Advice from my 2nd year at EPFL
Thösam Norlha-Tsang / August 13, 2022
11 min read
Introduction
Hey 🤙🏼, in this article I will talk about my second year at EPFL, how my 2nd year of Computer Science Bachelor went, what mistakes I made and how I could have done things differently.
My goal by writing this article is mainly to give you insights and some direction. Leeeet's gooo 🚀 !!!
Chapter 1 : my summer of 2021
Nothing much to say here, I went out for runs, walks, worked out and spent time with my family and friends.
After barely passing the first year, I decided that my second year would be different. So looking at the messages in our CS Telegram group, I saw that some people recommend to take at least one course in advance if we are going to take 38 credits. So I took Andrew Ng machine learning course (introduction), I did all the assignements and I had much fun.
I also walked through different tutorials on youtube, I built a weather app in Flutter, I learned basics of javascript and had my first steps in using Firebase. You can check out my github repo.
I also applied for Linear algebra and introduction to Object-oriented programming tutoring, on Is-academia and I also sent emails to teachers. You can find the PDF I sent to them here.
Apart from that I don’t think there are any other interesting thing worth mentioning.
If you plan on taking about 38 credits, I advise you to watch past lectures on SwitchTube or go to the respective moodle page. If you don’t find them, just ask on Telegram, go to the 3rd year group and ask there, someone will help you. You should also do all the exercise sets.
My recommendation is to do Analyse 3 and electromagnetism. Analyse 3 because it is straightfoward, the lectures in person during the semester aren’t incredible and you can finish the course independently without ever coming to see the teacher. Electromagnetism because although I went to the lectures, I felt every time that I lost my time. Don’t get me wrong, the teacher is passionate but… not really good at explaining concepts in a way that is easy to understand. Instead, I used to spent an hour reading the chapters she gave, then spending 1 hour doing the exercises and 30min correcting, which was sufficient to get a good grade. Just make sure to write down formulas on a sheet, since maybe you will be able to bring a cheat sheet at the exam. The exam we had was a MCQ, and it was very very similar to past exams (more than the exercises).
If you really feel bored then you can also do algorithms during the summer (very doable), although I really like the teacher the course is very very slow paced. (we have 2 lectures and every time he spends an hour to summarize the past lecture…), but this will probably change at the time you’re taking algorithms class (our teacher was Ola Svensson).
First weeks on campus
After the first year (and never leaving my room), I was decided to meet and make new friends. I made a plan to ace semester : find my crazy plan here.
So for the first 2 months, I arrived every morning at 6am, before the sunrise while a lady was cleaning the floor. I used to do my Analyse Set always a week ahead and during the lunchbreak on Tuesday. During SHS: evolutionary psychology I used to do homeworks. During Algorthims I used to sleep and during computer networks I used to play Agar.io or pokemon showdown. During the introduction to machine learning exercise sessions I had my linear algebra tutoring on Discord but often nobody was here, so I used to do my functional programming homework.
I mean, making a plan was easy but except waking up super early around 4-5 am every day and sleeping around 11pm, I wasn’t sticking to the plan.
Trust me, although I was keeping up with all homeworks and lectures, mentally I wasn’t feeling very well. So I had to come up with a different approach. I started to go to Hapkido training on Tuesday and Thursday and Taekwondo on Friday evening at the Sports Center near the lake. There I met new people and had a really good time. I also started going for runs and walks in-between revision sessions. Personally I am a big fan of 4-4-4 : studying by chunks of 4 hours.
What is important is to make a plan, be disciplined, use your time effectively (I used to eat 15-20 min then do exercise sets during lunchtime, come early at uni), but also think about your well-being, do sports at unil center, its free ! here is the link.
Side story ʕ•́ᴥ•̀ʔっ#
I used to eat alone by myself a lot in the past, I find it very dfficult to make new friends. So I started saying hi to people, asking their names and writing them down on my phone with a quick description of what they look like. 2 people (now friends) when we were in computer architecture lab session asked me if I wanted to join them to go eat lunch. I was startled. We talked and we waited in a line in front of the Rolex learning center, then since the waiting time was too long, one of them said that we should go eat somewhere else. I said that since I had a topperwhare maybe I should leave (idk was I feeling a bit weird, like a third wheel ?) but the guy said that I wasn’t bothering them and that I was welcome. I felt very happy, we talked about our goals and dreams, after a bunch of other events, we became friends. This little story is to tell you that even inviting someone to join during lunch time can make a big difference in that person’s life !
