Research Opportunities for Undergrads at WashU

Don_Quixote
Fri, 23 Apr 2010 11:11:13 +0000

I’m a Comp Sci student, not CoE, but here are my thoughts:

the iPod/iPad app development class has gotten really good reviews from students - I’ll probably be taking it this fall actually. At the moment, the wait-list is very short and your son would have a good shot of getting in; there are 3 prereq classes, but if your S has already written apps in Objective-C he could probably just register anyway.

I don’t think he’ll have any trouble finding neat things to do despite the size of the department. There are other really popular classes in the department (Rapid Prototyping, for example, is taught by the same professor as the app-development class) and undergraduates are entirely free to take 500 and 600-level classes if they choose to (most CSE/CoE majors do, I think).

As far as internships and research opportunities go, I know that the CSE department has just recently started a summer REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) program, which basically matches students up with professors whose interests match their own. That’s what I’ll be doing this summer, although I don’t know if the CoE department has a similar program.

Also, the washU chapter of ACM (computer-related student group) is very active and regularly goes to programming contests, gets the word out on job opportunities, and hosts recruiters for companies like Google, Microsoft, and other companies that have an interest in CSE/CoE students. Other than my REU, I applied for an internship with Microsoft and the gist I got was that they weren’t generally interested in anyone but rising seniors and seniors (although I do know a sophomore who made it in)… Smaller companies are probably less up-tight about that sort of thing, though