When issuing the Binding Study Advice, the Examination Board takes into account several issues before the final binding study advice is given:

  1. If you have obtained less than 60* credits due to personal circumstances that seriously affected your study performance and were reported within reasonable time to the student adviser, the Examination Board may decide to postpone your BSA for 1 year and grant you permission to continue the IBA programme.
  2. If no personal circumstances apply, you might be eligible for the so-called ‘hardship-clause’. In this scenario you have obtained 1 non-compensable insufficient grade or 2 fails in your first bachelor-year and you have attended all exam opportunities of the concerning courses. Decisive factors to evaluate your situation are your average grade and the overall picture of your study performance. If the hardship clause will be applied, you will receive a positive BSA which means you can continue the IBA program. Your remaining B1 courses need to be obtained during your 2nd year of enrolment. Please note that students are not eligible to apply for exchange in this scenario because not all 60 EC's are obtained in the 1st year of enrolment (with or without compensation).

In these situations the final decision will be made by the Examination Board. The student advisers have an advisory role in this procedure. It is not possible to get a predicted outcome before the BSA-meeting mid August, when your case will be discussed. The meeting will be attended by staff only.

The regular BSA-norm of 60 EC has been adjusted for students from the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 cohort. The norm for these cohorts have been adjusted downwards to 51 EC due to the corona pandemic. Students of these cohorts with a postponed advice, need to meet this adjusted norm of 51 EC by August in the subsequent academic year in order to get a positive binding study advice.