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There was definitely special treatment for MIT grads when I was interviewing at FB/Google. At FB, all of the MIT students were split off to go to the paid sushi

There was definitely special treatment for MIT grads when I was interviewing at FB/Google. At FB, all of the MIT students were split off to go to the paid sushi restaurant on campus, while everyone else went to the general cafeteria. At Google, I was told that MIT grads generally skip the phone interview and go straight to onsite (and this was the case for my interview with them too). I'm not sure how big the difference is, but they weren't school-blind.

hga 11y ago
MIT (and even more so for CalTech, but they don't have a world class CS program) has substantial math and science requirements that are not part of the required ABET CS curriculum. Per e.g. http://www.abet.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/C001-15-16-CAC-Criteria-03-10-15.pdf http://www.abet.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/C001-15-16-CA... One year of science and mathematics: 1. Mathematics: At least one half year that must include discrete mathematics. The additional mathematics might consist of courses in areas such as calculus, linear algebra, numerical methods, probability, statistics, number theory, geometry, or symbolic logic. [CS] 2. Science: A science component that develops an understanding of the scientific method and provides students with an opportunity to experience this mode of inquiry in courses for science or engineering majors that provide some exposure to laboratory work. [CS] The General Institute Requirements for all MIT undergrads include 1 term of the calculus beyond the AP Calculus BC sequence, 1 term each of calculus based mechanics and E&M, and 1 term each of biology and wet or solid state chemistry. There's also a laboratory requirement that's satisfied by the new EECS introductory courses that replaced 6.001-3 (SICP plus EE fundamentals, now it's robotics and communications). So a MIT (and CalTech) graduate is guaranteed to have more scientific and mathematical maturity than the generic CS degree holder from another school. It's also a degree that grew from its EE department like UC Berkeley and unlike (I think) CMU and Stanford, so there's some required low level EE learning (and last time I checked most in the department get a degree with lots of both). It's all done at a very fast pace as well, about 13 weeks of learning per se for a term (vs. e.g. the 2-3 terms that seems to be common for covering the AP Calculus sequence), so being able to learn hard stuff fast is an implicit requirement, and officially stated as a virtue, seeing as how quickly so much in so many fields including most especially computers changes so quickly. NOTE TO HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS: if you want to attend MIT, don't despair. In addition to a new model financial aid system which disdains loans, the raw odds if MIT judges you can do the work are 1 in 3. Best thing you can do besides the usual things is to demonstrate in your application that you can do projects. E.g. do a significant block of programming (FOSS nowadays) work and do a good jobs of writing it up, as I did, in addition to a serious biology project at a NSSF Summer Science Training Program that would have been published if not for later realized reagent contamination. Disclaimer: I was a MIT undergraduate pursuing a science degree, and interacted a lot with the EECS department (e.g. I lead the infrastructure part of their forced move from Multics to UNIX(TM) when MIT-MULTICS was shutting down due to Honeywell Brain Damage(TM)), and still have ties to the department.
- humanrebar 11y ago
  You say all those things like other CS degrees skip university-level mathematics and the scientific method. Even if they did (they don't), individuals can certainly take courses, minors, or majors to add those qualifications. In other words, why fast pass MIT grads but not applicants with MS degrees and published papers? Maybe Google has some metrics to back up their decision, but I'm skeptical that they can explain why the numbers are what they are.
  - pc86 11y ago
    I think it's much more likely that Google has data to back up this decision as opposed to doing it because MIT looks neat on a resume.
    - hga 11y ago
      Indeed, see my comment on how the MIT admissions office looks for evidence the applicant can do projects. If you graduate from MIT without gaining such an ability if you didn't start with it, well, you've wasted your time there unless, say, you're a pure math type (even the theoretical physics types have to do Junior Lab, which I gather is a requirement of the science equivalent of ABET).
    - humanrebar 11y ago
      You misunderstand me. I'll grant that Google has data to back it up. I also think not being able to explain the underlying mechanism (IQ? curriculum? selectivity? exposure to Atlantic seafood?) leads to shallow thinking, false negatives, and possibly false positives. I can't think of much about MIT that can't be replicated by a dedicated individual. And I think the industry as a whole agrees with that. There seems to be consensus that where a degree is from matters much less as industry experience increases.
  - hga 11y ago
    You say all those things like other CS degrees skip university-level mathematics and the scientific method. I said nothing of the sort. I said they only require 1 university level math course in addition to discrete math, and a vague in this short overview science requirement, let's call it 1 course with a lab component (but it could be more). All MIT undergraduates are required to do a lot more university level math and science, more than twice as much of the former given the usual pace of other universities, and four times as much as the latter. It's not optional, and FB/Google/whatever doesn't have to do any investigation of their transcript, just confirm they graduated from MIT (or CalTech, but it's 1/4th the size and science, not engineering oriented, I doubt they see many applicants from it and those should get true red carpet treatment). And that's without getting into intangible benefits; as a physics major mentioned to me in my first week, "everyone" who attends MIT learns how to do electrical wiring. No, it's hardly required, but any vaguely curious person will pick up a lot of science and engineering just by rubbing shoulders with 4,000+ other STEM undergraduates for 4 years. Compare to Zuckerberg's Harvard: back when I attended MIT, the math requirement for graduating from Harvard was proving you could do algebra, and I now find its CS program is not ABET accredited. That said, it's math heavy, requiring a linear algebra course which I assume goes beyond the linear algebra taught in MIT's required 2nd calculus course (see more here http://handbook.fas.harvard.edu/book/computer-science http://handbook.fas.harvard.edu/book/computer-science). Strange, but they are Harvard (and ABET has some ideas about how to teach CS that the MIT EECS department does not agree with at all, like being able to teach design per se), they were a pioneering computer institution prior to fully electronic computers, and students can fulfill some of their requirements by taking MIT EECS courses. (Let it be said I'm boosting MIT too much, if I wanted to do pure CS, CMU would be my first choice, Stanford probably 2nd, not sure about EE derived UC Berkeley (which has in addition has all those state school disadvantages, and nowadays many fewer of the in-state ones for residents), and MIT could easily be my last choice after the department panicked after the dot.com crash cratered enrollment for the first time ever.) As for "applicants with MS degrees and published papers", presumably they wouldn't be in the same interview track as gaggles of new graduates.
akavi 11y ago
When interviewing at Google, I also skipped the phone interview and went straight onsite because of where my degree was from. Or at least, that's what the recruiter said. Google claims to have a lot of data backing up its hiring decisions, so maybe they have internal stats showing phone screens aren't a useful further signal for certain alma maters?

