“It's not Balelec every day at EPFL – but have fun!”
"Welcome to the new students EPFL" tweeted Martin Vetterli after he took a picture of the new students. © Alain Herzog
On Friday, EPFL held its Welcome Day for the school’s 1,955 new Bachelor’s students and the 223 students taking the Special Mathematics Course (CMS). They were formally welcomed at the Swiss Tech Convention Center before heading off to check out the campus – where they'll spend the next five years of their life.
Four days before classes start, EPFL’s 1,955 new Bachelor’s students and 223 CMS students* were invited to the Swiss Tech Convention Center.
“This is a key day for you and an important one for me, because I wanted to be here to welcome you to EPFL,” said Martin Vetterli, who also spoke to the students about their social and ethical responsibilities in a world where technology is changing all the time. “EPFL is agile, dynamic and innovative, and we foster a strong culture of excellence – and I don’t mean just technically but also as humans. We are training a high-potential group of students. If you succeed, we have done our job,” he said, before wishing them luck with their studies. Referring to the famous Swiss music festival, he told them: “It’s not Balelec every day at EPFL – but have fun!”
Pierre Vandergheynst, the Vice President for Education, highlighted some advantages of life at EPFL – “We are very lucky to have more than 120 nationalities on campus” – along with the academic challenges that lie ahead: “The pace of work here and the study habits will be completely new to you. The first exam session is in January. The best piece of advice I can give you is to get down to work immediately. If you wait two months, it’ll be too late.”
Physics student Vassilis Papadopoulos, who had the best grade point average – 5.86 – among Bachelor’s students in 2017, gave the incoming students an insider’s tip: “The secret is to make lots of friends and then trip them up all year so that you end up with better grades.”
After being given some additional practical information, the students went off to explore campus together with their ‘coach’.
