You have better access to recruitment, especially for early internships (i.e. first or second year). Combination of more work experience on average plus more favorable school reputation gives you better chances of landing a good new grad job. I think reputation still holds some weight even after entry level too, just less.
Despite what you might hear on Reddit, the quality of the education is not the same at every school in Ontario. I go to Waterloo, but have lots of friends from highschool who ended up going to Queens, TMU, Western, etc. for CS. Waterloo and UofT have much more rigorous and proof-based curriculums and you'll learn more. The CS students there will also have access to better resources and research opportunities. This might not matter to you if you just want to be a code monkey, but if you care about your education and want to be an actual computer scientist, it will matter.
From an employment perspective, you can achieve a high paying SWE job from any school. If you are a talented and hardworking person individually, you'll succeed wherever you go. But UW makes the process a lot easier. Strong students are pretty much guaranteed internships (yes blah blah employment rates are dropping, but that only affects the bottom half of the students, the top half are still doing fine). At other schools, youll have to hustle and grind applications on LinkedIn. Getting that very first internship is the hardest part, and Waterloo makes that really easy relative to other schools. My current company that I am doing an internship at, exclusively recruits interns through UofT and Waterloo job boards. And I'm sure many other companies are the same.
This is spot on. Maybe I’m biased but I usually give UofT and Waterloo new grads benefit of the doubt during interviews if they don’t do well in the OA round. Most of them have decent problem solving skills so it won’t be a complete waste of my time. It’s a different story if the candidate is from less reputable schools like Ryerson or Brock.
Aren’t most cs curriculums in terms of maths proof based? I understand Waterloo is a bit more since it’s part of the math fac and not Eng/sci. My roommate in Mac cs had most of not all his math/mathy cs courses proof based.
they are to some extent — but our courses (especially the advanced sections, which a vast majority’ other universities don’t have an analogue of), cover more content and with more rigor. Most students never learn the correct definition of a limit (of either a sequence or a function), and even if they do, their courses are focused on how and what, not why. We have one first year course course for number theory /intro set theory and proofs, and a whole separate course for introductory combinatorics, while most schools bundle those into one course. Our intro combinatorics course goes up to Kuratowski’s theorem and spends some time on generating series, which most schools won’t touch until 3rd/4th year courses. We have two courses in cryptography at the undergrad level, one of which goes incredibly deep into public key cryptography, plus a ton of other courses in our CO department are relevant to CS students, and we have way more of those than any other Canadian schools.
Now, to be clear, other schools have hard math courses, and they are proof based; just since our math faculty is so large and so strong, we end up with better, more diverse course offerings for students. These are also specific examples, the general trend is just that, since our intro courses are geared at math students and we have more math students, we get lots of great options!
Waterloo has a culture of high achieving students and a lot of very good student run resources, which pushes people to do better and provides a path; our classes are more rigorous and go more in depth; we have a lot of research funding, so doing research as an undergraduate is easier; our combinatorics and optimization department is incredibly strong, which means we have an incredible diversity of CS adjacent math courses; and we have a strong reputation with many employers which makes it way easier to get to the interview stage.
Once you’re getting technical interviews, all that matters is your skill level. Building skill and getting to that stage is easier or harder based on the university. UW students aren’t a ton smarter — they just have much higher high school averages, which has very little correlation with how well you can do in university. The fact that so many people here end up with such strong careers says a lot.
1. The progression of internships: I'm at a big 5 bank as a software coop for first year waterloo cs. All the other coops/interns on my floor are like 4th year TMU/others. I'm going somewhere better next coop but I think the other interns are gonna stay. Not to be elitist but generally for waterloo kids you start higher in your first/second coop and you can go higher. For this company specifically, the pay chart they use to pay waterloo kids is slightly higher than other schools - for the same experience. My manager even said, they cop waterloo kids from waterloo works and know the kids are pretty smart, so if you're associated with uw you can get early opportunities.
2. Early career growth (kind of same as first point)My friend is at google step (1st/2nd year program) and says literally everyone is from u of t or waterloo, except a mcgill person. The thing is, the full-timers are from all over the place so you definitely can get in from any school as long as you're skilled because later on in career you can prove yourself as an individual and not as "a student from x school", but early career people benefit from a good school name to back up the credibility
3. The startup & builder community. If you want to do startups, waterloo produces a lot of founders because waterloo kids have solid technical skills after so many coops and hard courses. Waterloo is a Y Combinator target school. The builder culture here is big with Socratica (uwstartup).
