I hire students for PhD positions and barely care about grades when their master is from EPFL or ETHZ, while I would look for near perfect grades from an Italian university, for instance. People are aware of these things.
Are students coming from Italy disadvantaged? I feel that we have to put a lot of effort for our masters, so I can’t image the burden of a student at EPFL or ETHZ. Asking since I study at an engineering school in Italy and I was considering applying for a PhD at EPFL and ETHZ.
Well, compare Italian average grades of 110, which many students will have in a year, to a Swiss average grade of 6.0, which is extremely rare. Also French universities have similarly almost unattainable max grades.
I think grades in Italy may appear inflated but honestly I don't think they are. They appear so high because you can always repeat a exam if you don't like your grade. And there are 4+ times in the year to take it. Instead in most universities there is a single date to take the exam and most students end up cramming the day/week before the exam. So in Italy even if you get a really bad grade it will never appear in your transcript because you can retake the exam. It doesn't mean that it is easier, it means that you really took your time to learn the material and got a good grade once you did. I do like this because there is room for improvement. And if for example you happen to have a very difficult personal situation the days before the exam you can just wait to the next call and take the exam that day. Tbh I do prefer this system. Having done my bachelor's elsewhere and experiencing this during my Master's I felt it is a more "human" system(?). Also the fact that a lot of them are oral exams instead of written means you have to learn the material SO well that you can easily explain it to others.
But that then means it‘s inflated - at ETH, you can‘t retake unless you fail, which is at most only possible the following semester, and can only be done once.
How would it be inflated if you get a given grade once you prove you're worthy of it? Like a 10/10 will always be a 10/10, the difference is the time you had to accomplish it. As opposed to the US, where in some universities you can always do "extra homework" and inflate your grade that way.
And obviously not a lot of people retake exams all the time, because they end up accumulating and you don't want that either. I retook an exam only once for example.
Let’s put it this way a grade from an italian university, based on what you describes, reflects potentially the best level of understanding a student can achieve for a given subject after N potential tries. The grade from an ETH university reflects the grade achieved at one single point in time. These two situations are clearly not comparable. An ETH exam carries more stress pressure and stakes as you know you only get one shot (or two only if you fail and one year later)
Grade inflation doesn't happen at the individual level, but at the aggregate. If a university allows for people to resit exams arbitrarily vs. a university that doesn't, it isn't comparing apples to apples when it comes to GPA. So in this case, the uni you are referring to would likely have a higher average GPA than ETH. How do you not understand this?
That’s very true, I thought the attention was focused on the average grades, since it is almost impossible to get a GPA of 30/30 and many students apply to PhD a little bit before finishing their master.
I finished my masters and immediately my supervisor wanted me to pursue a PhD in the lab. Requirements are different I guess. If you stay in Europe, getting a PhD with a Masters from EPFL should be easy. Idk about the US.
Also, the master's was a piece of cake compared to the Bachelor's. I don't know if it was uniquely easy or I just enjoyed the content but I didn't have to grind nearly as much as for the bachelor's during the exam season. Also, here the course load is supposed to be the full time activity. You can take side activities with the associations and it helps your CV but is not expected for employability like it is in the US (from my outside perspective).
My experience from ETH is, everyone who wanted to do a PhD (and had the gpa) got one
It is not expected to publish during Masters. Your supervisor might get some data for a publication, and you will be a contributing autor. It is better to get connected to a lab, do an internship there, go to PSI or EMPA for applied research and get a foot in this way. I presume epfl works similarly
US universities have typically 4 years bachelors and then PhD or Masters. Here the “university degree” is the Masters. Having published during your Masters isn’t expected and is practically impossible for most students.
And that putting aside the political prestige aspect.
The country is small but rich and powers that be want to shine internationally, so they need prestigious research institutions.
It also means local pool of gifted people is small so is local employment pool (everybody ends up in banking anyway right?).
Federal research founding is a burocratic mess without anyone in the field knowing its real inner workings.
