Dear Sir/Madam,
I am currently a graduating Master’s student at (Hidden), pursuing a Master of Science in Energy, and I am interested in applying for the Master in Artificial Intelligence at your university for the next academic year.
Could you please inform me if it is still possible to apply for this program? Additionally, I would like to know if I need to complete any preparatory program before starting the Master’s in AI. I am also interested in finding out if I qualify for a reduced tuition fee.
I look forward to your response.
Kind regards,
Thomas Ponnet
Hello Thomas,
Thank you for your interest in SIAI.
1. The admission term (Link: [Notice] 2025-2026 Admission round (Feb 2025 ~ Jul 2025) | Swiss Institute of Artificial Intelligence)
Your application will be eligible until July 27th, 2025. Toward the end of the deadline, it is likely we will be closing the window and focus on pre-nurturing incoming students, thus we usually recommend students to apply earlier than that.
2.Eligibility to MSc AI/Data Science program
Though many students dream to directly come to a single year MSc AI/Data Science, almost all students lack necessary mathematical / statistical skills. After years of experience, we now have admission examination, in lieu of letter of recommendation from other universities. It is not a sign that we do not respect other highly repuated schools, but to give a fare competition ground for all potential students.
The admission exam is set in Jul 12th and Jul 13th of 2025. It will be a take home exam, as is for most of SIAI’s final examinations. (Plz note that we are an online school.) More details of the exam is in [Notice] 2025-2026 Admission round (Feb 2025 ~ Jul 2025) | Swiss Institute of Artificial Intelligence.
3. Scholarship
For students eligible for TA/RA positions, both of which require heavy math/stat backgrounds in prior schooling, we are happy to offer full tuition waiver.
Key requirement for this is 70% or above in the admission examination, unless you have prior PhD or heavy academic exposure from reputed universites in similar disciplines.
4.Right program to choose
Since a majority of students need prior study, we recommend them to start from PreMSc ( PreMSc-AI/Data Science | Swiss Institute of Artificial Intelligence) or try with AI MBA’s technical track ( MBA-AI & Big Data | Swiss Institute of Artificial Intelligence)
If you have more questions about the right progrm to choose, please take a look at the guide article.
Wish you the best and look forward to seeing you at SIAI in Fall 2025.
Best,
Cathy
Thank you @catherinemaguire for the details. Let me fill in little more information about the TA/RA positions.
Students in MSc AI/DS from PreMSc will most likely given TA positions for PreMSc and AI MBA classes, as they have done exactly the same course in the earlier year, although PreMSc year’s grade really matters in lining up opportunities.
Students coming directly to MSc AI/DS, we are sorry but we would like to not take any risks, unless we have obvious confirmation. After all, students in PreMSc and AI MBA are also here to study, not to subsidize unqualified TAs.
In general, TA/RA positions are not as means of training but as positions to help us to save resources.