TU Delft

TU Delft (Delft University of Technology) was founded on 8 January 1842 by King William II as a Royal Academy and is the oldest and largest technical university in the Netherlands. It is a public university with eight faculties and more than 26,000 students, a large share of them international, drawn by its reputation in engineering, technology, computing, design and the natural sciences.

Delft's traditional strengths include aerospace engineering, civil and hydraulic engineering — a field shaped by the Netherlands' centuries of water management — architecture and the built environment, electrical engineering and computer science, applied physics and industrial design. Teaching is project-based and closely tied to research and industry, and all master's programmes are taught in English, which makes TU Delft one of the most accessible top technical universities in Europe for South Asian graduates.

The campus sits in Delft, a compact historic city of canals between Rotterdam and The Hague, with Amsterdam under an hour away by train. Students cycle everywhere, and English is widely spoken in daily life. The trade-offs are cost and housing: non-EU tuition is substantial by European standards, and rooms in Delft are scarce, so admitted students should accept housing offers quickly and budget around €900 or more per month for living costs, on top of tuition.

TU Delft is also a pioneer of open education: its Extension School publishes large numbers of online courses and MOOCs, some of them award-winning, so prospective students can sample Delft teaching — and strengthen an application — before they ever apply.

Students from outside the EU/EEA pay TU Delft's institutional tuition rate. TU Delft's published rate for a non-EU/EEA Bachelor's student was €17,310 per year in 2025-26 (Computer Science and Engineering programme page); reported institutional rates for 2026-27 are €19,906 per year for Bachelor's programmes and €25,633 per year for Master's programmes. EU/EEA students pay the statutory rate (€2,694 per year in 2026-27). TU Delft estimates living costs for a student in student housing at about €909 per month.

Applications start in Studielink, the Dutch national enrolment system, and continue in TU Delft's own application portal, where you upload your documents and pay the €100 non-refundable application fee. Only complete applications are processed. For an MSc, you need a relevant bachelor's degree comparable to a Dutch research-university bachelor's and a CGPA of at least 75% of the maximum scale, with country-specific diploma requirements for many nationalities.

All MSc programmes are taught in English and TU Delft does not deviate from its published scores: IELTS Academic 7.0 overall (at least 6.5 per section) or TOEFL iBT 100 overall (at least 22 per section); Cambridge C1 Advanced or C2 Proficiency with at least 185 is also accepted. Bachelor's deadlines are 15 January for numerus clausus programmes and 1 April for other programmes; MSc deadlines vary, and scholarship applicants must be fully applied by 1 December.

TU Delft's eight faculties are Architecture and the Built Environment; Civil Engineering and Geosciences; Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science; Industrial Design Engineering; Aerospace Engineering; Technology, Policy and Management; Applied Sciences; and Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering.

Most bachelor's programmes are taught in Dutch; the English-taught bachelor's options include Aerospace Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering, Nanobiology and Applied Earth Sciences. At master's level, dozens of two-year MSc programmes are taught entirely in English across engineering, computing, design, applied sciences and technology management — popular choices include aerospace engineering, computer science, architecture, civil engineering, robotics, sustainable energy technology and data science.

TU Delft's flagship award is the Justus & Louise van Effen Excellence Scholarship for excellent international master's students: the Delft University Fund states that this two-year scholarship is worth approximately €60,000 for non-EU students, covering full tuition fees plus a contribution to living expenses, with a minimum of 16 scholarships awarded every year — two per faculty. Competition is intense and applicants generally need a bachelor's CGPA of 80% or higher.

Non-EEA students can also be considered for the national NL Scholarship, a one-off €5,000 grant for the first year, and several faculties run their own programme-specific scholarships. Current master's students can apply for van Effen Research Grants (€750 per month plus travel) for a research project abroad.