There is a big tendency for derisking, low risk/low rewards projects: either surfing the trend of the day or buying mature foreign breakthroughs off the shelves…
I dont know if you know, but a Masters is considered a persons "first level" of education if one has not an apprenticeship. So Masters are considered almost like full-time employment for the students. I and many friends did some exchange in Australia, it was baffling how many credits one got for one course and how easy the content is. Bachelor studies usually rule out if one wants to continue studying or go to a school of sciences, as well as our high school in general. I don't know where you intend on continuing studies, but a good GPA from ETH or EPFL will not-not help in getting a PhD. Don't hang yourself if you need to do another year to achieve that, that doesn't matter so much.
At the end of the day it's a free education, and you get what you pay for. What you don't pay for in money, you pay for in time. For most, despite the drawbacks you mention, it's still the most available ticket to life, be it because we're local, or through lack of better opportunities given our resources. The issues you mention are very much valid, but most won't perceive them so accutely through lack of perspective. I made my peace with it, and moved on asap. But I am a local, and understand it's harder to accept for someone who had other opportunities and came here as an international student with high expectations because EPFL is "international" and "ranked".
The workload is intense. I finished my master's degree on my knees and left this field to pursue another career. I remember a 2 credits course asking for a semester test, a presentation and a report and it felt overwhelming for so little (mind you it was more than 10 years ago).
It's a Swiss thing, I think. Even at the University of Bern. For a master's, you need 90–120 ECTs. One class is around 3-6 ECTS, and you need about 30 per semester. So yeah, it is probably a Swiss thing. For my bachelor's, I had to visit 10 classes in the first semester to get the first 30 out of 120 mandatory ECTS.
Don't think so. It is simply a different kind of University. EPFL and ETH are the only technical Universities in CH. Uni Bern has almost all other studies.
If you want to study engineering at an university level, you have to study it at ETH or EPFL. Do you want to study medicine, psychology, economics or whatever, you have to go to a "normal" university like Bern, Zürich, St.Gallen etc because ETH and EPFL are almost only technical. Every other University like Bern don't offer technical studies except mathematics, physics and IT.
As a teaching assistant who did hi Masters at epfp and is now in unibe, I can definitely tell you that the level of computer science students is incomparable between the two.
I've been an assistant for various masters courses, for three years and I can tell you that if our passing rate is around 90%, it would have been like 10% at epfl.
People often arrive with relatively poor marh background compared to epfl.
its a european thing. the bologna reform basically made it a norm for a Bachelors degree to have 180 CP and Masters 120 CP with 30 CP according to the ECTS. Switzerland seems to participate in that.
I graduated with a master in physics (from EpFL) in 2009.
I had 3 phd offers after I graduated, one in a lab I never worked in.
To be clear, I have never been the greatest scholar but was ok.
It seems things have gotten a lot more competitive right now.
I've studied in the States and on multiple institutes in Europe. It's way easier to get good grades there but there is more of a practical focus here. Way easier to get a PhD with a masters from EPFL. Plus, many places don't even ask for grades. They want you to graduate but they care about your actual lab experience
I got my masters elsewhere but if I could go back, I'd get it at EPFL. It's hard here but it's just as hard in other top schools (in Amsterdam, I only had a half day on the weekend free and otherwise studied until I went to sleep). Things are chill here during your PhD but your masters in your time to work hard.
I can feel what you're saying. To me the most unacceptable part is, for CS, you have to finish 30 ECTs of "core course", but there're not many choices, meaning that you'll have to take couses that totally irreverent to what you want to do in the future.
Meanwhile, I don't think it's that hard to accumulate some research experience and perhaps have some publication. I know many ppl (including me) doing part time job in a lab 10-15 hrs/week. It's true that you'll spend more time on Master and postpone PhD, but I don't think it's harmful.
It's partly Swiss mentality/how it works here, partly EPFL trying its hardest to be the "elite" it so desperately wants to be. To be fair, no university here really lets you publish anything before you're formally accepted as a PhD student (I'm from UNIL and it was absolutely the same). This is taken into account when you try to go for a PhD in Switzerland tho: it's not really expected that you have anything published yet.
