Culture and Student Life
The Aalto University students are known for active student life, an integral part of many student traditions play the brightly colored overalls worn to many events. The color of the overall signals what the student studies (e.g. the economy students are recognized from dollar green overalls). The student community has also organised important charity events. In fact, the name for these events tempaus, has entered common language to describe any carnival-like charity event.
The students of technology (the teekkaris) are especially noticeable, as they wear a distinctive hat with a tuft on many occasions (both formal and informal). Technology students are also famous for, and Finland's leading practitioners of, student pranks (jäynä), similar in principle to MIT hacks. Their most widely publicised stunt took place in 1961, when a team of students smuggled a statue of Paavo Nurmi onto the 300-year-old wreck of Regalskeppet Vasa just days before its lifting from the bottom of the sea.
The students of economy are known for their parties in downtown Helsinki, where the economy student building hosts a lavish nightclub, the KY Klubi (the economy student club).
Although student traditions vary in between the different constituent schools common activities started to burgeon early after the foundation of Aalto-U. The most noticeable student event of the first year of the university was Aalto on Tracks, where a group of 100 students came together to rent a private train which they traveled 10 000 km on from Helsinki to the Shanghai Expo enjoying multidisciplinary talks and workshops on the way. The event was such a success that the follow-up Aalto on waves is planned to arrange a trip by boat to South America. Aalto on Tracks also spurred students of Tongji University to arrange Tonji on Tracks which essentially takes the journey of Aalto on Tracks in the opposite direction.
Aalto Entrepreneurship Society is a multi-disciplinary society uniting students and graduates of all disciplines of the University. It aims to encourage high-tech, high-growth, scalable entrepreneurship by arranging get-togethers to spark ideas and innovations and aid start-up initiatives among the Aalto students.
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