6 ms·

It's funny, because it seems to me that a lot of the talent coming out of UW CSE isn't going to make it into the valley in any meaningful way. UW CSE is still

It's funny, because it seems to me that a lot of the talent coming out of UW CSE isn't going to make it into the valley in any meaningful way. UW CSE is still entirely focused on grades. There's literally no way to include anything but grades in your admission application -- not even recommendation letters. I've talked to some of the admissions faculty, and their argument is that it's unfair to people who are totally new to computer science to deny them on the basis of a lack of prior experience. I totally disagree with this, however -- you're not going to get into a music or acting program without any prior experience, why should you get into a CS program? From what I've seen, a lot of UW graduates end up getting recruited into a big company (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Intel, etc). It's by all means a great program, but it seems like they're never going to have someone they can point to as a success like, for example, Harvard, Stanford, or MIT. I think that's the reason why their reputation is a lot more quiet. FWIW, my co-founder and I have both been rejected from UW CSE (me with an overall 3.8 GPA and several conference papers published as first author while I was still in high school).

nickbarnwell 14y ago
> It's funny, because it seems to me that a lot of the talent coming out of UW CSE isn't going to make it into the valley in any meaningful way. This, exactly, has been my sentiment since starting at UW. There are plenty of capable, intelligent people who seem to have never written code prior to starting on the CS track. On the whole, the undergraduate program seems to have a very myopic focus. CS is not Biochemistry or Particle Physics - the equipment requirement is $50 for a used Ti-83 to learn BASIC on and catch the bug. > but it seems like they're never going to have someone they can point to as a success like, for example, Harvard, Stanford, or MIT. I think that's the reason why their reputation is a lot more quiet. I think the canonical success is Jeff Dean...who went there for graduate school and was immensely successful beforehand. For what it's worth, Harvard doesn't have too many success stories either. Both Gates and Zuckerberg dropped out, and it's a school with a reputation for fostering careers more than entrepreneurship. In many ways, it's more similar to UW than UW is to Stanford.
WildUtah 14y ago
Wait. I'm confused reading the admission comments. It seems you get admitted to UW undergrad, and then after two years you apply to the CSE thing. Are you considered undeclared until then? Is there any kind of test or is it entirely based on grades in the initial weeder classes? That seems like kind of a big risk to people who want to study a specific subject and might not get admitted to it. The'd just have to switch career ambitions or start over at another college with about a one year delay for transferring. Most state schools I see admit you to a specific major before you matriculate. Then you can change fairly flexibly within your department if you have the right classes and good grades. Elite schools usually admit undeclared students and then have them choose an area of study after a year with no further admission criteria. Are the UW faculty trying to build an elite program inside a non-elite university? That's an interesting idea, but I don't think I'd want to be the guinea pig who has to suffer for it.
- seanmcdirmid 14y ago
  First, UW is already mostly an elite university; its very hard to get in these days without the means to also getting into other elite universities like Stanford or UCB. Second, if all you want to do is make it into UW CSE, it is a risk. I remember the anxiety I went through as an undergrad waiting to here about whether I was excepted into the program or not. I got in, but it was by no means certain (I had 2.9/3.2/3.8 grades for physics, mostly do to me being slow to adjust to high-pressure weed out classes). I believe most public state schools are like this, they might have a few programs that are very high-quality compared to others, and therefore have to limit supply even after they have accepted students into the general population.
