lonesomerunner

I'm currently doing my bachelor in the department of Environmental Sciences and might be able to answer some of your questions. The decision for accepting or rejecting students is done without interview. Interviews are only done for the ESOP-application and you might even get ESOP without any interview. Not having had one is therefore not necessarily a bad sign. And I know the waiting time is nerve wracking, but even us ETH-students have not heard anything so far and we are almost certain to get accepted. It's completely normal you haven't heard anything, I guess they'll contact us during the next days That shouldn't be a problem. The study advisor said the most important thing is the proposal. You should be fine as long as it suits one of the research groups and is achievable in the given time (eg. your idea might be brilliant, but if you have to send a satellite to space, you're not going to get ESOP...). Grades are a tricky question: a lot of our professors seem to think that non-swiss grades are 'inflated'. The example here is that you're very likely to be top of the class with a 5.7 (out of 6). Translated to the GPA-system this would be something like a 3.8, which doesn't look that great anymore. It's just impossible to compare grades from different universities and countries. So it really comes down to the proposal... Hope to meet you and everyone studying Atmospheric and Climate Science or Environmental Science next fall in Zurich

Haven't heard anything either. The department of statistics is usually the first one to reject/accept students. ETH-exams end on the 18th of february and the new semester starts on the 21st, so that will probably be the week when most departments decide

No, I don't know more than you I fear. But as azzazz saw someone getting an invitation for an interview, I guess you might hear from them during the next weeks. The decision for getting into the masters program might be out by the end of february, decision for ESOP mid-march (at least that's how it was in the last few years). Getting an interview is certainly a good sign for your application. But there have also been students receiving an ESOP without having the interview. So it might just depend on your program, maybe yours doesn't even do interviews... Having that said, don't panic if you don't hear from them until mid-february

I can't remember being asked about ETH-D in my application to be honest, but that doesn't mean anything... If you look at your application in the eApply tool of ETH, it should say "(Name of your masters program), ESOP". I assume if they would offer ETH-D, it would say "(Name of your program), ESOP/ETH-D", but that's pure speculation. Furthermore, I checked the webpage about the scholarships for the master degrees and there isn't anything related to ETH-D, just ESOP and a few documents from 2016. I agree that cancelling ETH-D scholarships isn't what you would expect from a university with ETH's prestige. If you look at all the money that the federation puts into ETH, I honestly can't imagine supporting students with 10k CHF per semester is what will cause them financial problems. But again, that's just from my point of view as a bachelor student and I have absolutely no clue about ETH's finances. I guess that's just the way it is and we'll have to deal with it

Hi everyone, I just found this forum, thanks for setting it up! I'm an ETH student and happy to see people around the world getting interested in Zurich I don't think you have to worry about you're application if you have not received any information yet, we started our exams this Monday and people tend to be very stressed in the beginning of those weeks... And some bad news: I spoke with the study advisor of my program in November and she said that ETH won't offer any ETH-D scholarships this year due to financial reasons, they'll only offer ESOP. That might have changed in the 3 months since though...