ETH Zürich (SWISS FEDERAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY IN ZURICH)

ETH will give you access to the state-of-the-art equipment and you will be at the forefront of research in almost every STEM field there is; however, their faculty is not very helpful at guiding/supporting you if you don't come from a European, particularly Swiss/German style, schooling/background.  I can't tell you how many times a lecture started out with, "Well, I would go into detail about this mechanism, but you all already know it, so moving on...." If you are a foreigner in these programs, you will automatically be behind all of your Swiss/German/Austrian counterparts who did their bachelor's at ETH.  And, although most of the postgraduate programs are held in English, if a student or professor perceives they can get away with it, they'll switch to German in an instant for lectures and otherwise (i.e., group conversations, training, etc.).  If you are a woman, good luck, but if you're in the STEM field already, then you already know.

Parmi les cours que j'ai pris en Masters, tous sont de très haute qualité. Les slides permettent de bien résumer l'information et les exercices et projets permettent d'avoir de belles lignes sur le CV tout en apportant un apport pratique intéressant au cours.
Les professeurs sont en général tant intéressés à la réussite de leurs élèves qu'à leur propre recherche, ce qui n'est pas le cas partout et qui fait de l'école un endroit où l'aide peut assez facilement être trouvée et les contacts importants assez facilement être établis.
L'infrastructure est historique mais très bien équippée en instrument, projecteurs, etc... modernes. Il manque des prises à certains endroits par contre. Les bâtiments étant sur les 3 ou 4 campus à travers Zürich, on se retrouve à bien connaître la ville. Un grand avantage est que Zürich est assez petite pour qu'on puisse échapper aux foules sans trop de difficultés, mais lorsqu'on sort de l'uni, on peut sans attendre se retrouver parmi les rues vibrantes au bord de la Limmat (rivière).

Studying at ETH has been a very pleasant, interesting and eye-opening adventure. It has now been three and a half semesters and I really enjoy the great range of extra- and intracurricular activities ETH has to offer. Not only is there an association for all the students, providing us with a lot of fascinating things to do, there is also a more specific association for almost every field of studying which help us get insight into field-related topics such as excursions to an building site. Until now the professors have been a little distanced from us students as we still are more than 100 and are not yet recquired to have direct contact with them for our studying purposes. The teaching assistants however are very helpful and well suited to bypass the distance between the professors and the students. Overall the ETH has, up to this moment, only impressed me in a positive way.