Virtual Exchange

You are supposed to work hard for producing trash to satisfy Luisa, possibly sacrificing your GPA and time from other courses. But fear not. You do not have to take this course. You can credit transfer it instead and receive a T grade which is counted in GPA like a P. (Excluded from GPA calculation)

Credit transfer has two types: on entry and during study. On entry is like IB, IELTS exams etc presented to the school on entry, which is not applicable here. Credit transfer during study has two further types: Virtual exchange and physical exchange. Physical exchange is risky (in course selection) and expensive so it will not be discussed here. Virtual exchange, in the specific case of APRU virtual exchange (HKUST (not APRU) application here: Fall/Spring https://mystudyabroad.hkust.edu.hk/index.cfm?FuseAction=Programs.ViewProgram&Program_ID=13106, Summer https://mystudyabroad.hkust.edu.hk/index.cfm?FuseAction=Programs.ViewProgram&Program_ID=13180), it is free of charge. You pay nothing for credits!

The first courses that are our “Prototype” mappings are from Osaka University - the two design courses here for Fall 2023 https://vse.apru.org/osaka-s12324 coded 88A069 and 88A075, and the design course here for Spring 2022 https://vse.apru.org/osaka-s22223 coded 88A070. The mappings will apply to all future semesters with the same course. Note that these Osaka design courses only accept students in year 3 or above because in their course listing, in the table row of “Course Prerequisites/Restrictions”, they write that “Target students: All faculties except Medicine. 1st and 2nd year undergraduate students are not allowed.” But these prototypes are so successful that even year 2 students I contact with, want to apply every semester already.

A few things of note for virtual exchange:

• The application deadline for these virtual courses: July 31, 2023, in this specific semester (seen on the Osaka University APRU course listing webpage). This deadline is only for your APRU (not HKUST) application here https://vse.oal.cuhk.edu.hk/student/login (also required by the “(OVE) Choice of Course - APRU VSE” step in the HKUST application system)
• You must obtain school (for students without majors yet) or major department (for students with majors) approval by emailing this form https://mystudyabroad.hkust.edu.hk/_customtags/ct_FileRetrieve.cfm?File_ID=104844 (also available in the “(OVE) Upload signed endorsement from your major department” step in the HKUST application system) to your school or major department. They may ask for your academic transcript to determine if your credit load should be limited as a result of this application (basically (A) or (B) in Section IV of the form). Since your HKUST application can be completed after the APRU application (to update your APRU application system status to “Endorsed by Home U” before the offering university’s decision of “Approved by Course Offering U” or “Not Approved by Course Offering U”), you can delay your course choice in APRU application system until the deadline.
• If you are an SBM student, then you can only apply for one virtual course per semester regardless of credit load. This is mentioned at https://bmundergrad.hkust.edu.hk/files/exchange/Exchange%20Application%20General%20Policies%20-%20Updated%2012%20Jul%202023.pdf, “24. Students are only allowed to take ONE virtual course concurrently with their courses in a semester, regardless of credit load.” The enforcement mechanism for this rule is through a school override of major department approval. However, I noticed that this enforcement is only available in Fall and Spring semesters. You can take as many virtual courses in Winter and Summer if you like as an SBM student since the school will not have this enforcement mechanism available. Even if APRU Virtual Exchange is not available in Winter, there are still other valuable opportunities like Fudan University winter school (check email during October! It has the title “HKUST Winter Mainland Virtual Program: Winter School @ Fudan SOE” and is sent by ”study-abroad-request@lists.ust.hk on behalf of the HKUST Office of Global Learning”. Its application deadline is a week after the email so you should be careful. Details here https://mystudyabroad.hkust.edu.hk/index.cfm?FuseAction=Programs.ViewProgram&Program_ID=13111) which offers easy credit transfers, especially for ECON. 2 courses in 3 weeks - if both are 4 credit ECON courses then you can reach 8 credits in 3 weeks. But Fudan University summer school can only transfer 2 ECON credits per course - not as cost-effective as winter. You can search for other exchange opportunities here: https://mystudyabroad.hkust.edu.hk/index.cfm?FuseAction=Programs.SimpleSearch, specifically, course selection before HKUST application is categorised into “Program Enrollment” while course selection after HKUST approval is categorised into “Outgoing”. Both types may be free of charge or paid, it varies program to program. Note that searching this way only reveals past or present opportunities and does not guarantee future offerings. Meanwhile, I expect Fudan University winter school and APRU virtual exchange for Fall/Spring/Summer to be continually available every year.
• You still have a risk of being rejected by the course offering university if the quota is limited and your CGA is worse than your competitors (HKUST students disadvantaged here) or they have a preference in enrolling specific majors (like Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s summer school preferring civil and architectural engineers) or years (like Osaka university design courses requiring year 3+). However, it seems that universities are less strict about you giving them outdated IELTS results if they can meet the English language requirement given that you already meet their GPA requirement.
• You also have to pass this course (not receiving F) to successfully transfer this course. However, most universities outside HKUST usually give you at least a C if you hand in assignments even if you did not do well in exams. That said, failing an exchange (virtual or physical) will just mean you fail to transfer the credits. There will not be an F on your transcript. It is always better to try transferring this course given virtual exchange costs you no money anyway. It’s zero risk.
• You cannot transfer FINA-prefix courses using virtual study. You can only transfer them for physical exchange. A dick move from the FINA department, I know, but this is an aside for the EMIA2020 transfer.

