Is Europe superior over the US to work/study in the domain of science? Do any of you have experience with both...

What are my chances of getting into an EPFL MSc program if I graduate around the 95tb percentile at an alright yuropean uni

Good chances

The only thing The US is superior to Europe in is mass shootings and electing reality TV retards to run their country.

Don't ever go to America. You're not missing anything.

What are the chances for getting admitted to the MSc CS program when coming from a european university and being in the top 15%? Just estimated, still a long time to go

50/50, either you get in or you don't

Not bad.
Getting the scholarship is another matter though.

They literally need to accept everyone.

I don't really need it, and I didn't expect to anyways
Thay being said, my grades weren't always this good (80th percentile in my first year). Will this impact my chances?

Source?

As far as I know they must accept everyone with a Swiss secondary school diploma by law since they're a public uni but of course that does not apply to international students

Yeah, that also explains why the failure rate is so damn high for bachelor students, 50% don't make it past the first year.
Plus grade inflation isn't a thing in Switzerland, even in some of my master classes the failure rate of some courses is easily above 30%

How do people who fail classes even get in (esp. post-grad)
Are courses genuinely hard or something

If you complete your bachelor's degree at EPFL you're automatically accepted in the master program, so I guess a good chunk of people who fail classes weren't that great during their bachelor to begin with.

But yeah, some classes can get pretty fucking hard, and often there's only a final exam to determine your grade so if you fuck it up you gotta retake the course next year or get your credits elsewhere. And as I said grade inflation isn't really a thing in Switzerland. But if you really put time and effort in studying you shouldn't worry too much

Well. Universities in Europe, especilly in the likes of Germany is no joke compared to the U.S. system. No grade-curves, no multiple-choice, limited attempts for tacklign exams before getting kicked out permanently for this subject forever. + is not unreasonable for that. Plus, it's rather cheap financially compared to study here instead in the U.S.

But yeah - while Switzerland/Germany are going already balls deep in the subjects in the first semester, most Colleges/Unis elsewhere are just having generic classes until they decide what to study. In the end, most people already covered more math in (high-school equivalent) "Abitur/Matura" than the average 2nd year math major in the U.S.

I've been to both. So if you want to have a proper education - study here. MIT, Harvard & Ivy league generally just have a high reputation due research and funding and nothing else.

I am not trying to dismiss German unis.
But this is just BS.

What exactly? Point out some fact which you consider "BS" and we can have some proper argumention instead biased reasoning.

> In the end, most people already covered more math in (high-school equivalent) "Abitur/Matura" than the average 2nd year math major in the U.S.

BS.

> MIT, Harvard & Ivy league generally just have a high reputation due research and funding and nothing else.

BS.

I mean, German institutions are fine. But what you wrote is bull. Reeks of nationalism. Or even worse you're not German, but a German-weeb.

Lol stay mad, Ameritard.

the first part is true. most of what US colleges teach, math wise, we already cover in our last year of high school. swiss matura goes as deep or deeper (deeper for the most part), depends on which of the german abiturs you compare it to (southern states tend to have a better level, saxony is bretty gud, hamburg is bretty gud, everything else i wouldn't count on) and on what courses you take in your final two years. i'm not saying this is good or bad, i'm just saying i have a bunch of US friends who got to the math we had in our last year of high school in their first year of college.

the second part i can't comment on. i do feel like US unis have decent post grad and phd programs, quite often less generic than ours but therefore deeper into the subject matter. also, the later in the studies you go here in germany the harder it gets to find good courses.

German CS student here at one of the top universities. Almost 80% drop out until graduation (undergraduate) and something like a 1.7 (which gets converted to a 3.3 GPA) is easy in the upper 5th percentile. Almost everyone can get in, but there are some courses, which differ from uni to uni, that are used to weed out the bad students. I had a class where 70% failed the exam (and failed the course) and another one where only 25% got enough points in the homeworks to get the permission for writing the exam.

