Guide to CUFE CHS life:  

Hello and welcome to CUFE CHS, it might be heaven (uh not really for me, but who knows), it might be hell, it might be just in-between like everything else.

Website version
Repository version
PDF Version
Note that internal section links do not work in the PDF but external links work!

It is ok to feel a bit lost at first, hopefully this can help you.

Important Resources:  

• Drive link.  

• Personal Account (Student Information System - SIS): Important.  

• Credit Bylaws  

• Acadmic Calendar  

• Zayed Campus Map  

• Giza Campus Map  

• Bachelor Programs Brochures and Maps  

• Offical Credit Hours News (Always check both announcement links)  

• Official News for Programs (Always check both announcement links)  

• Permitted Absence Times Calculator Check Attendance Important section for more info.  

• Auto Evaluator Check Evaluation Important section for more info.  

Myths (all untrue)    

• Credit is easier than mainstream.  

• Credit students are richer (this is more of a stereotype, it is actually half false).  

• Credit have better lecture halls (half false as well).  

Paths  

There are multiple paths you can choose in uni, each with their ups and downs.  

• Supreme Nerd.  

• Normal Normie.  

• Slacker Procrastinator.  

But you need to remember that even a slacker can beat a super nerd, but that is not always the case, just don’t be depressed because you are not a supreme nerd, try to improve what you can instead.  

Supreme Nerd  

Being a nerd doesn’t mean you cannot have friends, even nerds have friends. You might even get more friends because they want your help in assignments and be on your team in projects. Just try to have more than one nerd as a friend though, and pick good people as friends.  

Normal Normie  

Normal people. Studies when necessary and tries to have a balance between fun and studying.  

Slacker Procrastinator  

I am too lazy to describe them, remind me tomorrow.  

Now, jokes are over. Time to get into the details.  

Lectures, tutorials, assignments, projects, deadlines, representatives, announcements, and probably some other things I forgot. You get used to it over time, but the sooner you understand your new life, the better.  

Bylaws

The credit bylaws list all the different rules and regulations that apply to your class, as well as GPA score points and their equivalent grades (percentage or witten grade). Please give it a read at least once in your academic study. Some of the rules are included in this guide, but the grades guide needs to be checked in the bylaws to make sure it is up to date.

Attendance    

You must not be absent for more than 25% of lectures and tutorials, measured by their length in hours (not credit hours), otherwise you will be deprived/disallowed from sitting the final exam and get a FW (forced withdraw) in this course.
The attendance tool can help you determine how many times you can be absence.
If you were absent for a medical reason and got deprived, you can present your excuse with official papers to the professor, and ask the professor if they will agree to allow you to attend the final exam.
Do note this might not work with all professors, the professor normally has the right to refuse to deprive you, but it is up to the professor. Also you can do that in case you were mistakenly considered as absent, which happens rarely.

In no way can you remove the absence records for any reason, excuse or no excuse, even if it was by mistake. Any official excuse (from the Cairo University Students’ Hospital) allows you to make up for any lost graded assignment or quiz, but won’t remove the absence at all. The above note is normally true with the exception that very rarely, the professor might sympathize with your case and ask the administration for permission to edit the absence records.

Lectures  

The one who gives it is called a doctor or professor, duh, but the important part is we have a wide variety of them, there are some with nice lectures that you can either enjoy or just don’t feel like time has frozen, while there is the opposite, and there is the in-between.  

First lecture is always the less strict one, you will know their rules, here are some of them that some of them enforce and the others don’t:  

• No mobiles: some of them don’t care, some of them will scold you if you use it or kick you out.  

• No drinks or food: actually it is kinda normal to eat in lectures due to having very short time between them and maybe no breaks at all, but some of them disallow it completely and may just allow you to drink WATER only.  

• No chatter with your friends: this is sort of a universal rule.  

• No going out from lecture: some of them disallow going out for any reason, though this is a bit rare, but a lot will just let you do whatever you want as long as you don’t take long, you can go to the bathroom or get you something to drink/eat, but try not to take too long, and don’t do that if the professor is strict, they might mark you as absent. With some of them you need to ask for permission to go out, and the others not necessarily. Better safe than sorry though.  

• Taking attendance: only a scant few don’t take attendance, most of them take attendance and some of them take it at a random time, they might even take it when some people are out and won’t accept any excuse you have, try not to go out before they do. Honestly though, most of them either take it after a fixed amount of time after the lecture starts, as soon as it starts, or at the end.  

• No taking pictures: some of them disallow taking a picture of the board, and female professors prefer that they aren’t photographed in the picture.  