Midterms BA3
For the midterms, I had a group of awesome friends to revise with. It really helps to have people that pushes you to work harder, better and motivates you to become the best version of yourself. When you understand something they don’t, you can help them. And when you don’t understand something, they will help you out. However, try to structure the revisions with moments where you can talk and other moments where you all focus on revisions. It’s very easy to drift away, joke around and not be productive. I suggest a pause of 20-30 minutes every 2 hours to keep it fun and productive. We also did many Bring Sally Up or going for walks/runs around the campus.
Important fact to remember, don’t leave everything for the sake of revising the midterms. It’s crucial to keep the pace, I didn’t do that and ended up late in all classes after the midterms and I couldn’t finish catching up some classes until the finals ! So try to incorporate midterms revisions in the weeks preceding the midterms, do a few past midterms (that you can find on your section drive).
Finals BA3
Around the end, I was exhausted. My friends were asking if I would take a break during christmas. Some were going to the mountains to enjoy rides on the snow, some were going to spend time with their family. Looking at how comfortable I was with some topics, I knew that I couldn’t waste any more time thinking about a break. I had about 6 weeks of Analyse 3 to catch up, 3 weeks of electromagnetism, 14 weeks of computer architecture (legit no joke, I didn’t do any exercises on the book (about 200 pages worth of exercises left to do) + I didn’t watch any of the lectures), all the exercise sets of ML to catch up too since I was giving my Linear Algebra tutoring session !
This is the revision plan I came up with : link. I started off by catching up all of Analyse 3 in a week, then electromagnetism. Honestly, I only revised between 3-4 days every subjects except nummet and comparch. Nummet I had 5.75 GPA with the homeworks so I was sure to pass the subject even if I did bad on the final. Those 2 courses, I only revised about half a day.
Well now, I would advise you to revise nummet well so you don’t destroy your grade from the homeworks. I spent countless hours to get a 5.75 that went down to 4.5 after the final. Also, electromagnetism is a very easy topic if you revise/learn with the book, however, revise by doing lots of past exams, the format was extremely similar and some questions were just little twists on previous exams questions ! I could have gotten more than 4.75 if I did the past exams (I only redid all the exercises 😟).
Holiday (February 2022)
During those holidays, I completed the introduction to deep learning course from MIT.
Looking at the options, I wanted to take Making intelligent things, interaction personne-system, signals and systems. But then they said only the first 50 people are taken so I didn’t make it in time. Because I took 38 credits, I could afford to take no options. So I decided not to take any additional courses and instead learn about web development on my spare time. I heard that to get an internship we must have projects to show off. I did 3 courses on udemy : web developer, react developer, next developer.
But I haven’t finished any of them 😅 and problably will not ever finish them. I did about 50% of every course. Because some weren’t up to date, I felt like losing time. But still, the React course I highly encourage anyone to take it, then transition to the next js course. Learning html, css and vanilla js is useful but you can work around that if you want to build projects immediately.
BA4 - the semester of chill
Honestly, I wish I had taken more credits than the bare minimum (25 credits), because compared to my previous semester of 38 credits, it truly felt like holidays. Sometimes I joke around saying that for me holidays didn’t start in July but in January 😆. I had much fun with friends, had time to learn web development but really I didn’t feel like improving intellectually.
So if you haven’t started your BA4, take more options or do projects outside uni, don’t waste your time around. I realized that when I have more time, I tend to spend more time to do the same tasks. It’s a bit counter-intuitive, I had more time to revise but my grades aren’t better than my BA3 despite having 13 less credits. For example, I spent about 13-25 hours each week on a project that is worth 2 credits !!! (Projet programmation oriénté system). There I got my first 5.75 but daim it was a lot of work. (I made a 1 hour loop with minecraft music where you can see all unit tests passing here).
Still went often to Hapkido on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Taekwondo trainings on Fridays, you should come too ! here is the link to see all sports at Unil-Epfl, you should check it out because it’s free 😄.
Some useful links !!!
Unil-sports website (most sports are free !!!)
Github student pack (it’s free !!!)
😎 Conclusion
Hope you found something useful reading my article. I am just sharing out my experience since when I started EPFL, I was also a bit lost and wished someone had shared some advice with me. You can come checkout my Youtube Channel, I will make sure to make some videos about my experience at EPFL. Other than that, I made this video for “soon-to-be” first years at EPFL, I explain how to use moodle, switchtube, drive of sections, discord, …. Please share this one, many first years found it very helpful.