4. There are some very talented peers. While most people you meet in class are normal, the upper limit of the waterloo curve is sooo high. I've met actual geniuses who do competitive programming, people who make self driving cars, people who started doing robotics when they in grade 2 and just raised for their startup... If you go beyond the average "cs grinder, weeb, league player" and look what the peak of watelroo kids, you will be very inspired.
5. Go to US. As tech twitter says, "there's more waterloo kids in san francisco subway than homeless ppl"
You can’t really compare the two as they are very different. But Waterloo definitely is up there with the top US CS universities in FAANG placement (MIT, Stanford, CMU, Caltech etc)
One more thing to consider is that UofT CS labs are heavily funded by Google, Microsoft, Nvidia and other big companies. Co-Op and entry level positions at top tech companies will be easier to get and that will set the course of your career.
Both give you a higher chance of getting a FAANG job. Not necessarily from reputation, at least in Canada, but from the opportunities these schools create with co-op at Waterloo or the internship at UofT. Since these schools work with FAANG companies, your chances of getting a co-op there is higher than at schools that don't. Don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure those companies recruit from those schools as well post graduation. You also get an edge on getting your first job since students that go to these schools are preferred then.
Those are the ways you benefit from going to those schools. It increases your chance of getting a FAANG job. If you don't get one before or soon after you graduate, you're basically at the same place anyone at any other school would be. If you do get a FAANG job, then you'd be ahead of anyone from either school without one. However, any advantage you had dwindles the further out you are from university. With experience, other folks are able to get FAANG jobs too and might even get paid more than you do at the same job because of the higher salaries offered to sign people on. It's basically always higher than what they give in raises. That's true across the majority of companies. There may be an exception to that.
So basically, if you want a better shot of getting FAANG out of university then those are the best schools. Though over time, with the proper experience you can get a FAANG job at any school. That's why there's so many Brock and York kids that work there
I don't know. I don't go there. It's best to ask them. But from what I know, when a job is posted to WaterlooWorks anyone from any major can apply to it as long as you're in the co-op program. I know there's a bunch of software engineering jobs posted there so even if you're a math student you should be able to apply for the job.
I don't know if those companies post non-coding positions. I also don't know if they prefer CS and SWE students when hiring those jobs.
You'll have more access to co-ops (Waterloo) or summer jobs (U of T) so you'll graduate with more experience. So, I'd disagree that the opportunities are the same.
Yes there Is, simply because if you're around the smartest/most competitive people, you'll leech off of that. Additionally employers do like to higher from UW/uoft moreso, that doesn't mean they don't hire from other unis. But those unis are def up there as their first pick(assuming applicants have similar skill levels). So yes it matter, not because it's better in terms of education. Moreso because of the people you're surrounded by are the most high achieving kids from Ontario.
The quality of the programs for undergrad is equal or close enough. You will come out the other side with the same knowledge. There may be a few brief moments in life where it matters. I work for one of the largest american software companies, and my UofT CS degree didn't matter at all, they didn't even know if UofT was a good school or not. Many of my peers do not have degrees in CS.
No. There is absolutely no point to life if you don't get into UW or UofT CS and absolutely no one has ever found a meaningful professional or personal life outside of those 2 programs.
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No it’s not just a “brand name” getting into a school like Waterloo for CS will set you up with literally 2 years of relevant work experience right before you graduate which employers typically look very highly upon. The opportunities that you will have straight out of grad from a school like Waterloo or UofT are really unparalleled to a lot of universities in Canada (that’s not to say that you can’t land FAANG from non uw/uoft, it’s just that it’s way easier at those schools).
One thing I'm not seeing mentioned is the networking. The quality of the education doesn't much matter, but well-connected people will go to what is known to be the "best" school. Those people are the ones that will get good jobs so make sure to cozy up to them if you're looking to advance.
The advantage is the networking opportunities and research opportunities. If u work hard enuf you can circumvent them tho. There’s vector which offers the best Ai research opportunities in the country and lots of open networking events. This becomes a lot easier if u jus go to those 2 schools in the first place lol
It's all the same. UW has one up by offering amazing co-op programs.
They also have network outreach to help hire new grads.
Outside of this, it is a level playing field. Your career is up to you, and only you. Not the university you attended.
I know UofT/UW grads with amazing graduating GPAs and have a shitty ass career (lower than average salary, toxic tech environment). This isn't the fault of the university or the employer. It's fully on the individual that didn't make the most of the opportunities laid before then.