It is normal that you don’t understand some professors at all, if the majority of the students don’t understand then more likely than not you will understand in the tutorial, isA. Otherwise, you should seek help via looking for online material, asking the professor, or even ask the teaching assistant.  

Tutorials  

The one that gives it is called a teaching assistant (TA), and normally they are more easygoing than the professor. They take attendance too though.  

Assignments  

Mostly assigned by the professor, and you need to ask the professor who to submit it to, sometimes they tell you to submit it to the TA, sometimes you need to submit it to the professor himself. Always do it before the due date, rarely do they allow late submission without losing grades, if at all.  

Projects  

A lot of courses include a project, sometimes it is 5-10% of your coursework grades, sometimes it is 20%. If it is 5-10%, then it is a minor project that is easy, hopefully, and maybe pairs or individuals. The rest are typically 4-member teams and the project typically takes a few weeks to finish. Projects need to be submitted on time because right after submission, in the next tutorial slot, most likely you will discuss it with the TA or the professor (varies from course to course).  

Representatives    

For regulations and in-depth information about the representatives system, check this important PDF.

Those are students that volunteered to coordinate with the professors if the need arises, and notifies the students with any news the professor wants announced. They also handle changing any deadline or quiz date if needed, but do note that quiz date changes require an unanimous acceptance, if any students rejects it, then the proposal is automatically rejected.  

In freshman year, you will be typically divided into groups with a fixed timetable, hence each group should have a representative under the supervision of an older class. Typically, each group has its own WhatsApp group, plus a “General Newsfeed” group on which any important news that is relevant to the whole class is sent, hence please never ever mute that one.  

After your freshman year, you should be sorted into, hopefully, your preferred program. Now each program should have its own WhatsApp group, and a new set of representatives. Some programs have multiple representatives, some have just one. The representatives get help from older representatives until they get used to it, so if you want to volunteer but don’t know what exactly to do, don’t worry. Just be prepared because it is similar to a management position: you need to be prepared for handling stuff frequently.  

When needing help, please reach out to your representative on the class group only, reaching in private is your last resort and used only when you need to share private details. Normally when you reach out to your representative in private, others do the same thing and in the end the representative is flooded with messages and takes a long time to reply to all, and a lot of requests are actually repeated and others can reply to it, doesn’t have to be the representative.    

Registration    

Try to follow your program map as closely as possible, and try to be 5 minutes early. Always check your timetable after registration.  

If you are in waiting list, then there you will be accepted if you are in the first 10, otherwise either ask if the professor accepts everyone or you need to register another course instead. If the course you registered doesn’t appear in your table, then the slot you tried to register was filled, and you need to register any other course. You can use “Registration Status Report” icon to check the status of any available course. You can also submit a special registration request, details in Special Registration section, but I repeat you need to register another course in case your sepcial request gets denied.

Special Registration

Via the Special Registration icon on the SIS portal, you submit special requests to enroll in courses that got filled in the normal registration stage, and you got a small chance to be accepted. Typically, there are a few slots saved for special registration. You will need to fill in what course you want, its slot, and type a comment about why you want it (if you got anything to say). Typically they try to give priority to people who have an urgent reason, like graduating, otherwise it is on a first come first served basis. Another thing to boost your chances is to specify a course you want to drop if they accept your special request. You can add multiple courses to drop in one request if needed, just explain in details what you want and your trade offer in the comment field, and specify the course names and codes.

Tuition Fees

How to pay

To pay, you can use Fawry outlet on-campus near the Cafeteria, and it is the best option because you only pay 2 EGP as transfer fees, otherwise paying via Super Fawry service will incur higher fees. Your payment code for Fawry is noted on your ID card and on your Profile, it is 14 numbers long.

You can ask the Credit Student Affairs for your total as well, normally they have this info available after the Drop only phase, which means the info is available from week 3 to week 5.

Duration

Fall or Spring

Week 3 until week 5.

Summer

Week 2 until week 4.

Late fines

Fall or Spring

First two weeks after deadline: 10% extra on total fees (total fees * 1.1).
After two weeks and until the end of the semster: 20% extra on total fees (total fees * 1.2).

Summer

First week after deadline: 10% extra on total fees (total fees * 1.1).
After one week and until the end of the semster: 20% extra on total fees (total fees * 1.2).
You only pay only one of the two fines based on when you pay, they are not added together.

General Formula

Fall or Spring

$$(Price\ of\ 1\ credit\ hour\times amount\ of\ credit\ hours+administrative\ fees)\times1.1$$ Mainstream fees are extra and added to the total fees, paid once annually, typically in Spring.