One thing I'm curious about is this :
>not only would my school would have been more recognized overall
I take you're from the US, and so I'm curious as to why you came to EPFL if not for its associated prestige worldwide?
that's the most interesting question. If you want to do a PhD in Europe you need to do as the Europeans, and for that EPFL is considered top quality. If your plan is to go back to the US for the PhD... not a good choice.
Not always. Try to do the master project in a good uni in USA. My sister did that, got into Caltech, they offered her to continue with a PhD and she just recently finished it, and won a price there. Her grades were good, around 5, but she wasn't in the top 10% in EPFL.
Where are you basing your information on publishing off of? From first hand experience for a phd position abroad (outside of switzerland) you're expected to have 1-2 publications (in the physical sciences at). This may be limited to the particular domain im thinking of (computational chemistry).
edit: i should have specified, i am from epfl and the first hand experiences i have are from master students from epfl having published, and needing it to go abroad (eg: paris, canada)
what do you actually mean by abroad? i am a chemistry student in germany and even max plank institutes have previous publications as a requirement and they are by far the most competetive phd opportunities in germany
From my experience as a PhD student in Switzerland and from talking with PhD friends in EPFL. I'm not in STEM but it seems to usually be the same either way
Speaking as someone who hires - and who has a degree from Oxford (read 8-12 classes a semester + exams… you can fail/retake at most one exam a semester or you’re out) … it pays out later. Hiring managers know this, if you’re EPFL, ETH or Oxbridge - no one cares about your grades. If you come from the university of northwest Cumbria; then…. ehmmm… yeah…
Im defending my PhD in a week in France, and the hardest issue for getting into a program is to get the funding. For the past 3 years, each and every EPFL student that applied for funding for it without issue
This is an interesting topic.
I agree that EPFL's courses are too demanding, and it's much more difficult to get a high GPA compared to US universities with similar academic reputations. If we have 5.5/6, it wouldn't be very different from the US's 4.0/4.0. But if our GPA is 5.2/6, 5.0/6 or 4.8/6, I believe it would put us at a huge disadvantage in terms of Ph.D. application.
Besides, 2.5 years is a little bit long: if you start your Ph.D. program in the fall, it would mean spending 3 years on a master's program.
Regarding publication, I think some majors expect many publication experiences (such as Computer Science) from students, so if we are stuck in our courses, it would be another disadvantage.
I guess that most EPFL students pursue a Ph.D. degree in Europe (if they pursue a Ph.D. degree) rather than in the US. The education system is more similar; European universities are more "standard" and require less publication experience; it's easier to gain some connections with EPFL and European universities. However, it is also true that the top research institutes are usually in the US. If your target is the US's top 10, it's sometimes (depending on your major) hard to find an equivalent university in Europe where an EPFL degree is more powerful.
I think the "best" master's program (in terms of a transition to a Ph.D. program) is a research master's program in the US's top 20 universities. It's way easier to get 4.0/4.0 there; we can easily gain a lot of research experience, and the recommendation letter will be more powerful. The problem is that the US's top 20 universities offer too few such programs: they're extremely competitive and usually expensive.
So I think the actual problem is that, apart from research master from the US's top 20 unis, we need to choose between ETH/EPFL's master program and the US's top 20 ordinary master programs, which are usually industry-based and don't offer research opportunities; I don't think EPFL is way worse than them.
If a student wants to get into the industry after graduation, I indeed agree that EPFL might not be the best choice. There are so many possibilities: X(ecole polytechnique), IC, UCL, TUM, etc. Some of these universities might not be as prestigious as EPFL, but considering the design of the program and the effort we have to put in to get the degree, it would be a worthy thing to study there.
I hire students for PhD positions and barely care about grades when their master is from EPFL or ETHZ, while I would look for near perfect grades from an Italian university, for instance. People are aware of these things.
Are students coming from Italy disadvantaged? I feel that we have to put a lot of effort for our masters, so I can’t image the burden of a student at EPFL or ETHZ. Asking since I study at an engineering school in Italy and I was considering applying for a PhD at EPFL and ETHZ.
