General information about the NOVA school

The NOVA school is meant to broaden the knowledge of astronomy graduate students. Courses are taught dealing with topics that were missed during the undergraduate studies. Every graduate student in The Netherlands is expected to participate in a NOVA school at least once, and preferably within their first year of the PhD.

The school is offered annually, usually during in the Fall. NOVA School (formerly known as NOVA Fall school) generally consist of two parallel course streams, which rotate between three topics "Galaxies", "Interstellar medium & Star- and planet formation" and "Compact objects and the late stages of stellar evolution". Each stream consists of a general part and a specialized part. The topics of the latter part are different each year.

The streams are targeted at students who did not have the topic in their undergraduate studies, to broaden their general background in astronomy. PhD students should choose the stream after consultation with their PhD thesis supervisor and select the stream that is the most distant from the science subject matter pertaining the PhD. All courses are taught in English, and often include practical exercises. In addition, all participating students are required to make a short oral presentation dealing with their PhD or Master thesis research project, for their fellow students