Summer

$$((Price\ of\ 1\ credit\ hour\times1.25)\times amount\ of\ credit\ hours+administrative\ fees)\times1.1$$

IT1 and IT2:

No administrative fees.
IT1 = 1 credit hour.
IT2 = 2 credit hours.
$$Price\ of\ 1\ credit\ hour\times amount\ of\ credit\ hours\times1.1$$

Credit hour price

1 credit hour (currently for 27) = 1800 EGP.
Each new class increases 14% of price of credit hour (i.e. class 26 1 credit = ~1580 EGP -> *1.14 = 1800 EGP for class 27).
Do note that it might fluctate so don’t take it as a hard rule, it is more of a guideline, so you need to ask your class/student affairs and note it down. Rarely does it differ for the same class through the years.

Discounts

Staff parents

If any of your parents are a member of the educational staff (professors or TAs) in any faculty affliated with Cairo University, you can get a 30% discount, but you need to get an official document from the University to prove that.

cGPA

If your cGPA (cumultative GPA not semster GPA) is:

• cGPA > 3.6: 50% off.
• cGPA < 3.6 and cGPA > 3.5: 25% off.

Installments

Available on demand at CUFE CHS Student Affairs.
You can pay it over 2 installments, 60% and 40% respectively.
The first installment must be paid in the same timeframe as the usual tuition fees.

Withdrawal    

You are allowed to withdraw from only 2 courses per semster.  

Retaking a course    

You are allowed to retake a course 5 times only in your whole academic study. It is advised to do it only for courses where you got a C or below, and it is a must if you get an F. Also, you can’t retake a course after 2 main semsters have passed since you originally took it.  

If you got a lower score, your old score will be replaced with the lower score. If you failed, then you will need to retake the course again.  

التماس/تظلم  

A request to re-calculate your final exam grades only. No rechecking/regrading is done, it just re-calculates the given grade. For a regrading, this requires a case to be presented to a legal court. To request one, check Document Request.  

Industrial Training (IT)

Always check the IT Manual before looking for any internship. Your class’s drive should have an up-to-date version. As of the date of writing (Jan 2024), minimum length of training is:

• IT-1: 3 work weeks equivalent to 90 hours.
• IT-2: 6 work weeks equivalent to 180 hours. Work week means Sunday to Thursday, 8 hours work day. You are supposed to find any internship on LinkedIn, Wuzzuf, or any possible one through personal connections. Sometimes representatives might post potential internships in your class groups, but not always. You might also find some on the Faculty’s site here. Upon completion of your internship, you are supposed to get a certificate that has:
• Company name and logo.
• Your name.
• Internship start and end dates. Has to be the same as the details submitted in the IT module on the SIS portal.
• Total hours of internship.
• Official signature such as your supervisor/senior or someone who ranks higher than them.
• Official company stamp. If any of the aforementioned details are missing, IT administration will ask you to re-submit the certificate after amending it. If you cannot submit the certificate of completion before the deadline requested by the administration, you can get a “استمارة تدريب” from the Student Affairs which has to be stamped from Mainstream’s Student Affairs (back of the main building that is in front of the obelisk), then fill the required details. Do note that the certificate will be required a few days before the IT exam and no alternative is accepted then. The IT Exam is commonly as follows:
• IT-1: Document that details your training process, hardcopy, with simple discussion with your program’s IT Coordinator.
• IT-2: Document that details your training process, hardcopy, and a PowerPoint presentation, softcopy or no need to submit. The representatives should keep you updated with the required deadlines, but the IT exam is usually at the end of the semester. As for the training document specifications, the length and required sections vary from program to program.

  Military Training  

Pass or fail course and mandatory for all male students. Sign up for an account here then apply for any available slot, typically open in winter or summer holidays, better check before the semester ends by a week or so, and check daily. It consists of physical training and lectures. Upon completion, there is a written exam. Your class drive might have a question bank to help you study.

Graduation:

• You should take your إخلاء طرف من التربية العسكرية from the Military Training office in the Student Hostel (المدينة الجامعية) at any time during your graduation semester, you only a photocopy from both your faculty ID card and National ID, and print the form from here.
• Around the end of the semester (when your representative announces it first):
  • You will need to pay via the CKES (directly or via Fawry), required service is: طلب دخول امتحان نهائي 104.
  • Take some forms from the student affairs where you will sign that you received them, so nobody else can do it for you. The forms are:
    • CHSF-024.
    • استمارة طلب دخول امتحان نهائي 104.
    • Exit Survey.
  • Fill these forms in the appropriate fields, some are to be filled by the student.
  • Go to your relevant program coordinator’s office or secretary to leave your CHSF-024 form, and you will recieve it later, ask whoever you leave your form with when.
  • For the English name field in استمارة طلب دخول امتحان نهائي 104, take care to copy it from your passport if any, if you don’t have one then make sure to fill your name in the passport with the same name as the one you type down. It is needed to write your English name properly to prove that the Graduation Certificate belongs to you for future reference.
  • After fulfilling the previous steps, submit the following to the Student Affairs:
    • 4x6 personal photo with a white background.
    • CHSF-024.
    • Receipt for طلب دخول امتحان نهائي 104.
    • استمارة طلب دخول امتحان نهائي 104.
    • Exit Survey.
    • إخلاء طرف من التربية العسكرية.