>I've been to both. So if you want to have a proper education - study here. MIT, Harvard & Ivy league generally just have a high reputation due research and funding and nothing else.

Depends on which university you get into. UC Berkeley (and probably UCLA) is better than literally any German school, but it has massive grade deflation and tons of autists.

So yea, it's more expensive longterm (80k for 4 years or so), but the education I receive her will be better than any German could ever get.

There's a reason why there are a grand total of 2 German schools in the top 50 unis in the world.

If you want to learn more and get a better paying job: US

If you want to save cash: Europe

what does the math curriculum have to do with how good a high school system is
the vast majority of people never need math past + - / *
if you are math inclined you can take the standard calculus linalg ode in just about any decent high school

Switzerland has better paying jobs than the US

Which uni? Which modules were the filter-out for you guys?

Also doing CS at a German Uni

I personally rank ETH and EPFL higher than any american university.

Considering visiting ETH to work on neurons as part of my PhD

Can I get your maths and CS tests desu ?

RWTH, Discrete Structures and Linear Algebra

linear algebra: u.nya.is/cypwlk.pdf
this exam was easy since you needed to do really much (enough points in homework, which took really long, and pass an exam before the real exam) to get the admission to write the exam, which is why only 25% of all students who signed up for the exam were allowed to write the exam. you also need to remember that it's one exam which decides your whole grade, if you fuck it up but pass you can't retake it. it's hard to prepare for it, since there is a big pool of exercises which could appear in the exam, this was our courses' script: u.nya.is/jptolb.pdf

discrete structures example exam (not mine, doesn't have it): u.nya.is/ymbmhs.pdf
imo it was easily passable, but over 70% failed it, probably because it's a first semester's course and it's somehow difference from high school math, i liked it.

analysis (also first semester's course): u.nya.is/tkipbh.pdf
kinda hard imho, but you can choose between exercises, 66% equals 100% and 100% equals 150%.

overall the exams are manageable but you only have 2 hours time, have all topics from a semester in one exam and you don't know at all what's in it.

intro to programming: u.nya.is/hvdgjl.pdf
not that hard, but kind of uncommon for a intro course to cover hoare verification, basics of functional programming (haskell) and logical programming (prolog)

data structures & algorithms exams vary heavily for each chair, it might be heavily math based or more comprehension based with some easy leetcode like problems (develop an algorithm with O(n log(n)) runtime instead of the brut force O(n^2) runtime)

operating systems course was easy, the prof joked how someone could fail linear algebra or the theoretical cs course in this semester but not his course, the exam was way to full for the time so 40% didn't pass it

formal systems, automats and processes: u.nya.is/dvbidk.pdf was ok, idk if every uni covers something like induction over automats, but I think they do.

stochastics: u.nya.is/cfbvrs.pdf
was ok, but we have no calculator in any of these courses, in stochastics it's kind of nasty for something like confidence intervals. here also failed many people the exam because it was the first course were you were not required to get a permission to write the exam as in every other course.

numerical calculation (currently hearing it); u.nya.is/kobhzm.pdf
it's just the calculation part of the exam, there is also a comprehension part where questions are asked (obviously no multiple choice) which wasn't uploaded. idk how it is, but i heard from some people it should be hard but other say it's easy. here you are (obviously) allowed to use a simple calculator without differentation functions.

computation and complexity (also currently hearing it): u.nya.is/pzmhgt.pdf
it's a very interesting course which is also one of the harder courses since it's heavily proof based, (the proofs are not on pure math level), idk.

we are one of the harder universities in Germany, but afaik the ETH (don't know about the EPFL) are on a completely different level.

so, thanks for reading my blog. if you have any questions, ask.

one thing i forgot: i leaved some courses out like technical informatics, software development, the minor one is required to do, the proseminar and the system programming lab. all these courses with the courses i mentioned above should be heard in 3 semesters.

are you saying you're covering this in 3 german semesters? that sounds like unreasonably much. Clearly much more than 30 credits per semester at least.

