Questions related to course fees

SIAI SIAI Admission
1

Hello SIAI,

First of all, thank you for the detailed reply for my earlier questions in Feb.

Today, I spot that the tuition got bumped up quite noticeably from CHF 20k+ to CHF 40k+. I admit that the earlier pricing was a bit too moderate for a prestigious MBA program dedicated to AI and Data Science, despite the fact that it is almost purely online. From the course lecture notes and examinations, I can somewhat understand the premium pricing should come forward, but still wonder if that is for year 2025.

Best,
Neeraj

2

Hello Ms. Chopra,

Thank you for your second inquiry, and I am glad to hear that the earlier question was resolved.

For the updated tuition, it will be applied from 2025 and onwards. So far, the programmes have been on a pilot run with modest tuition. As we are about to be re-certified by EduQua, Swiss’s education labeling, we are now stepping off from the testing stage.

From this year on, we will have guest lecturers from Silicon Valley, Mayfair, as well as key globally well-known institutions. In addition to that, there will be a few non-compulsory offline gatherings scheduled in 2025 and 2026 for students’ networking.

Our case studies for AI/Data Science from various backgrounds will soon be public, and will likely be actively used in classes for MBA AI/BigData as well as MBA AI/Finance.

We are proud of on-going changes and new upgrades to come. We wish your every penny to be paid off during and after your study at SIAI.

Best wishes,
Cathy

3

For MBA (and preMSc), we believe the new pricing will help students with more opportunities, as we will mainly use the fund to support wider and deeper networks in AI/Data Science industry.

For senior year in MSc, if students are from preMSc, it is likely that the student will be given some depth of tuition waiver by helping us to cook better receipe in lecture materials. Those students actively engaged in quality case studies may even be rewarded financially, if the case study creates profit.

For MSc by admission exam, we still plan to offer academic project opportunities. It’s not like we give a discount in tuition, but more like we need your hands to help ourselves.

Many professors at SIAI are on here with other primary jobs. We are also here to extend our network (like MBA students) and to do reseach in AI/Data Science (like MSc students). For every research, there usually are only 10% of real work that requires our full attention. The other 90% can be supported by entry level researchers. But we hope to completely trust the rookie researchers, and I believe our MSc students are the best candidates for that.

4

I have also noticed the price jump earlier this week, but didn’t know about ‘SIAI 2.0’

Though price indeed is a factor of variable, but what’s more important is the price ex-post the degree. I myself find an engineer so am not into MBAs, but some people go nuts for IMD despite the price tag. I can understand that the biz network they can leverage compensates the price.

For SIAI, I am a little concerned that the earlier grads from the pilot program can give us that much network. Although the price tag is much more moderate compared to IMD and I also count that AI network is way more expensive than traditional industriies’, I still wonder if the network can help us to secure jobs after the study.

5

@Thomas_Ponnet thank you for joining this thread. I was actually going to make my own perspective on this one, but re-aligned little bit to address your point. Hope this helps.

During my Masters, we also had this type of ‘job fairs’ that the school invited HR managers and key officials from Fortune 500 companies. After decades as a full-time engineer in a large and a few small institutions, so on the other side of the ‘job fair’, I can tell you that the events are not really designed to hire ‘top brains’. It was more about introducing the company to students that we tell them we are in play. 999 out of 1000 cases, you won’t be getting a job offer on that day.

Unless you have charm to attract recruiters, it won’t generally be easy to have the company’s attention. You have to have selling points, first of all. The selling points usually come from what you do personally (not what schools teach you), and the school’s education is to give you a foundation for your personal task.

If you are just a fresher from a bootcamp, your foundation must be shallow, meaning that your chance to win recruiters’ attention will be dim. And, I don’t think such students will tab SIAI’s admission.

What I recommend you is to build strong foundation, be it SIAI or any other prestigious schools with in-depth scientific studies w/ math for AI. And then, post your toy projects to your Github. Act like you are already a full-time professional while conversing with other experienced members when sharing codes or exchaning ideas. Unfortunately, most full-timers don’t spend much time on Github, but still, when I got your resume from HR and search your name on Google, I want your Github to be full of math-driven codes with sharp reasoning.

In STEM fields, your school name is less emphasized. What’s really a key is how good you are in foundation so that you can be versatile in whatever the project that your employer is working on.

With SIAI 2.0, what I have proposed to the team for the networking events is that we should call up senior researchers for sharing what they like from freshers instead of creating ties with HR teams. I am not saying inviting HR teams is valueless, but STEM students need more bottom-up than top-down.

@KeithLee earlier in our discussion mentioned related requirements for admissions to MSc AI/Data Science, but we have eventually moved to a simple exam on basic mathematical statistics. If we were not a school but a company, I guess @KeithLee’s recruiting points would have made more sense. The same logic should be shared by your target companies ‘ex-post’ SIAI.

Sorry to be a bit opinionated, but I guess you get my points.

6

@ethanmcgowan the admission exam was introduced because of the fair admission policy for all STEM majors. Not all STEM students have Github pages, so the most fair ground we thought was the exam. Other than that, I agree with you every line. We should help students to build firm foundation and later apply the training to business-level projects.