Do the leading West Coast tech companies like Google/Facebook/Microsoft/Apple/Amazon recruit from the WashU (St. Louis) computer science undergraduate program?
How are the internship and job prospects for WUSTL CS undergraduates?
One of my D’s best friends from HS is a CS major at WashU, and she and my D (who also majors in CS and goes to an east coast school) have compared notes. The friend says that it is difficult but not impossible for WashU students to nab internships; she knows of a handful of interns going to work at the companies you mention. I’d say that my D’s school gets more placed–20-25 out of the 100 or so CS majors per year. There isn’t much on campus interviewing at WashU but you can always send in an application to any of the top internship programs and they will interview you online. There are obviously a lot of other employers at WashU who recruit on campus for tech jobs (Charter and Garmin are local notables), but not so much from the ones you listed.
Thanks, spayurpets, that is helpful. Do you know if WashU CS or College of Engineering publishes a career or internship placement report? Most other schools do this but I haven’t found one for WashU, other than for the business school.
I don’t know if WashU does. I like that Brown career services publishes a full list of self reported jobs by year and major. It’s pretty informative and as you say one wishes more schools would do that.
Graduated from WashU and living in the Bay area now. 5 year since my graduation.
WashU CS department is pretty small but some companies (at my time, 2011, Microsoft, Google, Facebook) still came to our campus to recruit. They organized small events around career fairs. So pay attention.
While working at Microsoft between 2011-2015, they showed me they hired about 3 - 4 full time + 3 - 5 interns from WashU each year and tried to recruit more. From my experience, WashU students are far better than an average engineer at Microsoft.
I have tons of classmates/labmates working at other top companies (Google, Facebook, Dropbox, Box, Uber, Amazon, Two Sigma, etc.). You name it.
I think WashU students are very smart and have solid background. However, interviewing is a game that requires a lot of practice. I feel the professors didn’t teach us that. And spayurpet is correct. You also need to be proactive in networking and applying too. Just apply to 20 top companies, I guarantee you will receive at least 3 offers if you are an average WashU student.
Thanks for the input @heavyrain2408 .
WRT size, from cappex, there were 40 BS degrees, 29 MS degrees, and 6 PhD in CS. So this is definitely a very small fraction of the total undergrad populating at WashU. Though in absolute numbers, it’s bigger than some of the other CS departments in schools that DD applied to (e.g. Case Western and Rose Hulman).
Thanks everyone for the responses. Glad to hear the job prospects are so strong!