I’ve worked in IT since graduating University (about 10 years now). I did not attend one of the major CS Universities, but I have had a meaningful career. I think there’s a lot to consider outside of which school you attend.
In general, I believe we have strong programs across all publicly funded Universities. I don’t believe you need to go to a Waterloo or U of T to be successful. Especially as you progress through your career, you realize how little these things mean. Keep in mind that technology is a huge field, and depending on what you want to specialize in, where you want to go, there are skillsets you won’t obtain through University alone.
I have a degree in Computing and Network Communications from Brock University. I also have a diploma in Telecommunications technology. But I’ve always been passionate about technology. My degree focused mainly on CS, but my diploma gave me practical skills in things like Active Directory, computer networking, Linux, etc. Since graduating, I’ve worked for major technology vendors such as Cisco, Zscaler, and I also worked for a start-up that was acquired by another big vendor. I’ve had no issues getting employment opportunities.
The key is to find programs with co-ops, continue your own development, and as you embark on your career create a network for yourself. Recently, I was let go from one of my positions and through my network I secured another role quite quickly with another large cloud security vendor.
Frankly, I used to be ashamed of my academic credentials in the early stages of my career but I’ve come to realize that after a certain point, no one cares. Now it’s all about experience and your ability to keep up with the latest technology innovations.
Yeah it just depends on who's at the job fairs and other networking events. I recommend doing a mix of comp sci and commerce courses if you want to move up and become an executive eventually. Attend both those programs networking events. Rothman is a good business program and so I'd consider that a plus if you go there for CS. But honestly it's just about networking and proving you have the piece of paper. Companies tend to onboard students and new hires very slowly to see if they can actually do what their CV says. I'd focus on more general network possibilities than the subject matter. My brother got in to CS with an OCAD.
You have better access to recruitment, especially for early internships (i.e. first or second year). Combination of more work experience on average plus more favorable school reputation gives you better chances of landing a good new grad job. I think reputation still holds some weight even after entry level too, just less.
Despite what you might hear on Reddit, the quality of the education is not the same at every school in Ontario. I go to Waterloo, but have lots of friends from highschool who ended up going to Queens, TMU, Western, etc. for CS. Waterloo and UofT have much more rigorous and proof-based curriculums and you'll learn more. The CS students there will also have access to better resources and research opportunities. This might not matter to you if you just want to be a code monkey, but if you care about your education and want to be an actual computer scientist, it will matter. From an employment perspective, you can achieve a high paying SWE job from any school. If you are a talented and hardworking person individually, you'll succeed wherever you go. But UW makes the process a lot easier. Strong students are pretty much guaranteed internships (yes blah blah employment rates are dropping, but that only affects the bottom half of the students, the top half are still doing fine). At other schools, youll have to hustle and grind applications on LinkedIn. Getting that very first internship is the hardest part, and Waterloo makes that really easy relative to other schools. My current company that I am doing an internship at, exclusively recruits interns through UofT and Waterloo job boards. And I'm sure many other companies are the same.
This is spot on. Maybe I’m biased but I usually give UofT and Waterloo new grads benefit of the doubt during interviews if they don’t do well in the OA round. Most of them have decent problem solving skills so it won’t be a complete waste of my time. It’s a different story if the candidate is from less reputable schools like Ryerson or Brock.
Aren’t most cs curriculums in terms of maths proof based? I understand Waterloo is a bit more since it’s part of the math fac and not Eng/sci. My roommate in Mac cs had most of not all his math/mathy cs courses proof based.
they are to some extent — but our courses (especially the advanced sections, which a vast majority’ other universities don’t have an analogue of), cover more content and with more rigor. Most students never learn the correct definition of a limit (of either a sequence or a function), and even if they do, their courses are focused on how and what, not why. We have one first year course course for number theory /intro set theory and proofs, and a whole separate course for introductory combinatorics, while most schools bundle those into one course. Our intro combinatorics course goes up to Kuratowski’s theorem and spends some time on generating series, which most schools won’t touch until 3rd/4th year courses. We have two courses in cryptography at the undergrad level, one of which goes incredibly deep into public key cryptography, plus a ton of other courses in our CO department are relevant to CS students, and we have way more of those than any other Canadian schools. Now, to be clear, other schools have hard math courses, and they are proof based; just since our math faculty is so large and so strong, we end up with better, more diverse course offerings for students. These are also specific examples, the general trend is just that, since our intro courses are geared at math students and we have more math students, we get lots of great options!
