How was attending this University? I recently moved family abroad from USA. Hoping my daughter may have interest in attending here for computer science. I am just blown away by the cost of US Universities. Not sure what you get out of USA schools anymore compared to some European Universities?
Not the OP, but I studied at ETH Lausanne and visited at ETH Zurich, and it was my best academic memory, surpassing Paris, London or the other universities I attended.
So I recommend you a lot to try to get into this School, it's one of the best in the world, and the price of the education is a bargain compared to the comparable US universities.
In case someone gets confused searching for it, normally the federal politecnic university at Lausanne is called by its French name, EPFL.
ETH Zürich has better score in international ratings, but the EPFL doesn't lag behind much. It's a really top noch place to learn any technical career.
I enjoyed my time there a lot (did a BSc and MSc there) and can recommend it to anyone who's interested in the engineering and natural sciences. School doesn't cost much (I paid around 600CHF per semester), provides a great infrastructure (for one, I was already running simulations on a high-performance distributed-memory cluster during my third BSc semester), allows you to meet and work with a lot of great people, and you are also able to choose from a vast number of very interesting lectures thought by some great scientists (this gets unlocked during your MSc).
One of the "downsides" to ETH Zürich is that it's quite competetive right from the beginning: you have to pass the Basisprüfung after your first year to continue your studies there (8-9 exams during the month of August), which 40%-50% of the attending students will not pass (it's kind of a "filter-exam"); this is one of the differences compared to the popular US universities: everyone with a high school degree (Gymnasium here in Switzerland) is allowed to attend University here in Switzerland, i.e., we don't have interviews or entry exams for most of the BSc majors (medical school is an exception).
If you have questions, feel free to contact me (see my profile).
Yes. For PhD, it is paid very well. For MSc and BSc the cost is low. What ends up high are the living costs in Zurich. But given how much these costs have increased in the hot US cities, this may not be a problem.
