CS International Student

puzzled123
Thu, 24 Dec 2015 13:50:18 +0000

CS is pretty awesome here, and is growing very fast. I don’t think picking UChicago for CS will put you at a disadvantage over students studying CS at any other school. The focus on theory at UChicago is what makes it unique. Here is why I think you should consider our CS program as an asset instead of an aspect that makes you unsure about picking Chicago:

The practical parts of computer science are easy to pick up. More importantly, they change very fast. I have been a web developer for over 10 years, and the technologies for app development have changed faster than I could have imagined. When I started, Android and iOS weren’t even around. I made by first web app using Java servlets and hosting with tomcat- this style is now well outdated, and replaced with the likes of Spring MVC and Django. With NodeJS, Bootstrap, and all the recent web app frameworks, building an app has become extremely easy. Moreover, there was a time (not long ago) when XML was the primary way to send data- none of these pretty JSON APIs that you see nowadays existed! A few years before that- mobile phones, the internet, and personal computers were not commonplace. However, the science of computing has been around for a very long time. The point is, software development will continue to change, and you don’t want your 200k investment in a college education to be wasted on studying “app development”, because what you learn will be outdated in a few years anyways. The theory that UChicago CS will teach you, on the other hand, will always be around. For example, heapsort will always run at best nlogn time- regardless of the programming language, software framework, or device you are programming for, this will always be the case. Scientists and mathematicians have rigorously proved this to be true. It is the case today and will be the case hundreds of years from now. Our intro sequence is in Haskell not because profs want to waste your time- its because it is a “lazy” language that quickly lets you focus on mastering computing fundamentals instead of learning a bunch of language technicalities. Even if you want to make a career building apps, I would highly recommend a theoretical program like that at UChicago because it will teach you to think like a computer scientist. Don’t make a huge investment of your time and money in becoming a web developer- this is something that an 8 year old who knows how to Google things can become.

To answer your questions:

1. We don’t have a very institutionalized recruiting environment. You will have to apply to jobs on your own, for the most part. However, if you are any good at all, you will get some job. And things are quite frankly really good for CS majors right now. No-name startups are paying six figures to students right out of undergrad. Just search job openings on AngelList. If you do really well, you can end up at Google or an elite startup (depending on your interests). But you should know that even if you don’t do as well as you hoped, the safety net is quite high. Almost every CS major in the market is graduating with 5-6 offers, so as long as you focus on learning as much as you can, you have nothing to worry about. (P.S. If you are worried about jobs as an international student- the startup I was working at last summer was paying somewhere between 80k-120k to a 19 year old sitting in Vietnam. The path to citizenship in the US is a pain, but a skilled CS major is employable anywhere).

2. Yes, you will. However, Honors CS is pretty hard- I would recommend trying it out. If its too hard, drop to regular asap. Both the 160’s and 150’s are really good. I would not recommend doing 120’s, however. I have friends that are new to programming doing 150’s, and they are doing just fine.

3. Like I mentioned above, once you have a mastery of computing concepts, this part is really easy to pick up. We have weekly technical coding interview workshops, hack nights, tech talks, and student groups on campus. Also, do a few of your own projects. I would start by making a personal website, and then continue by working on any other entrepreneurial pursuit. Make sure to save your repos to a github account for showcasing.

Feel free to PM me if you have any specific questions. Good luck with your application, and I hope to see you at Chicago!