‘coz neither is a low key public flagship 
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My sons’ good friend made it through to the final round at Citadel (I don’t think he ended up with an offer but unsure because he was on the fence about the whole thing). He’s a CS major at UMass with zero connections. Edited to add: I’m not suggesting that it isn’t a big advantage to come from a name/target school, just that it’s not actually impossible from elsewhere.
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ha ha…well, I certainly don’t think of them as low key.
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Citadel talks to a ton of people and from what I’ve seen they cast a much wider net than their peers.
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Yes, and I think I said as much.
But to get from the first interview to an offer at one of these places one still has to perform better not only than almost everyone at their own school, but than almost everyone at places like MIT and Oxford, which is why the overall stats look the way they do.
Any “tail end” hiring strategy is going to have what y’all are observing. Take a look at the composition of some of the top symphony orchestras in the world. No, you don’t HAVE to graduate from a world-famous conservatory, and there will be an outlier (or two or three) who did not. World class talent but not trained at a world-famous conservatory.
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I think kids from lesser known schools that are on the border are cut more slack than kids from MIT
S23 is currently applying for jobs (computer engineering, graduates next May) and also looking for some affordable grad school options. He asked me if I spent a whole bunch of time applying for scholarships for graduate school…I told him back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, you could get a fully funded master’s without a ton of difficulty- without applying for scholarships- even in non-stem fields. If any of you lovely CC peeps have suggestions for CompEng grad programs/entry level jobs, feel free to share. I think he’s bit overwhelmed with all of the apps, on top of wrapping up a summer-long research project and starting classes today.
I think an MS at Princeton is likely to be funded. Very few others are, these days.
Entry level jobs need a lot of elbow grease in terms of applying. Getting referrals from recent young alumni that he knows etc.
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My son simply applied to Jane Street (per recommendation here) and they sent him their test. He didn’t complete it. Had he completed it and they liked what he wrote, could he have gotten into the consideration pipeline? Don’t know but he was a MechE from a non prestigious SEC school.
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What’s he looking for. My kids both used indeed successfully. My engineer only applied for rotationals - but there are jobs and jobs listed. Many here eschew the method but it worked for mine and some others - and some on here confirmed to those downplaying it, it’s exactly where their kids found jobs too.
So there’s that, the career center, professors, alums and more - but companies that list on handshake at his school likely list at many others.
It may not be easy finding jobs but they do exist and when we get the 26 grad info from colleges, I’m sure we’ll see high placement rates.
For me, you need to be disciplined - 30 minutes a day, 3 applications - but first you have to decide what you want - what type of job or company, where, etc. and then filter for those…you can even set up daily feeds. Many of the jobs he’ll get on indeed will show up on handshake within a week or two later.
Surprised to hear this - unlike many others in the field, JS normally proceeds straight to phone interview if one clears the human resume screen, at least in QT/QR/SWE tracks. Perhaps as a MechE he applied for some different position. In any case, if they selected him for the next step, that means they were willing to seriously consider him.
They would not have sent him a case if they were not going to look at a good answer. It is not an OA that is free to send and grade.
We’ll never know - as he didn’t even do the test. He doesn’t like NY and wasn’t interested in the role but i threw it his way. He liked the sound of big $$.
Some ideas:
Can he get help through the school’s career center/Ask current/previous professors for contacts at local companies or other centers of influence who can lead to a job/Reach out to employers where he had previous internships/Reach out to alumni on LinkedIn for a coffee chat/Attend an industry conference and network/ Join a school sponsored computer engineering club and attend events
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Thanks for this info- I know he’s been checking on Indeed and applying to multiple jobs per day. His friends who graduated this past May had success with the ‘apply to a zillion places and one will finally stick’ strategy. I wish I could tell you exactly what he’s looking for, he is doing research in machine learning / hardware systems at Brown this summer. He gets very excited when he tells me about it, but honestly most of what he’s saying goes over my head 
I think he’d like to find a job in hardware design (?) but he’d be happy to get his foot in the door anywhere. Appreciate it!
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Sometimes it is also useful to do a bottoms up job search — ie make a list of companies that are in this space, and reach out to people in these companies directly (eg AMD, Nvidia) There are also a lot of startups in this space (eg Ampere). There are also finance companies that would be interested in his skill set — eg IMC, Citadel, Hardware Engineer (FPGA/ASIC), New York :: Jane Street . etc to do FPGA work. The list of potential places that would be interested in his skill set is very long, and he should consider reaching out proactively. Even many of the traditional FAANGs hire in this space.
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I haven’t heard of this but I do know of instances where a freshman/sophomore intern gets a lot more slack than a junior/senior intern in terms of return offers.
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It’s the other way round. Freshman and sophomores don’t get internships unless they are stellar because firms don’t have the bandwidth to deal with them. To be careful I am talking about getting an internship as a sophomore in the industry you mention, not about a sophomore intern getting a return offer for the next summer. Incidentally, at some of these firms, if they make you an offer after a sophomore internship, it is a full time offer.
Also, interestingly, at some of the consulting companies (mbb) a few years ago, the firms were giving a full time offer at the same time they gave an internship offer. I thought this was bizarre.
Separately, mit kids are held to a higher standard because people know they are well prepped. At least at firms that attract a lot of mit interns without much effort. Of course if an mit kid applies to a firm that he normally doesn’t apply to, then he may get some benefit of doubt.
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Evidence (beyond vibes, beyond anecdata) for this?
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