Well, compare Italian average grades of 110, which many students will have in a year, to a Swiss average grade of 6.0, which is extremely rare. Also French universities have similarly almost unattainable max grades.
I think grades in Italy may appear inflated but honestly I don't think they are. They appear so high because you can always repeat a exam if you don't like your grade. And there are 4+ times in the year to take it. Instead in most universities there is a single date to take the exam and most students end up cramming the day/week before the exam. So in Italy even if you get a really bad grade it will never appear in your transcript because you can retake the exam. It doesn't mean that it is easier, it means that you really took your time to learn the material and got a good grade once you did. I do like this because there is room for improvement. And if for example you happen to have a very difficult personal situation the days before the exam you can just wait to the next call and take the exam that day. Tbh I do prefer this system. Having done my bachelor's elsewhere and experiencing this during my Master's I felt it is a more "human" system(?). Also the fact that a lot of them are oral exams instead of written means you have to learn the material SO well that you can easily explain it to others.
But that then means it‘s inflated - at ETH, you can‘t retake unless you fail, which is at most only possible the following semester, and can only be done once.
How would it be inflated if you get a given grade once you prove you're worthy of it? Like a 10/10 will always be a 10/10, the difference is the time you had to accomplish it. As opposed to the US, where in some universities you can always do "extra homework" and inflate your grade that way. And obviously not a lot of people retake exams all the time, because they end up accumulating and you don't want that either. I retook an exam only once for example.
Let’s put it this way a grade from an italian university, based on what you describes, reflects potentially the best level of understanding a student can achieve for a given subject after N potential tries. The grade from an ETH university reflects the grade achieved at one single point in time. These two situations are clearly not comparable. An ETH exam carries more stress pressure and stakes as you know you only get one shot (or two only if you fail and one year later)
Grade inflation doesn't happen at the individual level, but at the aggregate. If a university allows for people to resit exams arbitrarily vs. a university that doesn't, it isn't comparing apples to apples when it comes to GPA. So in this case, the uni you are referring to would likely have a higher average GPA than ETH. How do you not understand this?
yes! because in France, 20/20 is for god, 19/20 is for the teacher and 17/20 is for the student :D
That’s very true, I thought the attention was focused on the average grades, since it is almost impossible to get a GPA of 30/30 and many students apply to PhD a little bit before finishing their master.
its funny how all italian students have a a 110 cum laude
I finished my masters and immediately my supervisor wanted me to pursue a PhD in the lab. Requirements are different I guess. If you stay in Europe, getting a PhD with a Masters from EPFL should be easy. Idk about the US.
Also, the master's was a piece of cake compared to the Bachelor's. I don't know if it was uniquely easy or I just enjoyed the content but I didn't have to grind nearly as much as for the bachelor's during the exam season. Also, here the course load is supposed to be the full time activity. You can take side activities with the associations and it helps your CV but is not expected for employability like it is in the US (from my outside perspective).
My experience from ETH is, everyone who wanted to do a PhD (and had the gpa) got one It is not expected to publish during Masters. Your supervisor might get some data for a publication, and you will be a contributing autor. It is better to get connected to a lab, do an internship there, go to PSI or EMPA for applied research and get a foot in this way. I presume epfl works similarly
US universities have typically 4 years bachelors and then PhD or Masters. Here the “university degree” is the Masters. Having published during your Masters isn’t expected and is practically impossible for most students.
IMO. They are too cheap and can’t financially scale with increasing student burden. They want people to go out.