Post Graduation:

• To know your overall equivalent grade, check the bylaws to know how to convert your cGPA to its equivalent grade.
• After graduating, you need to take 3 things from the faculty:
  • Your file.
  • Graduation Certificate also known as Temporary Graduation Certificate (in Arabic or English), required by employers.
  • Honorary Graduation Certificate aka Final Graduation Certificate, honorary and is not submitted anywhere.
• Notes for Compulsory Military Service (eligible male students only):
  • If you don’t have استمارة 6 جند in your file, you will need to get بطاقة 7 جند بدل فاقد 6 جند from مكتب التجنيد in the governorate listed in your National ID.
  • Some accept the بيان نجاح but some require the Graduation Certificate, so have both when applying. Try to submit the بيان نجاح first because it is not used for anything else, mostly.
  • For Compulsory Military Service, check the exemption rules and required documents here. If you have to submit your documents before the Graduation Certificate is ready, you can request a “بيان نجاح” which is ready only after the results are officially certified but takes one day to be ready instead of a week like the Graduation Certificate.
• For the Engineer’s Syndicate, check the required documents here. You can start these procedures only after the results are sent to the Egyptian Engineers Syndicate from the Faculty, which takes 1-2 months after the results are officially approved and certified. Fees (as of class of 2023) were 1495 EGP, add 70 EGP for each year after that. You can also ask for a 3-year valid card for an extra 140 EGP. Formula for reference: $$1495 + (70\times(Current\ Year - 2023)) + Optional\ 140$$

Your file

• Can be requested 1 week after results announcement and has to be retrieved before requesting a graduation certificate.
• Go to the Central Library in the main CU Campus to get “إخلاء طرف” after paying 33 EGP (doesn’t include Fawry’s fees) in Fawry here with username: clib and password cl!b@#$), to stamp the receipt from Fawry.
• Go to the CUFE Library in CUFE Campus (building 9, behind Architecture building) to get another “إخلاء طرف”, you’ll pay 2 EGP (not via Fawry.
• Go to your program’s secretary to sign the same paper from the last step.
• Pay 156 EGP (doesn’t include Fawry’s fees) on Fawry on the normal CKES portal choose شئون طلاب, then choose رسم سحب ملف - خريج (الساعات المعتمدة).
• Go to the Student Affairs under building 20 not the normal Credit Hours Student Affairs with all the signed/stamped documents and the receipts to take your file.

Graduation Certificate and Grades Transcript

You have to retrieve your file before requesting any. The Graduation Certificate and Grades Transcript are normally ready 2-3 months after results announcement, due to time taken until the Cairo University’s Dean (not the Faculty’s Dean) officially approves and certifies the final results of the academic year.

• Go to the Graduate Affairs window behind the main administration building (the one in front of the obelisk), and ask for instructions to submit a request. They’ll tell you where to get the request form. The request form costs 5 EGP.
• Graduation Certificate is needed by employers, the Grades Transcript is rarely required but needed for M.Sc. registration.
• Prices (without Fawry fees, as of 2023):
  • Graduation Certificate: 77 EGP per copy.
  • Grades Transcript: 102 EGP per copy.
• You must have:
  • One official 6x4 photo with white background.
  • One black and white photocopy of your National ID.
  • If you want an English Graduation Certificate, you need a photocopy of your passport which must be valid.
  • Fawry receipt with a photocopy. After finishing all steps, they’ll tell you when to come back to take your requested documents. The Graduation Certificate normally takes a week while the Grades Transcript takes 10 work days. The Honorary Graduation Certificate is already paid for with your tuition fees under extra fees, and typically ready after a year of graduation.

Evaluation    

Mandatory and occurs in the last few weeks of the semster, if not done then you cannot access your account until the next semster, and won’t be able to register your Spring courses in the first phase (in Fall semesters only).  

