McGill vs EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), Switzerland for CS

College Search & Selection
, , ,
1

Hi all!

I’m expecting admission from both McGill University and EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), Switzerland.

I absolutely love both of these schools, and financials aren’t a problem for either. I’m having a very hard time trying to figure out which one I should pick when the time comes… I’d like to pursue a Bachelor in Computer Science, and I currently live in France.

EPFL is better ranked than McGill, but somehow there’s something about McGill (the general atmosphere, the campus, or the fact it’s on a different continent… ?) that prevents me from dismissing it so easily.

I also love EPFL’s campus (in a different way, I suppose, it’s less “urban”), and the classes that are offered are absolutely fantastic.

Whatever school I end up choosing, I’d like to use it as a stepping stone to apply for a Master’s at a better school, possibly in the US.

I’d appreciate your view on the issue, and any help is welcome.
Thank you!

2

Rankings are not important. Nonetheless I just looked up the QS rankings worldwide for CS. In the 2021 rankings McGill and EPFL are both highly ranked and are not ranked all that far apart. In the 2023 rankings the difference is a bit greater, but they are still both ranked quite well (there are a lot of very good CS programs worldwide). I do not think that the difference matters.

Two questions come to mind.

One is where do you want to work after graduation? Are you potentially interested in working in Canada, or is Europe more likely? I do understand that both of these schools will be relatively well known in both Canada and Europe. However, there may be some advantages of studying in the same location that you will want to work, such as companies recruiting on campus.

The other question is: Where do you want to live for four years? Montreal is an attractive location and there is a lot to do right there around the McGill campus. I do not know Lausanne at all.

I did get a master’s at a well ranked university in the US, and there were students there who had graduated from a very wide range of undergraduate universities. Most were Americans from American universities. Admissions is tougher for an international student. However, I think that either McGill or EPFL will be well recognized by the top schools in the US.

If you ultimately want to end up in the US, one issue is that immigration to the US is tough to predict this far in advance. Also, if you end up getting a permanent resident visa or citizenship in the US then you had better be pretty sure that you want to stay here permanently. The US feels it has the right to keep taxing US permanent residents and US citizens even after they have left the US and gone to live and work somewhere else. However, I am pretty sure that the taxation issue is not a problem if you just want to get a temporary visa to work here for a year after getting a master’s in the US (I have talked to a few people who have done exactly that).

I do not know all that much about EPFL. Based on what I have heard, I think that these are both very good universities and you will get a very good education at either of them.

One thing that you might do is to look at what the graduation requirements are for each school. I have noticed that for a bachelor’s degree universities in Canada tend to at least allow more classes in your major or related fields and have fewer unrelated requirements compared to universities in the US. I do not know how universities in Europe compare with this, although my wild guess is that they are closer to the Canadian model.

One last note: For internships in Montreal, being fluently bilingual in French and English is very useful. However, I expect that you already have this fully covered!

3

Hi back, @DadTwoGirls! Thank you once again for your feedback, and sorry for the late response.
Almost a week has passed, and I’ve been leaning more and more toward EPFL’s Bachelor program.

My plan is to eventually become a GNC engineer (embedded systems, but in rockets); I feel like finding a job like that as an international would be rather complicated as it often requires security clearances that would be hard for me to get, although I would be eligible for Canadian citizenship after I get a degree from McGill (from whom I have, by the way, received an acceptance letter this morning!).

I would probably need to open a new conversation for that, but since I’m at it: I heard CS wasn’t ideal for becoming a GNC engineer; while some companies such as SpaceX list CS as a possible major for some GNC engineering positions (namely on satellites, not rockets), it’s not very clear to me which major is preferred: is it Electrical Engineering, or even Mechanical Engineering?

I plan on pursuing a Master’s after that, probably something related to Control Engineering or Aerospace, I suppose; in short, my education would have to include both CS and a good amount of Physics/possibly Electronics. The thing about EPFL is that you can’t really pick your courses one by one, you have to stick to a program for the Bachelor’s: Bachelor’s programs ‒ Bachelor ‐ EPFL

If you have any kind of experience in this field, I would be very interested in what you have to say. Thank you!