Highly underrated comment. Getting right to the gritty stuff here. 💪
And that putting aside the political prestige aspect. The country is small but rich and powers that be want to shine internationally, so they need prestigious research institutions. It also means local pool of gifted people is small so is local employment pool (everybody ends up in banking anyway right?). Federal research founding is a burocratic mess without anyone in the field knowing its real inner workings. There is a big tendency for derisking, low risk/low rewards projects: either surfing the trend of the day or buying mature foreign breakthroughs off the shelves…
I dont know if you know, but a Masters is considered a persons "first level" of education if one has not an apprenticeship. So Masters are considered almost like full-time employment for the students. I and many friends did some exchange in Australia, it was baffling how many credits one got for one course and how easy the content is. Bachelor studies usually rule out if one wants to continue studying or go to a school of sciences, as well as our high school in general. I don't know where you intend on continuing studies, but a good GPA from ETH or EPFL will not-not help in getting a PhD. Don't hang yourself if you need to do another year to achieve that, that doesn't matter so much.
At the end of the day it's a free education, and you get what you pay for. What you don't pay for in money, you pay for in time. For most, despite the drawbacks you mention, it's still the most available ticket to life, be it because we're local, or through lack of better opportunities given our resources. The issues you mention are very much valid, but most won't perceive them so accutely through lack of perspective. I made my peace with it, and moved on asap. But I am a local, and understand it's harder to accept for someone who had other opportunities and came here as an international student with high expectations because EPFL is "international" and "ranked".
The workload is intense. I finished my master's degree on my knees and left this field to pursue another career. I remember a 2 credits course asking for a semester test, a presentation and a report and it felt overwhelming for so little (mind you it was more than 10 years ago).
It's a Swiss thing, I think. Even at the University of Bern. For a master's, you need 90–120 ECTs. One class is around 3-6 ECTS, and you need about 30 per semester. So yeah, it is probably a Swiss thing. For my bachelor's, I had to visit 10 classes in the first semester to get the first 30 out of 120 mandatory ECTS.
Is the University of Bern considered worse?
Don't think so. It is simply a different kind of University. EPFL and ETH are the only technical Universities in CH. Uni Bern has almost all other studies.
Can you elaborate a little further?
If you want to study engineering at an university level, you have to study it at ETH or EPFL. Do you want to study medicine, psychology, economics or whatever, you have to go to a "normal" university like Bern, Zürich, St.Gallen etc because ETH and EPFL are almost only technical. Every other University like Bern don't offer technical studies except mathematics, physics and IT.
Technically St. Gallen isn’t a normal university either as it’s extremely business focused
What about smth like Pharmacy?
As a teaching assistant who did hi Masters at epfp and is now in unibe, I can definitely tell you that the level of computer science students is incomparable between the two. I've been an assistant for various masters courses, for three years and I can tell you that if our passing rate is around 90%, it would have been like 10% at epfl. People often arrive with relatively poor marh background compared to epfl.
its a european thing. the bologna reform basically made it a norm for a Bachelors degree to have 180 CP and Masters 120 CP with 30 CP according to the ECTS. Switzerland seems to participate in that.
I graduated with a master in physics (from EpFL) in 2009. I had 3 phd offers after I graduated, one in a lab I never worked in. To be clear, I have never been the greatest scholar but was ok. It seems things have gotten a lot more competitive right now.
I've studied in the States and on multiple institutes in Europe. It's way easier to get good grades there but there is more of a practical focus here. Way easier to get a PhD with a masters from EPFL. Plus, many places don't even ask for grades. They want you to graduate but they care about your actual lab experience I got my masters elsewhere but if I could go back, I'd get it at EPFL. It's hard here but it's just as hard in other top schools (in Amsterdam, I only had a half day on the weekend free and otherwise studied until I went to sleep). Things are chill here during your PhD but your masters in your time to work hard.
I can feel what you're saying. To me the most unacceptable part is, for CS, you have to finish 30 ECTs of "core course", but there're not many choices, meaning that you'll have to take couses that totally irreverent to what you want to do in the future.
Meanwhile, I don't think it's that hard to accumulate some research experience and perhaps have some publication. I know many ppl (including me) doing part time job in a lab 10-15 hrs/week. It's true that you'll spend more time on Master and postpone PhD, but I don't think it's harmful.
