The English Programme committee meeting 3/2021 (11.5.2021) was a long one and covered a wide range of questions. I will go through some of the topics that are directly relevant to the students.
From 2022 onward, the admission criteria will change for admission group II since SAT SUBJECT test is no longer offered. A quick sidetrack, admission group I consist of Finnish students applying for the English program while admission group II consists of international students. These two groups use different criteria to rank the students, group I uses the entrance exam while group II uses the SAT test. The admission process for group II is going to use the reading and writing SAT test. However, the minimum requirement is that the math section score will need to be larger or equal 650. In addition, ACT test will be used as an alternative to SAT test. The ACT will be converted to SAT score through converting table. The ranking is still based on SAT score.
On another topic, the responsible teachers for the JOIN.Bsc seminar for the time period 1.1.2021 - 31.7.2022 are: Luc-St-Piere (COE), Maarit Käpylä (DS), Martin Andraud (DSD), Matti Raasakka (QT). However, this does not imply that they are the only teachers involve in guiding students writing the thesis, each major has two other teachers. Nevertheless, the names of the teachers here will be the one written in your transcript.
We also discussed the changes to the new curriculum for years 2022-2024. There are some interesting items. First, the Industrial Engineering Management (IEM) course still received bad feedbacks. It was proposed that maybe the IEM course could be pushed back to the 2nd year or 3rd year so that other basic courses can replace it. Furthermore, due to the content of this course being old, an alternative course about entrepreneur/start-up could replace it An entrepreeneur/start-up themed course would also align nicely with Aalto’s strategy (still in discussed). Furthermore, the number of programming courses and math courses in basic study can be changed from 25 credits to 20-25 credits with the aim that the student can choose to pick up some other courses in SCI (for example CHEM or PHYS). Note, this topic is still in discussion!
There is an interesting new program starting for students who want to study computer science in English. It was mentioned and discussed briefly that the CS department wants to open a computer science program in English. However, it won’t be next year as that would be a little bit fast. Instead, this program will admit its first students in fall 2022 (hopefully).
After the pandemic, it was noticed that the current equipment and infrastructure in Aalto for hybrid-teaching method has not been utilized to its full potential. There will be more training for lecturer on the hybrid-teaching method. I hope that this will improve the teaching quality in the Autumn.
On the meeting, there was another special guest, the marketing department! They went briefly through the marketing strategy and the list of target countries for recruiting new students. The goal is to increase the diversity in the international programs. They also wanted some ideas on why you should apply for the English program. If you have something to share on that, do not hesitate to contact me!
Hurray, we finally reach the end. I hope the pandemic situation will calm down during the summer so we can meet on campus in Autumn. Thanks for reading!
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