Student review [#8366] for Electrical Engineering
at Instituto Superior Técnico

Not as good as most students would tell you. The facilities are far from brilliant:
Almost every bathroom is dirty and broken.
Prepare for an adventure if you’re trying to find a place to study; since most rooms are crowded and there are no available power outlets for everyone (keep in mind this is an engineering university), people simply give up or spend hours looking for a place to study.

The teaching/learning component is average at best:
Most teachers are incapable of actually teaching. The evaluation method prizes students who are able to solve exercises faster, which gives me mixed feelings. Probably more than 70% of engineering students cheat on their tests because that’s arguably the fastest way to solve them (and they have far better grades).

The social interactions are awkward, to say the least:
Most students that still haven’t become depressed are cocky, and since they spend hours trying to collect exam resolutions, there’s also a great division between people. Groups which somehow managed to get solutions for exercises/test/exams, will often refuse to share them with other mates – unless the other part has value to give as well.
Not trying to be sexist, but the male portion of the students suffers from a very important problem, which is a greater difficulty in making friends, in creating relationships and also in having access to solved exercises or projects. This may not seem such a big deal, but the number of men who have become depressed while studying in IST is insane. They must spend more time when trying to collect information, they spend less time with actual people and day by day, year after year, most men sleep less, become more obsessed with virtual networks (i.e. games, social networks, forums, videos) and lose their social skills, which is a terrible side effect that really decreases the chances of future career success.
The university is probably one of the most famous universities in Portugal, if not the most. Once a student finishes his degree, he usually finds no problems when looking for a job.
The location is pretty good, there are a lot of surrounding places to eat and public transportation covers most of one’s needs.
I work now and I don’t think I’ve learned a lot while I was a full-time studying in IST. I feel like I wasted a lot of my life and potential inside an institution where examination criteria was mildly unfair and most people were socially awkward, obsessive or manipulative. Definitely not the “best years of my life”.