The Master Kick-Off (MKO) for master’s students started today, a three day-event aimed primarily at students who haven’t studied at TU/e before and who are new to the city of Eindhoven. But the event is also popular among a significant number of students who obtained a bachelor’s degree at TU/e, according to Jeanette Schoumacher, one of the MKO’s co-organizers. “The largest group does however consist of newcomers.” Schoumacher says that she is glad, since it appears that the NS train strike didn’t affect turnout for today’s event.

The group of international students were welcomed yesterday in a packed Blauwe Zaal in the Auditorium by representatives of international student association Cosmos. They also received information from the International Office about a range of issues, such as how to register at the municipality, about the fact that they need to take out health insurance when they aren’t covered in the Netherlands by their own insurance agency, and about how to find their way in the education program. “Please don’t forget to register for exams,” IO staff member Petri van de Vorst warned.

Wrist band

The internationals met again this morning in the hall of MetaForum to listen to the intro committee’s final instructions (“make sure that you don’t lose your wrist band”), after which they were treated to a performance by student dance association Footloose. Many attendees followed the performance with one eye on their cellphones, but in the end everyone joined in a heartfelt applause. Next, it was time for a vegan or vegetarian lunch.

This afternoon, the students will visit their department where they will follow their own program with lectures and workshops. The largest group can be found at to MetaForum, because that’s where no fewer than 262 master’s students will commence with the relatively new master’s program Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, according to figures from TU/e’s BI Portal. That makes it by far the largest group, followed by the master’s programs Architecture, Building and Planning (204), Computer Science and Engineering (165), Electrical Engineering (140) and Mechanical Engineering (134).

The number of registrations for a master’s program this academic year is 1.850, but it should be mentioned that students have the possibility of registering for more than one program. Most prospective master’s students – 60 percent – are Dutch. However, the number of internationals continues to climb noticeably, as is the case at the bachelor’s programs, because internationals only made up 25 percent of the total number of registered students just one year ago.