If you want to auto skip the evaluation, use this script (PC only) which will mark all answers as “Can not answer” and finishes the whole evaluation, it is not actively maintained, so if it gets broken then either see if any of the other students makes a new one, otherwise fill it manually.  

In my opinion, the evalutation is completely useless, unless you have cosntructive comments to add.  

Email

Sadly they do not provide free Windows Education license anymore. You can sign up for GitHub Student Developer Pack and get the benefits, but these mainly concern Computer Engineering students. Some major services might offer free trials or discounts for accounts with these domains or upon verifying your University ID. Note that AutoDesk (provides AutoCAD among other software) provides their products for free for university students here , which should help Architecture and Civil programs, and requires your ID but not any of the following email domains.

Faculty Email (@eng-st.cu.edu.eg)

Follow the instructions here. Gives you a big storage limit on Google Drive with that account, but it is not unlimited. The whole organization (any accounts with the same domain) have a collective limit of 100 TB.

University Email (@stud.cu.edu.eg)

Follow the instructions here. Gives you 5 TB on OneDrive and free Office 365 for Education after signing in with your account here.

Personal Account (Student Information System - SIS):    

Your personal account is very important, and very helpful.  

Links  

• https://std.eng.cu.edu.eg  

• https://chreg.eng.cu.edu.eg  

Icons  

Registration  

• Register your courses (or group, freshman only).  

My Time Table  

• Check your current time table.  

Full Transcript  

• check all of your grades so far, and you can print it to pdf or to a printer.  

Profile  

• You can use it to check your program (after freshman year to check what program you got accepted into) and check your payment code.  

Graduation Report  

• Allows you to check the remaining courses you need to take with their credit hours, electives, and your grades in these courses.  

Advising Helper  

• Very useful for checking out your expectations for GPA since it allows you to select courses and set your expectance for their grade, then it shows you the calculated GPA and cGPA based on that.  

GPA Transcript  

• Similar to Full Transcript, just a different layout.  

Info And Warnings  

• Always opens by default when you open your account alongside “Update Personal Data”. Tells you if you have any notice/alert for absence and if you were deprived of attending the final exam. In addition, it shows you any ultra important news.  

Mail System  

• Useless right now, similar to an internal email system.  

Term classwork  

• Shows your midterm and classwork grades. Always make sure it is correct, especially before the final exam since this data is used in calculating your final grade for the course.  

Registration Status Report  

• Shows status of any available course, whether it still accepts new registrants, its class size, count of students who are on the waiting list, remaining places (shown in negative), and its designated hall/lab.  

Request withdrawal from a course  

• Allows you to withdraw from any course, revise Withdrawal Important Registration.  

Edit profile  

• Useless, I think, use Update Personal Data instead.  

In Class Attendance  

• I only used it once or twice throughout my academic study, maybe useless. The professor will tell you if you need to use it.  

Private Interent Password:  

• Useless, was supposed to give you limited access to the interent in Floor 7 of Architecture building.  

Document Request  

• Shows you a list of documents to choose from, and then asks you to pay for them and provides the needed link, which is this one, never ever type it manually since you might go to another faculty’s and your money will be wasted.  

• This icon is mainly used for إثبات قيد or التماس/تظلم.  

• You need to present the receipt to the Credit Student Affairs to get your requested document.  

IT Registration

Used to register IT for your current semster or for summer semster. Revise Industrial Training (IT) section.

Get An E-mail Account

Gives you a Google Workspace email, and allows you to select the email’s username before creating it. Choose a professional format like firstname.lastname. For a list of benefits, revise Faculty Email section.

Special Registration Request

Allows you to submit, view, and delete a special request. Revise Special Registration section

My Seating Number:

Allows you to view your seating number for final exams.

Coordinator Data

Lists your program’s coordinators and their contact info (emails), reach out to them based on the advice of your representative or for matters related to registration and special registration requests only.

التواصل مع أستاذ المادة

New icon, rarely used. Good idea to check it in the first week, and if the professor tells you to regularly check it out, then do so.

Update Personal Data

• Must always be up-to-date and your picture has to follow their guidelines lined in the page, otherwise your account will be locked.

Credits  

Revised by: Ahmed Eldeeb, Founder of Current CHS Representatives System, Representative of EEE & General Representative, Class of 2023, Students Union (SU) Vice President (2021-2022), and IEEE CUSB Advisor.  

Attendance tool: Marawn Mostafa & Khaled Mamdouh, Representatives of CCE-C, Class of 2024.  

All 2023 Representatives who helped my class and always made sure we were always kept up to date, love you guys! ❤

Author: Mostafa Abdelberr, Representative of CCE-C, Class of 2023, Co-Founder of Current CHS Representatives System.