Does anyone have statistics about average GPAs, undergraduate college majors etc.
I know that this is one of the few programs that does not require applicants to have a background in computer science but how difficult would it be for someone from a quantitative background (without significant programming experience) to excel in the program?
I know that the school doesn’t offer financial aid for this particular masters program. That concerns me. Is the program just intended to be a lucrative source of capital for the university? Or is the school really invested in making sure that graduates receive the best instruction and master the subject matter in a relatively short period of time.
Perspective of an undergrad:
I would not advise getting a CS degree from the university of Chicago if you can get one from a comparable school. Our CS department is small, and has a bit of a reputation for graduating people who can’t code. I was a CS major (did well, but my career goals needed only software and I didn’t want to waste a year learning all the hardware/systems stuff - I already know how to code well) and am very well-connected with the comp sci community on campus. The professors are in general amazing but the material they teach is somewhat less useful or poorer-structured than what you would find at other top schools. The majority of people I know from UChicago who are working at Twitter/Facebook/Google (literally the only top tech company which actively recruits on campus at undergrad level) spend the majority of their time coding on their own projects rather than showing up to class. Of course, that means nothing, since any hacker worth his salt spends twice as much time coding outside of class, but I guess my point is you will learn more from your part-time coding work and internships than you will from the classes, which actually isn’t true at some other schools.
To answer your direct question. No, this is not a scam. If you really don’t have a CS background and can’t get into Stanford/Berkeley/CMU/etc. then UChicago’s masters program is actually a great option for you. I know a few master’s program students who couldn’t get in to a true top CS program (i.e. one spent his post-undergrad time in finance, which is a black mark as far as masters CS recruiting goes), and they’re quite happy with the program because it was their best option. If you are a smart quant, it’ll still be hard but not absurdly difficult to do well. It’s a real program, I just want to caution anyone reading this that the relative quality of the CS department at UChicago is a lot lower than its flagship STEM departments (Math, Economics, Biology/Chem, Physics etc.)
Thank you for the insight!