hga 11y ago

MIT (and even more so for CalTech, but they don't have a world class CS program) has substantial math and science requirements that are not part of the required ABET CS curriculum. Per e.g. http://www.abet.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/C001-15-16-CAC-Criteria-03-10-15.pdf http://www.abet.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/C001-15-16-CA... One year of science and mathematics: 1. Mathematics: At least one half year that must include discrete mathematics. The additional mathematics might consist of courses in areas such as calculus, linear algebra, numerical methods, probability, statistics, number theory, geometry, or symbolic logic. [CS] 2. Science: A science component that develops an understanding of the scientific method and provides students with an opportunity to experience this mode of inquiry in courses for science or engineering majors that provide some exposure to laboratory work. [CS] The General Institute Requirements for all MIT undergrads include 1 term of the calculus beyond the AP Calculus BC sequence, 1 term each of calculus based mechanics and E&M, and 1 term each of biology and wet or solid state chemistry. There's also a laboratory requirement that's satisfied by the new EECS introductory courses that replaced 6.001-3 (SICP plus EE fundamentals, now it's robotics and communications). So a MIT (and CalTech) graduate is guaranteed to have more scientific and mathematical maturity than the generic CS degree holder from another school. It's also a degree that grew from its EE department like UC Berkeley and unlike (I think) CMU and Stanford, so there's some required low level EE learning (and last time I checked most in the department get a degree with lots of both). It's all done at a very fast pace as well, about 13 weeks of learning per se for a term (vs. e.g. the 2-3 terms that seems to be common for covering the AP Calculus sequence), so being able to learn hard stuff fast is an implicit requirement, and officially stated as a virtue, seeing as how quickly so much in so many fields including most especially computers changes so quickly. NOTE TO HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS: if you want to attend MIT, don't despair. In addition to a new model financial aid system which disdains loans, the raw odds if MIT judges you can do the work are 1 in 3. Best thing you can do besides the usual things is to demonstrate in your application that you can do projects. E.g. do a significant block of programming (FOSS nowadays) work and do a good jobs of writing it up, as I did, in addition to a serious biology project at a NSSF Summer Science Training Program that would have been published if not for later realized reagent contamination. Disclaimer: I was a MIT undergraduate pursuing a science degree, and interacted a lot with the EECS department (e.g. I lead the infrastructure part of their forced move from Multics to UNIX(TM) when MIT-MULTICS was shutting down due to Honeywell Brain Damage(TM)), and still have ties to the department.

