Open Door Day at MEPhI is not just mere acquiantance of students with the directions of training and the rules of admission. This is acquaintance with the history of the legendary university, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. And for the university staff it is a special holiday, which is being prepared for a year.

The opportunity to become a student of one of the leading technical universities in the country, to get acquainted with world-famous scientists, to learn about getting education, recognized all over the world, as well as about the real chance to make one's own scientific discovery is what always attracts young people to MEPhI.

So on Sunday about two thousand entrants and their parents filled the corridors of the university. Moreover, for many children acquaintance with the university began long before that day: someone is deliberately preparing to enter our university through MEPhI Pre-university, and some take part in the contests, traditionally held at university. By the way, on this day the winners of the Olympiad "Rosatom" and the Engineering Olympiad among schoolchildren were awarded.

A colorful flash mob was made by students, who at the end of the dance created the word "MEPhI". Volunteers offered to take part in the quest "University Marathon", which helped each student to better know the university and feel like a real student.

In addition to the traditional meeting with the university administration and representatives of the admissions campaign, the program of the Open Door Day included many interesting interactive events: experimentarium and workshops, demonstration of entertaining experiences and intellectual competitions, communication with employers and sports competitions, excursions to scientific laboratories and vocational guidance testing. At the end of the day, some children even expressed regret that they could not participate in each of the events, since many of them were held at the same time.

The official part of the Open Door Day, a meeting with representatives of the university institutes, gathered many young people in the assembly hall of the university. Positive feedback from students and the leading positions of MEPhI in world and national rankings, which schoolchildren could learn, for example, on the interactive portal "Navigator of the entrant", is an undeniable advantage for future students.

In a welcoming speech to the guests, vice-rector of MEPhI E.B. Vesna cited the words of the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin during his meeting with students of MEPhI in 2014, that MEPhI is a legendary high school and the quality of the specialists who are trained here has never been questioned. And indeed it is. The only university that was created during the war for the nuclear project, today is still "a step ahead". MEPhI is preparing unique research engineers whose thoughts and ideas immediately come true - specialists who design the future, define the face of the world, are to provide our country with leadership in high-tech areas.

This year the main part of the event was held in an unusual format: in the form of a briefing, called the "Profession of the Future" by the organizers (which fully corresponds to new directions in educational programs). The leaders of the Institutes, who replaced the narrowly directed faculties last year, spoke about the advantages of educational programs and breakthrough scientific directions of each of the structural divisions and answered the questions of high school students.

Thanks to the integration of education and science, MEPhI can train specialists in professions that are not yet available today, but will be determining tomorrow, for example, bioengineers or programmers of artificial intelligence, etc. For future MEPhI graduates, this means that they will be the first when there is a need for such specialists, which means they are unique, popular and successful.

The meeting in the assembly hall continued with the awarding of the winners of the Olympiad "Rosatom" and the Engineering Olympiad of schoolchildren, diplomas were awarded by the vice-rector E.B. Vesna and head of the Olympiad department S.E. Muraviev. He noted that the interest of schoolchildren to participate in these Olympiads is growing, and the number of their venues is increasing. This indicates an increase in the prestige of engineering and technical specialties, an increase in interest in obtaining engineering education in general, and in MEPhI, in particular. By the way, following the results of the reception campaign of the last year, 40% of those who entered MEPhI, are winners and prize-winners of the All-Russian Olympiads of various levels.

Secrets and innovations of the admission campaign of 2017 were told by the responsible secretary of the admission campaign V.I. Skritniy. The recent graduates of MEPhI who already work in their specialties in various fields of science and technology told about their path to the profession.

For more detailed acquaintance with the new structural units of MEPhI, the "Experimentarium" was held, where interesting scientific developments were demonstrated, and the children could act as experimenters in this laboratory of unique phenomena and devices.

At the same time, each of the Institutes was assigned its own territory, where they organized their competitions and quizzes.

One of the most interesting and useful events for the entrants of the Open Doors Day was MOST, or the International Educational Student Territory. Employees of the Institutes during their direct involvement from the largest scientific centers of Switzerland, France, Germany told about their work, stressing that now in the world experts in the field of interdisciplinary science, for example, at the intersection of physics and medicine, are especially appreciated. And these are exactly the directions that are being successfully developed in MEPhI today. Students and graduate students talked about their international internships, noting that the level of education, received at MEPhI, is fully in line with the required competences. Young scientists, who are currently in CERN, conducted a virtual tour of the experiment.

A special interest among schoolchildren was caused by a speech of student from Palestine who spoke enthusiastically about her studies, student life and friendship at MEPhI. According to Abir Abudan, foreign students are proud that they receive education in such a strong university, highly appreciate the quality of educational programs and hope to continue working in the nuclear industry.

By the way, our university trains more than a thousand students from other countries. Jordan, Palestine, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Turkey, and other countries were represented on the Open Door Day with colorful exhibits and national costumes. Thanks to a good preparation, foreign students already know Russian so well that they talked with pleasure to Russian schoolchildren, told about their country and about their studies at MEPhI.

The spectacular part of the Open House program was the Battle of the Science Slam institutes, a battle for scientific topics in the format of 10-minute stand-up speeches from representatives of each of the institutes, the meaning of which is to tell as simply and spectacularly as possible the most difficult scientific problems the institute deals with. The event very quickly gathered active support groups of speakers among the schoolchildren who came to the event, who, by the way, chose the winner of the battle.

Expectedly great interest, not only among schoolchildren, but also from their parents, caused demonstrations of entertaining experiments in physics and chemistry. And also the performances of our athletes, and students of the military department.

And, of course, excursions. During the whole Open Doors Day the schoolchildren were given a unique chance to make excursions to the departments, scientific centers and laboratories of MEPhI to see with their own eyes the fascinating scientific world of the university.

The holiday is over. According to its results, we now assume that this year MEPhI will again receive new worthy students.