  - nickbarnwell 14y ago
    > First, UW is already mostly an elite university UW had a ~58% admit rate in 2011, MIT's was 9.6%, Harvard's was 6.2%, and Stanford was 7.1%. To say "it's very hard to get in these days without the means to also getting into other elite universities" is patently false.
    - 14y ago
irollboozers 14y ago
Lol, this is why I laughed to myself when reading this article. There are tons, I mean tons, of great startups coming out of UW, but they are not coming from the CSE program. They are coming from math, physics, life sciences, and even the entrepreneurship program at the Foster b-school. All the kids who I've met making waves in the Seattle startup scene are informally trained hackers. Oh and by the way, did I mention they are all young and under 23-24, and not PhD/Master's students? This article is all good for the image of the school and Seattle, but it fails to grasp the real movement of the scene. The movers and shakers, the ones at the crest of a huge potential tsunami in Seattle, are the young people who never got the silver spoon of CS programs, and thus will never be lured away to cushy $80k jobs as entry-level coder at Amazon.
- ken 14y ago
  I think you're right about UW CSE, but I'd like to point out similar observations on a different axis. I know lots of software people in and around Seattle, and I've worked at a couple startups here. A few are "informally trained hackers", but most are formally trained -- only elsewhere (mostly Stanford, or east coast schools you've heard of). While everyone knows that UW has a good CS department, I don't think I know a single person who went there. I actually know more programmers who went to Whitman (one) than UW. I don't know where they're going: maybe they leave town, or maybe they're getting hired by big companies, or maybe I'm just hanging out in the wrong circles (quite possible).
  - seanmcdirmid 14y ago
    It used to be that most UW CSE grads went down to Intel, these days many are off to Google; I'm sure some of them even make their way to Microsoft, but its not a large program so its not like you would see many around outside some otherwise obvious places. Coolness about Whitman. Walla Walla doesn't get enough love.
  - tylermenezes 14y ago
    Most everyone I know from the CSE program who've graduated are now working for Facebook. They seem to be a major recruiter from there. They even opened a Seattle office fairly recently.
BadassFractal 14y ago
On that note, I've always been impressed by how Stanford instructors assume that their students will be founding companies in the future. It's very different from two of the other top 5 schools I've gone to, where you're told that if you succeed, one day you'll be working at Microsoft (in the olden days, not much anymore) or Facebook or some other hot uppercomer. It's somewhat demoralizing when you're taught how to write reports to upper management, always assuming that you want to be an employee (this was from a graduate program).
ttan62 14y ago
Right there with you- as a current UW student who briefly considered CSE I decided against it because the mentality (the vibe, even) of the department clashed against my startup aspirations and the learning mindset necessary for creating a startup. I was instead drawn to the Informatics program, which is less technical but provides a much better environment for entrepreneurship: we trade project management, information organization, and a web design/development focus for computer science theory and engineering. A tragic design/planning flaw of UW is that the engineering departments are on the opposite side of campus (~8 minute walk) from the business school. Collaboration is isolated and leaves little serendipitous idea exchanges that could very well develop into potent startups. I can only imagine how things might be different if UW had made the two neighbors...

