New students
Welcome to ETH Zürich!
The SMW welcomes you at ETH. We are the association of materials students and it is our job to help to with your studies, to represent your interests within the department and ETH and to organize fun events for your free time. We are also a good contact point, if you have problems with your studies, if you feel you have been treated unfairly or if you have suggestions or questions in general. We have good contacts to and are well represented in our department and its governing bodies, so that we can easily bring forth topics which interest our students.
In order to facilitate your start at ETH, here is a summary of the most vital and important information.
Overview
Student office
The student office of the D-MATL is your first contact point when you have administrative questions regarding your studies. You can find it on the F floor of the 5th finger in the HCI building. The people working there are very nice and always happy to help you. So don't hesitate to visit the student office if you have any questions.
Opening hours
| Monday |
closed |
| Tuesday |
9:00 am - noon |
| Wednesday |
9:00 am - noon |
| Thursday |
9:00 am - noon |
| Friday |
closed |
If the door to the student office is open, you can also enter outside of opening hours.
Lecture times
One lecture unit generally lasts 45 minutes followed by a 15 minute break.
On the ETH Zentrum campus all lectures begin 15 minutes after each full hour. For example: 10-11 means 10:15 am - 11:00 am.
Ausnahme: Die Unterrichtsstunde 11-12 beginnt um 11:10 und endet um 11:55.
On the Hönggerberg campus all lectures begin 15 minutes before each full hour. For example: 10-11 means 09:45 am - 10:30 am.
(There are a few exceptions for the HIF, HIL, HIP, HIQ and HIR building. There the lectures start at the full hour, but you won't have lectures there anyway.)
Examples:
Lecture 8-10 in HG building
1st lesson: 8:15 - 9:00
2nd lesson: 9:15 - 10:00
Lecture 11-13 in HCI building
1st lesson: 10:45 - 11:30
2nd lesson: 11:45 - 12:30
Due to the different lecture times, you always have 45 minutes to commute between the center and the Hönggerberg campuses.
Shuttle bus
To get from Hönggerberg to the center and vice versa, there is a shuttle bus connecting the two campuses. In addition, there is a direct bus leaving the main train station to Hönggerberg at 7:34 and 7:54 in the morning. The shuttle bus is a free service for students and employees and only available during the semester.
Shuttle bus ETH Zentrum - ETH Hönggerberg
From ETH Zentrum the bus leaves for Hönggerberg every 20 minutes beginning at 8:14 in the morning until 6:14 pm. The bus station is located in the passage underneath the Polyterrasse.
Time of travel: about 15 minutes
Shuttle bus ETH Hönggerberg - ETH Zentrum
From ETH Hönggerberg the bus leaves for ETH Zentrum every 20 minutes beginning at 7:54 am. There is one stop en route at "Haldenegg" from where you can get to the main station. The last two buses at 6:14 and 6:34 pm go directly to the main train station via "Haldenegg".
Time of travel: about 15 minutes
Under the following links you can find detailed plans for traveling between the two campuses: ETH Zentrum; ETH Hönggerberg.
Campus plans / Rooms
If you are looking for a specific building, you can find campus plans of ETH here.
If you are looking for a specific lecture or seminar room, you can look for it at the Room information of ETH. When you click on the desired room, a new site opens. In a box on the lower right of the page labeled "Lokalisierung" you will find a map for the building and a floor plan indicating the location of the room.
Food
Around ETH there are many cafeterias and so-called mensas catering to various tastes. To find out what is available you can go to http://www.gastro.ethz.ch for the menus of each facility. There you can also find webcams showing the current situation in the larger mensas in order to avoid large rushes of people.
Here is a small overview of the food options around ETH:
- Meals:
- Main Mensa (HG)
- Clausiusbar (CLA)
- foodLab (CAB)
- Unimensa at the University of Zurich
- Snacks & Drinks
- Cafeteria (HG)
- Bqm (HG)
- Polysnack (ML)
- Essen:
- Physics Mensa (HPR)
- Chemistry Mensa (HCI)
- WoKa (HIT)
- Alumni Lounge
- Snacks & Drinks
- Chemistry cafeteria (HCI)
- Bistro
- Baucafeteria (HIL)
Printing
ETH offers free black and white printing of up to 800 A4 pages per semester, with each additional page costing 5 Rp. This service is offered at various printing stations under the so-called VPP system, meaning "Verteiltes Printen und Plotten" or "distributed printing and plotting". The Materials departement offers a computer room with such a printing station and two laser printers, which is located at HCI D 467. VPP also allows you to print out any PDF or Postscript file via a web form, for example for posters and other formats. A price list can be found on the aforementioned website.
NOTE: Almost all VPP stations indicate the utilization of nearby printers as well! It might be worth it to choose a printer in another room to avoid waiting time. Often printers are running at full capacity while another printer two rooms away is completely unused.
