Who are you?
Hi, I'm Vashti. I'm a BX26 student, and I'm majoring in mathematics and physics. I'm Indian, and I was born and raised in Singapore.
Why did you choose Ecole Polytechnique?
Ever since I was a high school student, I knew that I wanted to do something in physics, particularly quantum physics. It was also my dream to work at CERN. I then found the Bachelor of Science at Ecole Polytechnique, which seemed like a perfect program for me. It's international, fully taught in English and the courses seemed interesting. I felt that a Bachelor in both mathematics and physics was a good foundation for anything that I wanted to do in the future.
How is it to have such an international, environment here?
Honestly. It's great. I came from an international environment in high school, and so, coming to university, that was something that I was really looking for, and that when I was applying to schools, Polytechnique definitely had an edge over any other school. And, coming here, I made friends from Spain, from Morocco and from France.
It's been amazing to see such a mix of cultures. It is most highlighted in the international buffets we hold. It's so nice to see everybody making food from their culture and how proud they are of their nationality and to share their culture they are. It also made me more comfortable with my national and cultural identity.
What was your favorite course?
Atoms and lasers from Semester 4 probably because subject itself was interesting, and it was taught in a different way than what we experienced in class before. We got into small groups and were given an open-ended problem. Sometimes it was just one single line with no real quantities or no formulas. We used our knowledge from the course to figure out an answer. Every session was like a journey to try and figure out problems like a mystery: “Which formulas do we need to use?” and “what assumptions do we need to make it?” It really taught me how to think critically and use an amalgamation of all the different things we had seen till now.
What is your favorite memory?
There are so many! I feel like every week we make some fun memory. But probably one of the best times was when we won as the L’ORE. I just remember being so stressed before the unveiling night. It was a whole week of sleepless nights, making crepes like 24/7. As the one in charge of communication, I was at every event trying to take photos and sharing them on socials.
It felt like our whole team had achieved something. Everybody was giving us positive feedback on our events. Then when they announced we won, we all came together in a big group hug, and it was just amazing.
One of the hardships was trying to balance the academics and this super important role that is integral to the student community. There were definitely times where it was very difficult to stay on top of everything. It really taught me how to manage my time and how to be resilient.
What do you think about tutoring at Ecole Polytechnique?
Tutoring is one of the most underrated parts of this program. It isn’t like a class or like a lecture. It's about two hours outside of the schedule where you get to engage with the content of the course once more. This helped me to click with the concept of the Dirac notation, which uses the bras and kets, and connecting it to what vectors in Hilbert spaces.
It was also one of the highlights of my semester, because gave me exposure on quantum physics too. As tutors are usually doing a PhD thesis in a topic adjacent to what they're helping us with, sometimes you get to chat with them about their research. They gave me an overview into what's going on in quantum research right now and big issues they're trying to solve. It was interesting to hear from someone who's working in the field. It allowed me to think about what I want to do in this field in the future.
What do you value most about this program?
It gives us a great basis for whatever we want to do in the future. It's quite theoretical and it teaches us many techniques, for mathematics, for physics as well that are going to be helpful in our future. We are 25 students in the BX2026 cohort and are all going into such varied paths. I feel like this program allows yo to do whatever you want.