Instituto Superior Técnico (reviews)

I really enjoyed doing my Bachelor’s and MSc here. I feel like I went through some very challenging subjects and had the best teachers along the way. This is one of the best – if not the best, according to rankings – engineering universities in Portugal, so you shouldn’t expect it to be easy. But you can expect to feel invincible afterwards 🙂

The university itself is good, the facilities are okay however, the teaching and evaluation method is flawed in my opinion. The teachers want to evaluate all contents they taught yet the school decided to restrict total evaluation time to 3 hours per course, which means we have long tests for only 45 minutes – at this point, not only do we have to know everything, which is already hard as it is, but we also have to write everything at a very high speed and have unrealisticly high speed thought process. The result is a great school with a flawed method and a frustrated body of students. The social life in the university is great.

A Bachelor in Instituto Superior Técnico presents itself as an easy task at first glance.
As many of my colleagues I entered my Degree with a lot of positivity
It was only later that I endured the usual hardships of a degree in Engineering. This changed me to the core.
I faced loads of existential crisis and wondered for many days if I should quit or not this journey.
I was ready to throw it all away when life threw me one of (if not) the biggest hardships that I ever had faced. For months I cried and failed courses. I was completely and utterly burned out. Also COVID didn’t help…
I had to remind myself that I wanted to be a Naval Architect and design sailing vessels. It wasn’t enough.
A whole year passed and I only managed to pass 2 courses.
I could’ve thrown the towel. Most of us would and It would’ve been fine.
But at the end of the day that’s not who I am.
With a lot of help from friends and family I picked myself up and got to work. First fixed my life schedule. Sleep, workout, reading, time with family and friends. Then Studying.
That’s when I understood how my College worked. I started to work 12 hours straight. Managed to focus through doubts and keep a positive mindset.
Técnico changed how my brain functions and perceives life and challenges. I am now far more methodycal. See problems as opportunities and face everything with enthusiasm regardless of the outcome.
Why 3 stars then dear reader?
Well from what I gained it could easily be 4/5 stars. But the pain was sometimes unbearable. During the dark days of my burn out not even Bruce Springsteen singing Dancing in the Dark could’ve pulled me. No Clash song, Nick Cave or The Cure.
This lowest sometimes pokes at me and tries to tear a seem of doubt in my mind.
I think I will carry this wound all my life.
I searched support from Técnico of course! Got none…
With that said part of me died in that campus. And I miss it somedays. But I am thankful for the part that borned there.

Thank you for your time and attention.

I did my bachelor’s at FCUL, in Lisboa and currently doing my Msc in Physics Engineering at IST. They have a great program, really complete and there is an awesome advantage compared to my old school, we can pick other master’s degree topics. For example, I like differential geometry, only the math majors are doing it typically, but here I can do it to without any problem-