What does take coming from the US it to get into Heidelberg or LMU München for a PhD?

It's a job application.
Contact the group/profs directly.
Competitive though. Everyone and their grandmas want to be a physicist these days.

There is a general grade cut-off, which shouldn't be too rough. Not sure what it is and how it accounts for foreign students.

The main thing you gotta do is convince a Professor to take you on as one of his PhD students.

nope, it is 29 credits in first semester, 32 credits in second semester and 33 credits in third semester, see u.nya.is/qogzzr.pdf

funny, they force everyone through the math that gets done here in 5 semesters in 3 and some of the shit they do earlier here gets pushed back.

also i just did a discrete math course last semester and its stunning how different the exam was from this one. for 40% of the exercises I wouldn't have known how to approach it at all.

I study physics at the ETH Zurich and the courseload (especially in the first year) is pretty intense

Thank you anons. Really appreciated.

which uni?

it was "one post" from me, just structured in different posts

I can appreciate weeding out early though so people won't quit 3 years down the road.

>In the end, most people already covered more math in (high-school equivalent) "Abitur/Matura" than the average 2nd year math major in the U.S.
BULLLLLSHHHIIITTT
My gf is Polish and did the highest level math exam in Matura. Guess what? She never heard of a complex number until her first year of college.

This is Veeky Forums.
Don't take things seriously.

We had a few people in our German university who covered most first year topics but that was a really small minority, so this is no rule.

To the user who said we don't have multiple choices in the exams at EPFL: that's wrong, our first-semester linear algebra exam for math majors is half multiple choice, half exercises where you prove stuff.
Source: I'm taking the exam in January.

This is Veeky Forums.
People like to play pretend.

So, given a high GPA and decent research experience, you just need to sell yourself?

One of my favorite professors had his PhD from Heidelberg, I may speak to him.

I think so

>Polish GF
>Switzerland
They have a common neighbour: Germany.
But that's all. Unless your GF lives in CH, his point stand for CH afaik

This is true

I came from a standard 4-year American high school to study engineering at a continental European university. The students here do an extra year of high school and if they come from a good one, they may have even some differential equations and linear algebra. The first math course in university wasn't even calculus; it was a sort of merged analysis/calculus course that began with the definition of the derivative and ended with partial differential equations... in one semester. The following semester was standard multivariable calc, starting with series and finishing again with differential equations. The drop-out rate here for first-year engineering is ridiculous.

If you're a self-motivated student, stay in Europe. If your hand needs to be held and you don't mind paying more for "connections" and the "college experience", go to America.

>If you're a self-motivated student, stay in Europe. If your hand needs to be held and you don't mind paying more for "connections" and the "college experience", go to America.

So American universities are expensive daycare facilities you go to when you can't develop a successful career through merit alone? Yeah, that explains a lot.

yep

that's why they're the best in the world and students come from all around the world for the chance to study at them (:

This wildly varies from countries to countries. Even in Switzerland, depending on the canton this can vary from 3 to 5 years in HS (and this also depends what you define as HS). For instance where I did HS, it was only 3 years, and that's taking into account revisions for the final exams, so more like 2.5 years. The linear algebra/differential equations part is true though, we did learn some LA (matrices, linear maps and eigenstuff mainly) and some DE. The DE test was about word problems that you had to model and solve. As for university, I can't say but here at EPFL it's also a mix of analysis and calculus, though never as far as PDE. We also have a standard one-semester LA sequence except for the math/phys majors that have a full year advanced linear algebra course (and advanced "analysis" too). Math majors also get a full-year geometry course which is usually pretty cool. We used to have a standard synthetic ("axiomatic") first course followed by an elementary introduction to differential geometry focusing on curves and surfaces. This year the course focuses mainly on the tiling problem and symmetry, with a lot of focus on group theory and group actions.

reputation != reality