According to TU/e's Business Intelligence tool, there are 13,069 students at TU/e. But that figure does not yet include the outflow of graduating students and the influx of new students. Those figures won't be available until October.

In recent days, during Welcome Day, Campus Quest and Campus Market, students had the opportunity to pin their home country on a large world map at Cursor. This generated lively conversations and new meet-ups. 

The world map attracted many curious students. The question “Where are you from?” was followed by names of countries from all over the world, from Norway to New Zealand and from the United States to Japan. Most of the new students still are from the Netherlands and the rest of Europe (with notable pins in Romania and Bulgaria) and Turkey.

A first-year Master's student expected to be the only one to pierce a pin in the African island of Mauritius and that turned out to be true. A Chilean student also expected to be the only one from the long-stretched South American country, but a total of six pins are pinned in Chile. Whether this student managed to find fellow compatriots is not known. A number of Turkish students were luckier, as they found out on the spot while piercing that they were from all of Turkey and could switch from English to their native language.

The world map offers an interesting representation of TU/e's internationalization. Cursor does not vouch for the reliability of all the pins. For example, there is a pin in Bear Island (Norway), which is halfway to Spitsbergen from the North Cape. According to wikipedia, the only inhabitants of this island are nine employees of a Norwegian weather station ...