humanrebar 11y ago
You say all those things like other CS degrees skip university-level mathematics and the scientific method. Even if they did (they don't), individuals can certainly take courses, minors, or majors to add those qualifications. In other words, why fast pass MIT grads but not applicants with MS degrees and published papers? Maybe Google has some metrics to back up their decision, but I'm skeptical that they can explain why the numbers are what they are.
- pc86 11y ago
  I think it's much more likely that Google has data to back up this decision as opposed to doing it because MIT looks neat on a resume.
  - hga 11y ago
    Indeed, see my comment on how the MIT admissions office looks for evidence the applicant can do projects. If you graduate from MIT without gaining such an ability if you didn't start with it, well, you've wasted your time there unless, say, you're a pure math type (even the theoretical physics types have to do Junior Lab, which I gather is a requirement of the science equivalent of ABET).
  - humanrebar 11y ago
    You misunderstand me. I'll grant that Google has data to back it up. I also think not being able to explain the underlying mechanism (IQ? curriculum? selectivity? exposure to Atlantic seafood?) leads to shallow thinking, false negatives, and possibly false positives. I can't think of much about MIT that can't be replicated by a dedicated individual. And I think the industry as a whole agrees with that. There seems to be consensus that where a degree is from matters much less as industry experience increases.
- hga 11y ago
  You say all those things like other CS degrees skip university-level mathematics and the scientific method. I said nothing of the sort. I said they only require 1 university level math course in addition to discrete math, and a vague in this short overview science requirement, let's call it 1 course with a lab component (but it could be more). All MIT undergraduates are required to do a lot more university level math and science, more than twice as much of the former given the usual pace of other universities, and four times as much as the latter. It's not optional, and FB/Google/whatever doesn't have to do any investigation of their transcript, just confirm they graduated from MIT (or CalTech, but it's 1/4th the size and science, not engineering oriented, I doubt they see many applicants from it and those should get true red carpet treatment). And that's without getting into intangible benefits; as a physics major mentioned to me in my first week, "everyone" who attends MIT learns how to do electrical wiring. No, it's hardly required, but any vaguely curious person will pick up a lot of science and engineering just by rubbing shoulders with 4,000+ other STEM undergraduates for 4 years. Compare to Zuckerberg's Harvard: back when I attended MIT, the math requirement for graduating from Harvard was proving you could do algebra, and I now find its CS program is not ABET accredited. That said, it's math heavy, requiring a linear algebra course which I assume goes beyond the linear algebra taught in MIT's required 2nd calculus course (see more here http://handbook.fas.harvard.edu/book/computer-science http://handbook.fas.harvard.edu/book/computer-science). Strange, but they are Harvard (and ABET has some ideas about how to teach CS that the MIT EECS department does not agree with at all, like being able to teach design per se), they were a pioneering computer institution prior to fully electronic computers, and students can fulfill some of their requirements by taking MIT EECS courses. (Let it be said I'm boosting MIT too much, if I wanted to do pure CS, CMU would be my first choice, Stanford probably 2nd, not sure about EE derived UC Berkeley (which has in addition has all those state school disadvantages, and nowadays many fewer of the in-state ones for residents), and MIT could easily be my last choice after the department panicked after the dot.com crash cratered enrollment for the first time ever.) As for "applicants with MS degrees and published papers", presumably they wouldn't be in the same interview track as gaggles of new graduates.

akavi 11y ago

When interviewing at Google, I also skipped the phone interview and went straight onsite because of where my degree was from. Or at least, that's what the recruiter said. Google claims to have a lot of data backing up its hiring decisions, so maybe they have internal stats showing phone screens aren't a useful further signal for certain alma maters?