So, here are the steps to credit transferring EMIA2020:

1. Check the APRU course list regularly for any courses with the word “Design” or “Creativity” or “Innovation” that includes the topic of Design Thinking (I hypothesise that any course that talks about Design Thinking will be able to transfer to EMIA2020. Also, the same topic can transfer to ENTR1001 since that course centres around Design Thinking as well). Don’t wait for email promotion from the Office of Global Learning because you want to apply for new mappings at least a month in advance. Say, we found Osaka’s design courses here.
2. Check if you are eligible for the GPA/semester requirements, English language requirements (an example for these two are in https://vse.apru.org/yonsei-s12324), and any course-specific restrictions (as seen in the Osaka design courses 88A069 and 88A075 in https://vse.apru.org/osaka-s12324 because in their course listing, in the table row of “Course Prerequisites/Restrictions”, they specify that “Target students: All faculties except Medicine. 1st and 2nd year undergraduate students are not allowed.” The format of these requirements is consistent, in the same places as the examples. Also, avoid non-credit-bearing courses (Waseda University is the only example at the time of writing https://vse.apru.org/waseda-s12324). Some universities only allow you to apply for ONE course in that university in that semester (Osaka University does this for example) so you should take note of this in later steps as well - you wouldn’t want to write two courses in your school or major department endorsement form and get limited in HKUST credits allowed in the same semester based on deduction of two courses from your credit limit, when you can only get into one.
3. Check what HKUST courses you can transfer from these courses. Even if the official way is checking at https://registry.hkust.edu.hk/useful-tools/credit-transfer/database-institution, this way only provides you with past successful mappings and not past denied mappings. That said, if the course has been approved before as shown by searching in that database using this University, and specifically EMIA2020 on the right-hand side, then congratulations! You can take the course to use that mapping and don’t have to follow the rest of the steps, you can just apply for this course directly in the APRU and HKUST application systems with major department or school approval, and expect a credit transfer when you complete the course.
4. If the mapping is not there by searching the official route, we can abuse the credit transfer application system at https://w5.ab.ust.hk/jsct/ct_stdt_appl to reveal if this mapping has been applied before and denied, or expired because of course code changes or course cancellation.
5. In the credit transfer application system, click “My Application”, then scroll to the bottom to click “here” in “If you wish to apply credit transfer for other institution, please click here to specify”.
6. With the category “On Entry”, write the university name in “Institution”, and select the result with “through virtual study” at the end. (The non “through virtual study” is for physical exchange). Then, since the Transfer Term (for when the mapping starts to apply) is locked to your entry term, you must work around it.
7. Right-click the Transfer Term box with your entry term and left-click “Inspect”. The developer panel of your browser should appear, and in the HTML code (the text with lots of angle brackets <> <> <>), there should be a line highlighted starting with “<select”. To the left of the “<select”, there should be a right-pointing triangle. Click that triangle. It would reveal a line starting with “<option value=“. To the right of the “<option value=”, there should be a four-digit number corresponding to your entry term. For example, for 2010: the first two digits represent the academic year - 20 means 2020-21, 21 means 2021-22, and so on. The third digit means the semester: 1 means Fall, 2 means Winter, 3 means Spring, and 4 means Summer. The fourth digit is always zero.
