Column: UTwente Sorting Hat quiz

A lot of students struggle with their choice for a BSc and MSc major, let alone for their eventual career. They finish university with more questions than when they started.

Let’s be frank: there are way too many studies to begin with. There are 20 BSc and 37 MSc studies, and then I am conveniently skipping over all the MSc specializations. Who can choose between all that?

You can’t. It’s hard. Life’s a struggle when you’re a muggle.

But the solution is surprisingly easy. Let’s just replace the whole system by four Houses:

House of Engineering. Basically Gryffindor but with a Beaver instead of a lion.

Social House. Basically Hufflepuff. Parrot.

House of IT. Basically Ravenclaw. Beetle.

House of Business. Basically Slytherin. Fox.

We develop an AI that we put in a hat, which picks your study for you (and eventually wipes out humanity). And until that time, you can use the following quiz:

1. You are walking across the promenade, past the half-sunken church tower, when you see a student who has fallen into the water and is begging for help. What do you do?

1. You start looking for materials to build a bridge so you can safely reach the student.
2. You open your ‘How to communicate efficiently’ book and look for the chapter about students who are drowning in icy water next to half-sunken church towers.
3. You keep walking. You are wearing AirPods after all so you can’t hear the student.
4. You save the student in exchange for €50 and his/her lunch.

2. You have an exam next week. What do you do?

1. Study hard and pass with a 6.5, largely due to your messy handwriting.
2. Use post-its, markers, and tape in 20 different colour variations each, while rewarding yourself with candy after each page of the book that you have read. You pass the exam with flying colours.
3. Put all the study material in your calculator.
4. Nothing. You made the strategic choice of aiming for the resit.  

3. Your bike gets a flat tire. What do you do?

1. Fix it.
2. You need a new one. You know that <enter your religious God(s)> (Santa Clause if you’re an atheist) doesn’t hand them out for free. So you steal a bike and ask for forgiveness.
3. This wasn’t in the script.
4. Trade your bike for the bike of another student that doesn’t have a flat tire.

4. What is your main consumption at the university?

1. Free instant coffee from my study association.
2. Sugar-Free Iced Grande Vanilla Latte with Soy Milk and Extra Whipped Cream and Chocolate Sauce from Starbucks.
3. Coffee that you brought with you in your 1L thermos flask.
4. Double espresso with sugar.

5. If you could have coffee with your favourite person, who would you have coffee with?

1. Elon Musk.
2. Zac Efron.
3. Sophia or IBM Watson.
4. Myself.

6. Why did you go to the University of Twente?

1. I did not like Delft.
2. Because it was recommended to me after doing every study choice test that I could find online and the ratings for the studies here were good.
3. Because my mom told me to.
4. Because I did not yet understand that going to university is a horrible decision in terms of cost effectiveness and becoming rich quickly.

7. What is your main role in a group project?

1. I mess up the equations.
2. Lay-out, grammar, spell check, final presentation,  report template, quality check, and I write the evaluation report.
3. I post memes in the group Whatsapp, create a badass script, and write an accompanying summary like a 10 year old.
4. I trust in my group members and chew bubblegum, and I am all out of bubblegum.

Results:

Simply count your answers and see which answer you chose the most:

A – Engineering/Gryffindor.

B – Social/Hufflepuff.

C – IT/Ravenclaw.

D – Business/Slytherin.

Hope this helps with your study/career choice! And if you aren’t happy with the result, well, maybe that letter to Hogwarts will still arrive.