Sitting in a corner of the main building’s atrium of Instituto Superior Técnico, Rocky observes the crowd of people milling around the dozens of stalls dedicated to various master’s programmes. Thirsty for attention, he gets up and approaches two visitors, raising his front paw in greeting. The pair of visitors laugh – they had just been greeted by a remote-controlled robot dog from the Department of Mineral and Energy Resources Engineering, which was roaming around the event interacting with the participants.
This is one of the moments of Técnico Master’s Day, which took place on 12 March, aiming to provide visitors with all the information they need about the school’s master’s programmes. Several master’s students and professors gathered at roundtables and stalls to answer numerous questions about the next steps in the academic journeys of hundreds of undergraduates.
‘I had some really good conversations’, shared Daniel Burke, a third-year student in the Undergraduate Programme in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Although he is undecided about which master’s programme to choose – debating between control, robotics, artificial intelligence or energy – he is certain that he wants to continue his studies at Técnico. ‘I’ve had a great experience and this is one of the best schools in the country,’ he said.
Lara Pereira is a first-year student on the Master’s programme in Radiological Protection and Safety, taught at Alameda campus and Loures campus. She’s attending the Master’s Day not as a visitor, but to share her Master’s experience.She decided to take her course because of the ‘wide range of job opportunities’ it offers. She believes that ‘having this education provides a strong foundation to explore various career paths’. Coming from a university where she completed a degree in health, she describes her experience studying at Técnico as ‘both beneficial and challenging’, especially as a working student. She also emphasised that ‘any student from another higher education institution can enter Técnico and pursue a master’s degree here’.
The event also focused on enlightening students who intend to study at a foreign institution through the several mobility programmes offered by Técnico and those interested in attending the school from abroad. At the Main Building’s entrance, there were also entrepreneurship initiatives and training activities for building an attractive CV, as well as meetings with Técnico alumni.
Tomás Santos, with his hand full of leaflets alluding to all these activities, praised the event. He has just completed is Undergraduate Programme in Telecommunications and Informatics Engineering, the student assured, with a smile on his face, that ‘I recommend this day for those who are undecided about what to do in the future’.
The event brought together more than 350 students, not only from Técnico but also from higher education institutions in cities such as Guimarães, Braga, Porto, Aveiro, Coimbra, Covilhã, Setúbal and Évora. Tomás, a student at the University of Coimbra, shared his thoughts after engaging with several attendees. He noted that Técnico master’s programmes ‘are very appealing because they offer a wide range of options, prioritise employability and foster connections with companies’. He highly recommended the Master’s Day ‘to anyone who has any doubts about their academic choices’.
Applications for master’s programmes (and integrated master’s programme) at Instituto Superior Técnico for the 2025/26 academic year are open from 3 to 21 March (1st call). The 2nd call takes place from 16 June to 11 July (at 5 p.m.) 2025, and will include the vacancies left over from the 1st call.