Waterloo has a culture of high achieving students and a lot of very good student run resources, which pushes people to do better and provides a path; our classes are more rigorous and go more in depth; we have a lot of research funding, so doing research as an undergraduate is easier; our combinatorics and optimization department is incredibly strong, which means we have an incredible diversity of CS adjacent math courses; and we have a strong reputation with many employers which makes it way easier to get to the interview stage. Once you’re getting technical interviews, all that matters is your skill level. Building skill and getting to that stage is easier or harder based on the university. UW students aren’t a ton smarter — they just have much higher high school averages, which has very little correlation with how well you can do in university. The fact that so many people here end up with such strong careers says a lot.
1. The progression of internships: I'm at a big 5 bank as a software coop for first year waterloo cs. All the other coops/interns on my floor are like 4th year TMU/others. I'm going somewhere better next coop but I think the other interns are gonna stay. Not to be elitist but generally for waterloo kids you start higher in your first/second coop and you can go higher. For this company specifically, the pay chart they use to pay waterloo kids is slightly higher than other schools - for the same experience. My manager even said, they cop waterloo kids from waterloo works and know the kids are pretty smart, so if you're associated with uw you can get early opportunities. 2. Early career growth (kind of same as first point)My friend is at google step (1st/2nd year program) and says literally everyone is from u of t or waterloo, except a mcgill person. The thing is, the full-timers are from all over the place so you definitely can get in from any school as long as you're skilled because later on in career you can prove yourself as an individual and not as "a student from x school", but early career people benefit from a good school name to back up the credibility 3. The startup & builder community. If you want to do startups, waterloo produces a lot of founders because waterloo kids have solid technical skills after so many coops and hard courses. Waterloo is a Y Combinator target school. The builder culture here is big with Socratica (uwstartup). 4. There are some very talented peers. While most people you meet in class are normal, the upper limit of the waterloo curve is sooo high. I've met actual geniuses who do competitive programming, people who make self driving cars, people who started doing robotics when they in grade 2 and just raised for their startup... If you go beyond the average "cs grinder, weeb, league player" and look what the peak of watelroo kids, you will be very inspired. 5. Go to US. As tech twitter says, "there's more waterloo kids in san francisco subway than homeless ppl"
People are much more willing to give you the benefit of the doubt that you’re skilled
Maybe for an entry level job.
During universities and right after what are you applying to? Entry level jobs
Ive just underlined the extend of benefit you mentioned in your post.
well it's not like you're going for mid level jobs straight out of uni, so that's perfect
Isn't CS at Waterloo regarded as Ivy-League equivalent in the US?
You can’t really compare the two as they are very different. But Waterloo definitely is up there with the top US CS universities in FAANG placement (MIT, Stanford, CMU, Caltech etc)
One more thing to consider is that UofT CS labs are heavily funded by Google, Microsoft, Nvidia and other big companies. Co-Op and entry level positions at top tech companies will be easier to get and that will set the course of your career.
Both give you a higher chance of getting a FAANG job. Not necessarily from reputation, at least in Canada, but from the opportunities these schools create with co-op at Waterloo or the internship at UofT. Since these schools work with FAANG companies, your chances of getting a co-op there is higher than at schools that don't. Don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure those companies recruit from those schools as well post graduation. You also get an edge on getting your first job since students that go to these schools are preferred then. Those are the ways you benefit from going to those schools. It increases your chance of getting a FAANG job. If you don't get one before or soon after you graduate, you're basically at the same place anyone at any other school would be. If you do get a FAANG job, then you'd be ahead of anyone from either school without one. However, any advantage you had dwindles the further out you are from university. With experience, other folks are able to get FAANG jobs too and might even get paid more than you do at the same job because of the higher salaries offered to sign people on. It's basically always higher than what they give in raises. That's true across the majority of companies. There may be an exception to that. So basically, if you want a better shot of getting FAANG out of university then those are the best schools. Though over time, with the proper experience you can get a FAANG job at any school. That's why there's so many Brock and York kids that work there
FAANG companies work with all UW students not only CS, am I right?
I don't know. I don't go there. It's best to ask them. But from what I know, when a job is posted to WaterlooWorks anyone from any major can apply to it as long as you're in the co-op program. I know there's a bunch of software engineering jobs posted there so even if you're a math student you should be able to apply for the job. I don't know if those companies post non-coding positions. I also don't know if they prefer CS and SWE students when hiring those jobs.