4

Congratulations on your acceptance to McGill!

I had to look up what a GNC engineer is (“guidance, navigation and control engineer”). It does look to me as if taking a fair amount of physics and computer science and mathematics would be a good idea, although one online source recommends a major in electrical engineering.

I was a math major who took one year’s worth of mechanical engineering courses and two years of physics (through special relativity and quantum physics). The only math class that I ever had trouble with was “control systems”. Some of that was due to the teaching ability (or lack thereof) of the specific professor who was teaching the course. However from what I remember it would be highly desirable to be VERY familiar and comfortable with linear algebra before taking this course. Years later as a graduate student I took a different course that had a similar heavy use of linear algebra and I found it very useful to spend a couple of Saturday’s playing around with matrices and exponents and carefully considering what it really means to raise e to the power of X, where X is a matrix. The following quarter I found this understanding to be very useful since I took a different course that made heavy use of e to the iX, where X is an unknown result of a stochastic (probabilistic) process. Sometimes a student needs to take some extra time to understand the relationship between high level mathematics and real life, which seems like an understanding that might be very useful to a GNC engineer.

From what I just read on-line, it looks like security clearance is required for a GNC engineer. In the US a top secret clearance would be needed, which is likely to be very hard to get as a non-US-citizen. I would be surprised if there was much work for a guidance, navigation and control engineer in Canada (although I think that I just found one opening in Laval, which is very close to Montreal).

If there is related work in Europe, I would expect that a degree from McGill would be respected. Also, I have heard as you suggested that a Canadian university is likely to have more flexibility in terms of allowing you to take the appropriate math and physics courses in addition to the engineering courses that are required for a degree in EE. I have heard of some McGill students who spent an extra year for their bachelor’s degree largely because they wanted to take some additional courses (for a student who is in-province, as I was at the time, way back when I was looking at universities McGill was very economical and the cost of spending an extra year was not an issue for many students).

I am wondering whether it would be possible for you to contact EPFL, tell them what sort of courses you would like to take, and see whether they feel that they can offer this much flexibility.

5

You have no idea how much your feedback helps! Thanks again.

I am wondering whether it would be possible for you to contact EPFL, tell them what sort of courses you would like to take, and see whether they feel that they can offer this much flexibility.

I will get in touch with EPFL about that, I’ll probably be able to contact them in person as I’ll be at their Open Days next week, thanks for the advice. I doubt it’ll lead to anything, but at least I’ll get feedback that specifically applies to their school.

The flexibility of McGill is something that definitely interests me… however, I was only admitted to the Faculty of Science: it was the only one I applied to since I was only interested in the School of Computer Science at the time. (I actually planned to major in Computer Science & Physics, but now I’m not sure if it fits my project —isn’t Physics too theoretical?)

Do you think it could become a problem that I wouldn’t be in the Faculty of Engineering, which possesses the Electrical and Computer Engineering & Mechanical Engineering departments, as well as the McGill Institute for Aerospace Engineering? I’m not sure if McGill allows interfaculty programs.

If you do think it is problematic, and if they don’t allow students to take courses in distinct faculties, then do you know if Inter-Faculty transfers are available to incoming students?

Thank you!

6

One daughter did actually manage to change faculties at McGill after being accepted but before even deciding whether or not to go there. They accepted her to the new faculty as well. She ended up going somewhere else. However, she was wanting to switch to something that is easier to get into compared to engineering.

While we were considering McGill, we talked to someone a year or two ahead of her from the same high school. He had switched from science to engineering successfully as a McGill student. I was under the impression that he had to apply and that there was some sort of criteria to get accepted, which probably involves having a high GPA in the related classes.

I think that you should talk to admissions at McGill about this. My guess is that they probably do, but this is only a guess.

I still think that you have two very good choices here.

1 Like
7

This topic was automatically closed 180 days after the last reply. If you’d like to reply, please flag the thread for moderator attention.