Grew up in Zurich and attended ETH in mechanical engineering.

Going abroad for an exchange made me realize how good ETH is. Low assignment workload and pure focus on theory in the first years means the theoretical depth and thoroughness with which it is tested makes this a great education. The student engineering projects that we were able to participate in were world-class. ETH also has a great low-bureacracy culture. The amount of lectures held on cutting edge topics by world-class professors is amazing. And: In their last few years, students have the opportunity to participate in internationally competitive research.

With some exceptions, the students I took classes with during my exchange in North America did not seem nearly as consistenly competent as my peers at ETH.

However, ETH has a few areas where there is definitely room for improvement:

– Male-dominated in many fields, both in the student body and among professors. This definitely must be improved.
– Generally, ETH is not nearly as diverse as other unis (e.g. MIT), which means there’s less diversity of thought and a less creative culture.
– Ethics and scientist’s/engineer’s role in society are almost never discussed at ETH.