit more (31 or 35 EC) is fine.
• Learn more: Studying abroad at VU. The Outgoing Student Exchange Team has phone hours Monday, Wednesday and Friday 12:00-13:00 (+31 20 59 85745) and a walk-in hour Tuesday 12:30-13:30 in the Global Room (HG-1A36).
• One warning: going abroad in semester 1 while you still need to retake mandatory period 1-3 courses is your own risk. VU offers no online courses, so that can cost you an extra year.

4. Internship

The BSc AI and CS programmes do not offer an internship instead of a minor, and job-shadowing internships get no VU involvement at all. What you can do is a research internship as part of your Bachelor Project (thesis):

• You find the internship yourself, and your thesis supervisor must approve it and the research question
• You get no extra EC for it; it is your thesis, hosted somewhere interesting
• Plan about 3 months, in periods 5 and 6 (April to June), with two supervisors: one at VU and one at the company
• Doing this as an international student? The advisors sign a tri-party internship contract for research internships only. Download it from the Bachelor Project Canvas page, sign it together with the company, then send it to the advisors.

Registration Tips

• Some minors have limited spots and early deadlines, start planning early
• If studying at another university, begin the process well in advance
• You should generally have at least 90 EC from Year 1 and 2 before starting a minor
• Registering more than 18 EC in one period sounds productive but blocks any overlapping-exams arrangement, and more than 3 courses in one period is asking for trouble

Questions? Contact your Academic Advisors: academicadvice.cs.beta@vu.nl