8. Double-click the four-digit number to change it to our transfer term. For example, the Osaka design courses will be taken during 2023-24 Fall. Then, the term code should be 2310 because 23 means 2023-24 and the third digit 1 means Fall. BE CAREFUL! Entering a wrong number or entering a number at least 1 year from the current term (say 2410 (2024-25 Fall) when the current term is 2023-24 Fall) and not fixing it before continuing, will result in the system being broken. You do not want to waste time emailing iselaine@ust.hk (The Information Systems Office staff responsible for the Credit Transfer mapping system) to request the term code to be changed. When done, you can close the developer tab that appeared when you clicked “Inspect” using the “x” button at the top right of this panel.
9. Click “Submit”. You will now see your raised credit transfer mapping list. Now, click the blue ”+ Add Course” at the bottom. Click the “Expired mapping” checkbox to view expired mappings due to course code change or course cancellation too. You can search for “EMIA2020” to see if any course has expired or denied mappings to EMIA2020. Or you can search for the course name too. If there is a denied mapping, then you’re in trouble and have to justify why the course matches EMIA2020 by comparing the syllabuses or otherwise. You’d be better off finding another course.
10. If there is no mapping at all, then you can try requesting a new mapping. Scroll to the bottom and click the “here” of “If you cannot find your incoming course, please click here to add”.
11. Fill in the course code, course title, course unit (the first box for a numeric number, the second box for the unit like “credits”), and course hours per week/no. of weeks. Course hours per week/no. of weeks is not important for the mapping and is only for future students to look at when they reuse this course for new HKUST course mappings. But the course code, course title and course unit must match the course listing on the APRU website.
12. Search the HKUST equivalent course using the blue 🔍 button, and enter “EMIA” for the first text box. The second text box is for the course code, you may enter “2020” there but you can also just select EMIA2020 by searching “EMIA” alone. The “Academic Organisation” is for searching by department code, for example, “CSE” for “COMP” and “CSIT” prefix courses, or “LANG” (probably for the old name “Language Center” before the name of CLE) for “LANG” or “LABU” prefix courses. For your reference, if you want to transfer a requirement (e.g. common core broadening Science area, Entrepreneurship minor elective Fundamentals, ISOM 3000 level course IS side, SOSC 1000 level SA common core, COMP major elective Computer Systems / Networking area), this is where you don’t search the course but instead type in the “Course Title” textbox. Be as specific as possible (like those examples and not just “COMP major elective” without writing about the area) or you risk a “Needs more Information” response a few days later and delay your mapping.
13. Now upload the syllabus documents. The system only accepts PDF files as syllabus documents. Usually for APRU Virtual Exchange, you need two types of files: A PDF Save of the APRU course listing webpage with the course section opened, and all syllabus documents linked in the Course Outline in the course section, converted to PDF. On a Windows computer, you can save a webpage as PDF using the Ctrl+P shortcut and choosing “Microsoft Print to PDF” as the printer. Clicking “Print” will bring up a save file dialogue to save the webpage as PDF. Note that you must provide English versions of all syllabus documents. So for example, if a mainland university has course outlines in Chinese, you should use an online service to translate the files from Chinese to English. You don’t have to worry about translation quality since you will also submit the original language file together with the English machine-translated file. But you should still hand-modify the course title, course code and credits to match the APRU course listing. Not translating the files to English risks a “Needs more Information” response a few days later and delays your mapping.
14. Check that your syllabus files to upload, when combined, includes all the required information. This includes

