Could you please share your experience of living in these 2 cities as a bachelor student?
Which one did you prefer and why? What were the main negatives?
Thank you!
Did anyone have a chance to be a student in both EPFL Lausanne and ETH Zurich?
there was an article in le temps this week interviewing students who attended both.
I think generally the appreciated the city of zurich (bigger, culture, night life, student accomodation) better than Lausanne but appreciated the campus life and the facilities of EPFL better than ETH.
I was surprised to read that student housing was cheaper in zurich (with woko and so on...). Myself, I could never get a student room in Zurich and had to pay up... I never went to EPFL.
I think the on-campus life at EPFL is very, very vibrant and its proximity to the lake + mountains are big pluses as well. Lausanne is a beautiful, compact city with a pretty good nightlife scene, but student housing is in very short supply.
Can't speak for ETH, but I think EPFL is great. Bear in mind that in both unis first-year classes are extremely competitive as there are a limited number of spaces from second year onwards. Standards are very high and the work load can be a bit heavy. Being smart is absolutely not enough (everyone there is smart), a good work ethic is pretty essential to success.
Reads like a banal approach to Uni.
Back to the bachelor. Which one has the degree that makes you want to study in first place? In which language can you perform better? DE or FR?
Realistically, both are at the same level, but there is a stigma (at least in Switzerland) that EPFL is for those not good enough for ETHZ, which even people that I've worked with who did ETHZ say is true, i.e. it's bullshit that people believe, just a stigma, not that it is less of a place.
Tom
Not surprised what Tom is writing, I've noticed numerous times similar 'stigma' Zurich vs Geneva, so could be a bit broader ie german part vs romandie.
For some obscure reason, I always experienced it coming from german part towards french, and never the opposite. Heck even frontaliers I talk to like Zurich, even though they can speak 0 german and sometimes struggle there. And french are generally not that tolerant language-wise. Even in expat group from my own country its exactly split like this. Could be just very specific situation of me & people around me of course.
Never understood a single bit of hate coming from german part, cities (GE vs ZH) are almost identical, Zurich has stronger job market, while Geneva being a bit smaller but closer to nature and cheaper France (and Italy too). I mean mostly details, one picks preference but its nonsense to like one and hate the other.
Between the two it also matters what you want to specialize in if you choose to continue your education.
E.g. if you want to be in the earth sciences, ETH has a wide and well regarded department at the masters and PhD level, whereas EPFL's department and upper level courses is much more limited in scope (although still filled with fantastic researchers).
The language level is the same (DE/FR) and the degree is available in both places.