Limitations: Printing via VPP has some limitations. Most stations can only print 20 pages per print job (duplex counts as 2 pages) and most printers have a file size limitation as well. Therefore, many lecture scripts have to be separated into smaller print jobs, especially if they contain many pictures. Since those are decompressed for printing, the print job can reach much larger sizes than the original file. Unfortunately, you can only check whether you have crossed the limit at the printing station after you have sent the print job.
How do I create a PDF?
Since VPP only accepts PDF (and Postscript) files, all other documents have to be converted first. Many new software and operating systems have built-in means to do that. Apart from those, there are various ways to do that:
One of the most flexible possibilities is the installation of a "PDF printer" in your operating system. This incorporates a new virtual printer, which allows every software with a printing option to create PDF files.
I recommend PDF Creator, which is freeware. After a very easy installation you will have a new printer which you can choose to create PDFs.
If you want to print a PDF using Microsoft Office 2007, you can use the official Microsoft Save as PDF / XPS" add-in.
OpenOffice has built-in means to create PDF files.
IT services
ETH offers its students many services. You can find an overview of them here.
For example, IT services offers a network drive, e-mail account, personal web space and access to the ETH intranet via VPN.
Here we present a couple of important services, which unfortunately are not always known to all students.
VPN / Free wireless access
VPN stands for "Virtual Private Network". With the software that you can find on the IT website you can access the intranet of ETH from anywhere. This allows you to use internal services such as your network drive or get access to licensed material such as scientific journals!
Due to an agreement between ETH and an internet service provider you can use VPN not only to access internal ETH services but also use almost all public wireless LAN stations at train stations, hotels etc. for free. All you have to do is to connect to the network and login via VPN with your nethz login and password.
STUD-IDES
Stud-IDES provides various software which might be helpful for your studies for free or as student editions at great discounts. Among other things, you can find Matlab, Microsoft Office, Mathematica, ChemDraw and much more!
MSDNAA
MSDNAA (Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance) is an offer from Microsoft that provides their software for lecturers and students of technical universities for free! Through MSDNAA you have access to many programs ranging from whole operating systems to developer tools and much more!
To benefit from MSDNAA, you must first register for it using STUD-IDES.
Project NEPTUN
The goal of Project Neptun is to provide students and staff at ETH and other universities with high quality laptops at cheap conditions. If you need a new laptop, it's definitely worth it to take a look at the offers. However, the offer is only open twice a year at the beginning of each semester, but you will receive a notification each time.
The laptops offered by Neptun are usually of very good quality. Depending on your demand, you might of course find cheaper or better offers elsewhere, but usually the price/performance ratio of Neptun is excellent.
SMS Gateway
At www.sms.ethz.ch you can send text messages. Since Oktober 2010, this service is not anymore for free, but cost 5 Rp. per SMS (15 Rp. to a number outside Switzerland). If you register your mobile phone number under www.personalien.ethz.ch, you can dispatch messages with your number as the sender.
Maths preparation course (PSE)
| Time: |
14.-16.09.2011, half a day (Semester begins 19.09.11) |
| Location: |
ETH Zürich Zentrum, time and location will be communicated after registration |
| Administration: |
Wilhelm Hüttenes, whuettenes@student.ethz.ch |
| Lecturers: |
Sandra Häberli, hasandra@student.ethz.ch
Sonia Brechbühl, soniabr@student.ethz.ch |
| Goal: |
Preparation and repetition of relevant knowledge in mathematics to support a successful start in ETH life. |
| Fee: | 20 CHF (nominal fee) |
| Important: | The preparation course will be conducted in German!! |
Contents
Relevant topics ranging from differentials, integrals, vectors and matrices (Gauss) to complex numbers, sequences and progressions will be introduced and practically exercised.
There will be a handout illustrating the topics and - of course - enough time for questions.
Requirements
The preparation course can be helpful in case of some uncertainties concerning Integration, Differentiation, exponential functions, logarithms, complex numbers and/or other basic tools in mathematics.
The preparation course is not relevant for you, if you successfully passed the ETH entrance examination (not equivalent to Basisprüfung!!!) or if you already know (and understand) advanced analysis and algebra such as differential equations of high order, vector analysis or numerical fixed point iterations.
Registration
There will be a nominal fee of 20 CHF per registration to guarantee presence during the lecture and to cover the expenses of handouts, room charges etc.
For registration and questions please do not hesitate to send an e-mail to hopo@smw.ethz.ch or use the link below. There is no deadline, but registrations at the beginning of the lecture can only be accounted for in special cases.
Please include your full name, address and (if already available) your student number into registration. Subject: "Anmeldung_SvK" or "Info_SvK" (without ""). Registrations are checked periodically and a confirmation containing payment information and more detailed information concerning the course will be send.
We are looking forward to your registration and wish you to have a happy and successful time at ETH!
Questions // Registration
Registration will only be valid after payment!
Please apply as early as possible. This helps us organising rooms and material needed for the lecture.
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