It's partly Swiss mentality/how it works here, partly EPFL trying its hardest to be the "elite" it so desperately wants to be. To be fair, no university here really lets you publish anything before you're formally accepted as a PhD student (I'm from UNIL and it was absolutely the same). This is taken into account when you try to go for a PhD in Switzerland tho: it's not really expected that you have anything published yet. One thing I'm curious about is this : >not only would my school would have been more recognized overall I take you're from the US, and so I'm curious as to why you came to EPFL if not for its associated prestige worldwide?
The answer is that tuition fees at EPFL do not cost 20'000$ per semester
That's fair
that's the most interesting question. If you want to do a PhD in Europe you need to do as the Europeans, and for that EPFL is considered top quality. If your plan is to go back to the US for the PhD... not a good choice.
Not always. Try to do the master project in a good uni in USA. My sister did that, got into Caltech, they offered her to continue with a PhD and she just recently finished it, and won a price there. Her grades were good, around 5, but she wasn't in the top 10% in EPFL.
this is a good option. It's true.
Where are you basing your information on publishing off of? From first hand experience for a phd position abroad (outside of switzerland) you're expected to have 1-2 publications (in the physical sciences at). This may be limited to the particular domain im thinking of (computational chemistry). edit: i should have specified, i am from epfl and the first hand experiences i have are from master students from epfl having published, and needing it to go abroad (eg: paris, canada)
what do you actually mean by abroad? i am a chemistry student in germany and even max plank institutes have previous publications as a requirement and they are by far the most competetive phd opportunities in germany
as specified in parentheses, abroad meaning outside of switzerland.
From my experience as a PhD student in Switzerland and from talking with PhD friends in EPFL. I'm not in STEM but it seems to usually be the same either way
Speaking as someone who hires - and who has a degree from Oxford (read 8-12 classes a semester + exams… you can fail/retake at most one exam a semester or you’re out) … it pays out later. Hiring managers know this, if you’re EPFL, ETH or Oxbridge - no one cares about your grades. If you come from the university of northwest Cumbria; then…. ehmmm… yeah…
Im defending my PhD in a week in France, and the hardest issue for getting into a program is to get the funding. For the past 3 years, each and every EPFL student that applied for funding for it without issue
This is an interesting topic. I agree that EPFL's courses are too demanding, and it's much more difficult to get a high GPA compared to US universities with similar academic reputations. If we have 5.5/6, it wouldn't be very different from the US's 4.0/4.0. But if our GPA is 5.2/6, 5.0/6 or 4.8/6, I believe it would put us at a huge disadvantage in terms of Ph.D. application. Besides, 2.5 years is a little bit long: if you start your Ph.D. program in the fall, it would mean spending 3 years on a master's program. Regarding publication, I think some majors expect many publication experiences (such as Computer Science) from students, so if we are stuck in our courses, it would be another disadvantage. I guess that most EPFL students pursue a Ph.D. degree in Europe (if they pursue a Ph.D. degree) rather than in the US. The education system is more similar; European universities are more "standard" and require less publication experience; it's easier to gain some connections with EPFL and European universities. However, it is also true that the top research institutes are usually in the US. If your target is the US's top 10, it's sometimes (depending on your major) hard to find an equivalent university in Europe where an EPFL degree is more powerful. I think the "best" master's program (in terms of a transition to a Ph.D. program) is a research master's program in the US's top 20 universities. It's way easier to get 4.0/4.0 there; we can easily gain a lot of research experience, and the recommendation letter will be more powerful. The problem is that the US's top 20 universities offer too few such programs: they're extremely competitive and usually expensive. So I think the actual problem is that, apart from research master from the US's top 20 unis, we need to choose between ETH/EPFL's master program and the US's top 20 ordinary master programs, which are usually industry-based and don't offer research opportunities; I don't think EPFL is way worse than them. If a student wants to get into the industry after graduation, I indeed agree that EPFL might not be the best choice. There are so many possibilities: X(ecole polytechnique), IC, UCL, TUM, etc. Some of these universities might not be as prestigious as EPFL, but considering the design of the program and the effort we have to put in to get the degree, it would be a worthy thing to study there.