• Course code, course title, number of credits
• Content (Course description / Intended Learning Outcomes)
• Assessments (Work to be done and Proportions of final grade)
• Schedule (Date and time of each lecture/tutorial/laboratory. Past semester information is allowed)
  Missing any of this information risks a “Needs more Information” response a few days later and delays your mapping. If you cannot find one of them, consider contacting the university for more information and print the email conversation as PDF.

1. Leave the “Grade Obtained” textbox empty.
2. Click the blue ✓ button to submit this new mapping request. Expect anywhere from two weeks to a month to wait for a response. However, if a “Needs More Information” status is given, it will only take a few days. You don’t need to check this system every day since the system will send you an automatic email update when the status changes, but still you can notice early signs of denial by looking at the course mapping list. For example, if a new mapping suddenly appears with “Pending” status for the same course you are trying to map to PHYS1003, but instead this mapping is towards PHYS1000LEVEL, then this is likely a recommendation from the PHYS department for the Academic Registry to process as the course to map to instead. You can expect a “Mapping denied with others proposed” result a few days later. But this is just a heuristic, not 100% accurate since there is still a chance that another student simply made this mapping request instead of the department.
3. If you waited and got the green circle as the mapping status, then congratulations! You can continue onto registering for this course. Otherwise if denied, you can try justifying by comparing the course under mapping to the HKUST course (EMIA2020), but you are usually better off looking for another course instead.
4. If the mapping is still under review by the time the deadline is reached, you can either take the risk of mapping rejection by applying for the course anyway or look for another course instead and risk missing an approved mapping - courses are not guaranteed to be offered next time. Note that you can still email the APRU system staff to withdraw your application before being accepted, and you can also withdraw from the course once accepted. For the latter case, I don’t know the impacts on your chances of enrolling into a future course by the same university successfully though. This is why I recommend you apply for a new mapping at least a month before the application deadline.
5. After completing the course, you should notice a new application that is added by the Office of Global Learning with the category “Study abroad (HKUST organized) (Virtual)” instead of the “On Entry” added by yourself. You should use that for official usage of mapping requests instead. You can still ”+ Add Course” to make use of your previously approved mapping request. You don’t need to upload the syllabus again for reusing an existing approved request but you do need to input the grade. If your final grade will be released after the semester ends, you can still type a “TBC” (note this textbox only allows 3 characters so you might be tripped up by spaces) as a placeholder to indicate this course to be processed by the Academic Registry. Click the blue ✓ button to submit one last time.
6. Your transcript upon completion of this virtual exchange course must be sent directly from the offering university to HKUST, whether to the Office of Global Learning or the Academic Registry. This should be automatic as standard practice, you should not send or upload the transcript by yourself since it would be unverifiable by HKUST. Not having the transcript will result in your application being stuck on “Pending Official Transcript” as a Reference Tag.
7. Wait again - the credit transfer process may take as long as a few months or as quickly as a week. The Academic Registry seems to only do “Complete initial check” by the end of each semester so if you submit the application and miss when they check credit transfer mappings, you might need to wait until a few months more. Meanwhile, submitting at the right time can get this done in a week. Upon clicking the blue ✓ button, your application status action list (seen by clicking the 🔍 next to your Application Status) will have a “Submitted” action, then after “Transcript verified”, “Complete initial check”, “Complete review & Post”, finally “Approve”. The T grade will appear on your academic transcript when “Complete review & Post” is done - you do not need to wait for Approve. A side note: Program Office Endorsed in the Status table above application status action list seems to always be ”—”, and the Checked seems to always be a yellow triangle. I suspect the Checked may only be done on graduation. I don’t know for sure.

There you have it - extended majors without the pain of EMIA2020 and Luisa Mok. Good luck with your virtual exchange experiences!