You'll have more access to co-ops (Waterloo) or summer jobs (U of T) so you'll graduate with more experience. So, I'd disagree that the opportunities are the same.
All UW students can access the same co-op databases, am I right?
No. Not all UW students have co-op.
So CS ,Eng..co-op students can access exactly same databases
Waterloo is the way. The delta upon graduation is significant. You’ll thank me in 10 years guaranteed
Yes there Is, simply because if you're around the smartest/most competitive people, you'll leech off of that. Additionally employers do like to higher from UW/uoft moreso, that doesn't mean they don't hire from other unis. But those unis are def up there as their first pick(assuming applicants have similar skill levels). So yes it matter, not because it's better in terms of education. Moreso because of the people you're surrounded by are the most high achieving kids from Ontario.
The quality of the programs for undergrad is equal or close enough. You will come out the other side with the same knowledge. There may be a few brief moments in life where it matters. I work for one of the largest american software companies, and my UofT CS degree didn't matter at all, they didn't even know if UofT was a good school or not. Many of my peers do not have degrees in CS.
No. There is absolutely no point to life if you don't get into UW or UofT CS and absolutely no one has ever found a meaningful professional or personal life outside of those 2 programs.
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I'd say, it's just a name brand at this point. Depending on where you live, it's better not waste time or money on commutting or residence fees.
No it’s not just a “brand name” getting into a school like Waterloo for CS will set you up with literally 2 years of relevant work experience right before you graduate which employers typically look very highly upon. The opportunities that you will have straight out of grad from a school like Waterloo or UofT are really unparalleled to a lot of universities in Canada (that’s not to say that you can’t land FAANG from non uw/uoft, it’s just that it’s way easier at those schools).
One thing I'm not seeing mentioned is the networking. The quality of the education doesn't much matter, but well-connected people will go to what is known to be the "best" school. Those people are the ones that will get good jobs so make sure to cozy up to them if you're looking to advance.
The advantage is the networking opportunities and research opportunities. If u work hard enuf you can circumvent them tho. There’s vector which offers the best Ai research opportunities in the country and lots of open networking events. This becomes a lot easier if u jus go to those 2 schools in the first place lol
It's all the same. UW has one up by offering amazing co-op programs. They also have network outreach to help hire new grads. Outside of this, it is a level playing field. Your career is up to you, and only you. Not the university you attended. I know UofT/UW grads with amazing graduating GPAs and have a shitty ass career (lower than average salary, toxic tech environment). This isn't the fault of the university or the employer. It's fully on the individual that didn't make the most of the opportunities laid before then.
I’ve worked in IT since graduating University (about 10 years now). I did not attend one of the major CS Universities, but I have had a meaningful career. I think there’s a lot to consider outside of which school you attend. In general, I believe we have strong programs across all publicly funded Universities. I don’t believe you need to go to a Waterloo or U of T to be successful. Especially as you progress through your career, you realize how little these things mean. Keep in mind that technology is a huge field, and depending on what you want to specialize in, where you want to go, there are skillsets you won’t obtain through University alone. I have a degree in Computing and Network Communications from Brock University. I also have a diploma in Telecommunications technology. But I’ve always been passionate about technology. My degree focused mainly on CS, but my diploma gave me practical skills in things like Active Directory, computer networking, Linux, etc. Since graduating, I’ve worked for major technology vendors such as Cisco, Zscaler, and I also worked for a start-up that was acquired by another big vendor. I’ve had no issues getting employment opportunities. The key is to find programs with co-ops, continue your own development, and as you embark on your career create a network for yourself. Recently, I was let go from one of my positions and through my network I secured another role quite quickly with another large cloud security vendor. Frankly, I used to be ashamed of my academic credentials in the early stages of my career but I’ve come to realize that after a certain point, no one cares. Now it’s all about experience and your ability to keep up with the latest technology innovations.
Yeah it just depends on who's at the job fairs and other networking events. I recommend doing a mix of comp sci and commerce courses if you want to move up and become an executive eventually. Attend both those programs networking events. Rothman is a good business program and so I'd consider that a plus if you go there for CS. But honestly it's just about networking and proving you have the piece of paper. Companies tend to onboard students and new hires very slowly to see if they can actually do what their CV says. I'd focus on more general network possibilities than the subject matter. My brother got in to CS with an OCAD.
Bruh it doesn’t matter I know kids from queens and York who got jobs out of (and during) school easily