Can any former or current alumni getting either a BA or MS in Computer Science talk about the opportunities they’ve had either with internships or job offers? If anyone can link any data regarding job placements that would be swell.
It’s a major within The University that is relatively new and is growing in importance and prestige. There are many grads, mostly newer, now working at what many consider the most important technology companies in the world. For instance, about 40 grads now work at Google in the Silicon Valley office. Jobs are listed on the Computer Science Department website and on the Career Services site. The Career Services listings are private and only available to current students and grads.
I am a current Math + CS student and this is what I have found so far:
- The recruiting environment is not very established for software engineering. Students have to take their own initiative when applying to companies. Notable tech companies that visited recently and have an established recruiting cycle include Google, Microsoft, and Uber. However, for the vast majority of tech companies, students have to apply on their own.
- In interviews, the UChicago brand name is received in a very binary fashion: either the interviewer knows what UChicago is, and is immediately impressed by it, or they don't know what it is, and will ask why you opted to study there. I find that approximately 30% of the time it is the former, and these are the 30% of companies that you actually want to work for (e.g. Amazon, Facebook, etc.). Overall, however, I found that tech companies really don't care what school you went to as long as you ace the technical part of the interview.
- Securing internships in tech is not that hard, especially in this economy. I have secured 2 offers for next summer, and have many more interviews coming up. I found the technical coding workshops they host weekly (in Ryerson) to be very helpful for interview prep (they have free dinner too!) as well as hack nights, and pretty much every other tech event that the University has been pouring a lot of money into.
- A lot of the top CS students at UChicago do prop trading instead of software dev at one of the big tech companies. There is pretty heavy recruiting by all the prop shops for UChicago CS students, and a lot of shops visit campus during the career fairs. From what I have heard, to get a prop trading interview (at a good shop) you have to be a high GPA math/physics/compsci major at Harvard, MIT, Chicago, or Caltech. Recruiting from other schools is considerably less. Once you have the interview, its all on you, and the questions they ask are much harder than in software. In other words, its insanely competitive to get offers at these firms (Jane Street, Optiver, etc.).
I hope you don’t mind my asking, but what year are you at UChicago and what kind of grades do you have? Thanks.
me?
Yes, I was asking to get a feel for what kind of grades in CS may be necessary to see some interest in large high tech employers for internships and jobs.
I just finished my first quarter- I ended up with all As with a pretty hard course load. However, I had no GPA when applying to internships, only my SAT. I don’t think any of the firms I interviewed with would have cared if I put a GPA either. Tech is very meritocratic in the sense that a programmer’s skills/experience is considered well above his/her school or GPA. I would worry less about trying to get a high GPA and more about picking the right classes and learning as much as possible.
P.S. I had three summers of software internships before this year, and that helped a lot with getting offers. There is a huge hurdle to cross in getting the first internship- I offered to work for free, and that did the trick.
Thanks for answering my question.
@puzzled123 are you happy with the profs? Do you get good guidance from them and help finding good internship/job opportunities?
I am very happy with the profs; my CS professor is my favorite so far. I applied to internships on my own, although I am sure the profs would have helped if I asked.
Ravi and Kurtz are the best people at UChicago. I’ve heard really great things about Adam Shaw, too.