nickbarnwell 14y ago

> It's funny, because it seems to me that a lot of the talent coming out of UW CSE isn't going to make it into the valley in any meaningful way. This, exactly, has been my sentiment since starting at UW. There are plenty of capable, intelligent people who seem to have never written code prior to starting on the CS track. On the whole, the undergraduate program seems to have a very myopic focus. CS is not Biochemistry or Particle Physics - the equipment requirement is $50 for a used Ti-83 to learn BASIC on and catch the bug. > but it seems like they're never going to have someone they can point to as a success like, for example, Harvard, Stanford, or MIT. I think that's the reason why their reputation is a lot more quiet. I think the canonical success is Jeff Dean...who went there for graduate school and was immensely successful beforehand. For what it's worth, Harvard doesn't have too many success stories either. Both Gates and Zuckerberg dropped out, and it's a school with a reputation for fostering careers more than entrepreneurship. In many ways, it's more similar to UW than UW is to Stanford.

WildUtah 14y ago

Wait. I'm confused reading the admission comments. It seems you get admitted to UW undergrad, and then after two years you apply to the CSE thing. Are you considered undeclared until then? Is there any kind of test or is it entirely based on grades in the initial weeder classes? That seems like kind of a big risk to people who want to study a specific subject and might not get admitted to it. The'd just have to switch career ambitions or start over at another college with about a one year delay for transferring. Most state schools I see admit you to a specific major before you matriculate. Then you can change fairly flexibly within your department if you have the right classes and good grades. Elite schools usually admit undeclared students and then have them choose an area of study after a year with no further admission criteria. Are the UW faculty trying to build an elite program inside a non-elite university? That's an interesting idea, but I don't think I'd want to be the guinea pig who has to suffer for it.

seanmcdirmid 14y ago
First, UW is already mostly an elite university; its very hard to get in these days without the means to also getting into other elite universities like Stanford or UCB. Second, if all you want to do is make it into UW CSE, it is a risk. I remember the anxiety I went through as an undergrad waiting to here about whether I was excepted into the program or not. I got in, but it was by no means certain (I had 2.9/3.2/3.8 grades for physics, mostly do to me being slow to adjust to high-pressure weed out classes). I believe most public state schools are like this, they might have a few programs that are very high-quality compared to others, and therefore have to limit supply even after they have accepted students into the general population.
- nickbarnwell 14y ago
  > First, UW is already mostly an elite university UW had a ~58% admit rate in 2011, MIT's was 9.6%, Harvard's was 6.2%, and Stanford was 7.1%. To say "it's very hard to get in these days without the means to also getting into other elite universities" is patently false.
  - 14y ago

irollboozers 14y ago

Lol, this is why I laughed to myself when reading this article. There are tons, I mean tons, of great startups coming out of UW, but they are not coming from the CSE program. They are coming from math, physics, life sciences, and even the entrepreneurship program at the Foster b-school. All the kids who I've met making waves in the Seattle startup scene are informally trained hackers. Oh and by the way, did I mention they are all young and under 23-24, and not PhD/Master's students? This article is all good for the image of the school and Seattle, but it fails to grasp the real movement of the scene. The movers and shakers, the ones at the crest of a huge potential tsunami in Seattle, are the young people who never got the silver spoon of CS programs, and thus will never be lured away to cushy $80k jobs as entry-level coder at Amazon.

ken 14y ago
I think you're right about UW CSE, but I'd like to point out similar observations on a different axis. I know lots of software people in and around Seattle, and I've worked at a couple startups here. A few are "informally trained hackers", but most are formally trained -- only elsewhere (mostly Stanford, or east coast schools you've heard of). While everyone knows that UW has a good CS department, I don't think I know a single person who went there. I actually know more programmers who went to Whitman (one) than UW. I don't know where they're going: maybe they leave town, or maybe they're getting hired by big companies, or maybe I'm just hanging out in the wrong circles (quite possible).
- seanmcdirmid 14y ago
  It used to be that most UW CSE grads went down to Intel, these days many are off to Google; I'm sure some of them even make their way to Microsoft, but its not a large program so its not like you would see many around outside some otherwise obvious places. Coolness about Whitman. Walla Walla doesn't get enough love.
- tylermenezes 14y ago
  Most everyone I know from the CSE program who've graduated are now working for Facebook. They seem to be a major recruiter from there. They even opened a Seattle office fairly recently.

BadassFractal 14y ago

On that note, I've always been impressed by how Stanford instructors assume that their students will be founding companies in the future. It's very different from two of the other top 5 schools I've gone to, where you're told that if you succeed, one day you'll be working at Microsoft (in the olden days, not much anymore) or Facebook or some other hot uppercomer. It's somewhat demoralizing when you're taught how to write reports to upper management, always assuming that you want to be an employee (this was from a graduate program).

ttan62 14y ago

Right there with you- as a current UW student who briefly considered CSE I decided against it because the mentality (the vibe, even) of the department clashed against my startup aspirations and the learning mindset necessary for creating a startup. I was instead drawn to the Informatics program, which is less technical but provides a much better environment for entrepreneurship: we trade project management, information organization, and a web design/development focus for computer science theory and engineering. A tragic design/planning flaw of UW is that the engineering departments are on the opposite side of campus (~8 minute walk) from the business school. Collaboration is isolated and leaves little serendipitous idea exchanges that could very well develop into potent startups. I can only imagine how things might be different if UW had made the two neighbors...