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After admission

You have arrived — the 2026–27 year has started

The M2 thesis defenses took place on 2–3 September and the welcome day on 4 September. Classes start the week of 7 September — check your slot on the weekly agenda.

In your first two weeks: complete your inscription pédagogique with Romane Taddei, choose your optional courses on the Classes page, and make sure you can log into eCampus. M2 students: also pick between Signal Processing M2 and From Symbolic to Neurosymbolic AI.

Key academic dates (2026–2027)

Start of the year

Date What happens
2–3 September 2026 M2 thesis defenses — Wednesday 13:30–18:00, Thursday 9:00–16:30, Bât. 507, salle de conférence
4 September 2026 Master welcome day
Week of 7 September 2026 Classes start. M2: first class Monday 7 September, 13:30. M1: the first Bloc 1 courses are on Thursday 10 September, 09:00
September 2026 Inscription pédagogique — register your course choices

Late arrival (exceptional cases)

  • Students are strongly expected to be in Paris-Saclay in September.
  • Courses are not offered in hybrid or online mode.
  • Late-arriving students may still take exams (or catch-up exams), provided they arrive no later than November.

End of the year

Date What happens
January – April 2027 M1: TER (research training), alongside the classes
1 March – 31 August 2027 M2: internship, five to six months
From May 2027 M1: internship, at least 8 weeks — ideally finished by the end of June, but it may run until 31 August
End of August 2027 Official end of M1
Early September 2027 M2 thesis defenses
End of September 2027 Official end of M2 (time to finish the internship and correct the thesis)

What to do after being admitted

Congratulations! Here is what to do, in order.

1. Check that your financial plan holds

If you do not have a scholarship, you need a significant amount of money to live here. The cost of living in France is high: near Paris you need roughly 1300–1600 € per month, plus an initial sum for travel, a housing deposit, and kitchen equipment.

If you cannot afford it, please do not come

The number of scholarships is limited, and arriving without the means to live is a very bad idea. Tell us early instead — see the scholarships section below.

2. Confirm your decision (or resign)

Confirm on the application platform. If you decide to go elsewhere, resign ("démissionner") on the platform, or at least email us at ai.master-informatique@universite-paris-saclay.fr, so your slot goes to another student. You can still resign after having confirmed.

Once you have accepted officially, we count on you — it is a firm commitment. But if for any reason (financial or other) you think you might not register or not show up in September, tell us how likely that is. We will not exclude you for being honest; it simply lets us estimate the summer drop-out rate and overbook sensibly. And if you are 100 % certain you will be here, that is useful to know too.

3. Get registered

Inscription académique (administrative registration)

If you run into problems, contact scolarite-licencesmasters.sciences@universite-paris-saclay.fr — though they are very busy at the start of the year, exactly when you need them. Going to building 336 and talking to them in person is often the fastest fix.

Once you have paid these (inexpensive) fees there is no refund if you change your mind and do not show up in September.

Inscription pédagogique (course registration)

This happens during September, after you arrive: choose your optional courses (contrat pédagogique), send an ID picture to the pedagogical secretary Romane Taddei, and sign the exam code of conduct.

4. Prepare your brain

See Get Ready for the online crash courses, and the Classes page to see what is coming.

5. Before writing to us

Check whether the answer is already on this site — most are. If you do write, keep the request concise, clear and polite, and be patient.

Scholarships and funding

The scholarship season ends around late May. The two programmes where we can help — IDEX and SaclAI-School (mixtAI) — close before the summer, and IDEX results arrive around late June. The EIFFEL scholarship has a deadline in November, well before the application season.

We try to spot the strongest students and short-list them; a separate jury then selects a few files from that short-list. Because of the tight schedule we sometimes have to build the short-list before reading every file — we do our best. Each year a few of our students obtain one of these Saclay scholarships, but the other Paris-Saclay master programmes need their share too, so most students are not funded this way.

Other possibilities:

  • Your embassy — check whether a French–(your country) programme exists. Apply early; by the summer it is usually too late.
  • A student loan — we cannot recommend taking on debt, but AI is a field in demand, so it can be an option.

If none of this works out, you may have to give up your place. If you realise you do not have the means to join us, please tell us as soon as possible and resign from the platform. Some students work part-time to fund their studies, but we advise against it: student jobs are poorly paid, energy-consuming, and they seriously hurt academic results.

Tuition fees. Non-EU students at Paris-Saclay pay the same (low) fees as EU students: the extra differentiated fees are waived. This exemption applies to the 2026 inscription; for arrivals in 2027 it may change, and nothing is confirmed yet. See tuition fees.

Housing

Read the French pages too

Some pages are not fully translated, and the French version is often more complete than the English one. Use a translator rather than assuming the English page has everything.

Preparing for arrival

Université Paris-Saclay provides a number of services to welcome you.

  1. Read the International Welcome Desk page and save it — it stays useful throughout your stay.
  2. Book an individual appointment with the administrative support manager, who explains the administrative steps to take once you are in France.
  3. Attend the Q&A webinars on Teams — dates and links are announced each year around May–June on the international welcome page.
  4. Register for the Arrival Days to get information and support as soon as you land — check the dates first, then book your trip so you can take part.
  5. Find your cohort's group chat. Each year the students organise their own WhatsApp or Discord group — ask about it on your first day of class and get added straight away. That is where practical information travels fastest.

Other useful links for international students

Getting everyone to the same level

Will there be entry-level classes to fill in my missing prerequisites?

That is exactly what the first period is for. In P1 (September–October):

  • Applied Statistics and Mathematics for Data Science are the mathematics refreshers — estimators, maximum likelihood, linear algebra, continuous optimization.
  • Hands-on Machine Learning with scikit-learn gets your tools ready.

The goal of P1 is to bring students from different backgrounds to the same starting level. These courses refresh, though — they cannot replace undergraduate mathematics you never took, which is why your mathematics grades weigh heavily in the selection.

The best preparation is still to work through our online crash courses over the summer: see Get Ready, and the Classes page for what each course covers.