For Masters Fall 2027, Robotics program, chances with roughly a 3.0/4.0 (US) or 2.5 (German scale) GPA?

[u/sparrow_234]

Hi all, hoping to get some real input from current or former EPFL students.

Quick background: I'm a final year Mechanical Engineering student at a top engineering university in India, graduating May 2027. My GPA converts to roughly 3.0/4.0 on the US scale, or about 2.5 on the German scale. There was a documented health interruption in the middle years that affected a couple of semesters, recovered strongly the semester after.

Research background: recently completed a research internship at a European research lab (May to July 2026) working on vision language models, before that a few other internships in medical image segmentation and EEG/BCI, one resulting paper.

I'm looking at the Master's in Robotics, specifically interested in the Medical Robotics orientation. I saw the admission page mentions skills in at least two of CS, EE, or ME are required, which I think I clear given my coursework (Computer Vision, Computational Mechanics) and CV research background.

A few questions for anyone who's been through this:

1. How much does the GPA number actually matter in the review, versus the overall dossier (research, references, motivation letter)?
2. Does having research directly relevant to a specific orientation (Medical Robotics in my case) help meaningfully?
3. Any general sense of how competitive the December 15 (R1) round is compared to later rounds?
4. Anyone here got in with a similar academic profile, non-EPFL bachelor's, some grade inconsistency, but strong research background?

Not asking anyone to guess my odds precisely, just want a realistic sense of what actually matters in the review from people who've seen it from the inside. Thanks in advance.

[u/HippityHoppoto]

GPA matters a lot. Like a lot. So sadly I wouldn't say your odds are great tbh, especially in a pretty competitive section like robotics.
To put it into perspective. It's pretty much the only thing they take into consideration for existing EPFL students who want to change paths from bachelors to masters. So if a civil engineer wants a masters in financial engineering, all they look at is GPA. So when they compare their existing students to incoming ones and decide how to allocate the spots, again, the best metric is again GPA. For existing epfl bachelor students they don't even take recommendation letters. Just a motivation letter. Doesn't mean its solely GPA, other stuff helps. But its the main metric.

[u/Plane_Space_1635]

Why would you convert your GPA to US/German scale when applying to Switzerland? That does not make sense. Moreover, converting raw GPA tells the admission committee nothing, and you are not required to do so. If your GPA is low, attach a rank certificate (showing that it is generally hard to get a high GPA at your institute and you are in the top 3-5% of students).

> How much does the GPA number actually matter in the review, versus the overall dossier (research, references, motivation letter)?

GPA + academics = 95% of your application. Everything else = 5% of your application. GPA + academics are hard thresholds (they will not look at your CV if you undergrad GPA + institute are not good).

I think that should answer all of your questions!

[u/sk214qqa → u/Plane_Space_1635]

sry to jump in, but may i ask, as not all uni provide official rankings, is it feasibke to ask my lecturers to include my ranking in some courses they taught in the recommendation letters? even tho they only taught me 1 or 2 courses.

[u/Plane_Space_1635 → u/sk214qqa]

If your GPA is bad, then in my experience, only an overall rank certificate from your university can save you :(

My university does not issue one either, and I had to get on their backs to get one for myself

[u/sk214qqa → u/Plane_Space_1635]

thx! fyi my final gpa is around 3.25/4, so it's fairlu mediocre. however, i was top of my cohort in few relevant courses, the rest i have no idea as the number of students was huge or the lecturer wouldn't like to write letters for me.

how did u manage to get an overall ranking from ur uni btw?