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Upenn CIS

Program Overview​

This is essentially a CS program. The Master's requires completing 10 courses. Common graduation timelines include:

Two-year track (3-3-2-2) One-and-a-half-year track (3-3-4) Students can choose a course track or thesis track, offering flexibility for both job hunting and PhD applications. For tuition, if full-time, each semester is about $26,000, but it may be lower in the second year if you take fewer courses.

The Ivy League title is very appealing. The admission threshold for students from mainland China can be elevated to SS tier, while for US undergrads it's around S tier. However, job placement truly can't compare to Stanford or CMU SCS level programs.

Admission Threshold & Data Points​

There are joint programs with some liberal arts colleges that allow internal admission. 23Fall application data: admission rate < 5%

Admitted student profile: US undergrads make up 90%+ GPA: Generally 3.95+ Top 15 US undergrads can go as low as 3.9

  1. Indian student, GPA 9.22/10, multiple publications, two years full-time experience
  2. UK undergrad from KCL, PhD dropout, one publication
  3. Top 50 US undergrad, GPA 3.87
  4. Xi'an Jiaotong University Industrial Design undergrad, GPA 90
  5. Haverford College CS+Economics undergrad, GPA 3.88

Job Outcomes & Data Points​

Upenn CIS is nicknamed "mini-MCDS" -- the workload is very MCDS-like, except the job outcomes aren't quite as good as MCDS.

Overall, job hunting is decent, mainly depending on the job market conditions.

  1. Indian student, 2 years Cisco full-time experience, landed IBM full-time
  2. Top 50 US undergrad, no internship, landed Bloomberg
  3. Upenn Robotics undergrad, had NASA intern and small company intern, landed Apple intern
  4. Haverford College, GPA 3.9, had consulting intern, landed NYC consulting firm
  5. Upenn CS undergrad, landed Amazon and got return intern offer
  6. Indian student, multiple long-term small company internships, landed Bay Area small company
  7. Upenn CS undergrad, had two Microsoft internships, successfully returned
  8. Upenn CS undergrad, landed Meta internship and successfully converted to full-time
  9. Wharton Statistics undergrad, landed Meta new grad
  10. Indian undergrad, 3 years Cisco full-time, intern landed Apple, new grad landed Google
  11. Indian undergrad, had Goldman Sachs internship, landed Google intern and converted to full-time
  12. Indian undergrad, no internship, landed Microsoft new grad

Course Experience​

Fast-paced, heavy workload, no easy courses. The workload is twice that of undergrad. Especially for systems courses, nearly every team member spends days at the library, and working on projects until midnight is the norm. For example, CIS 5050 Software System requires building a distributed email system similar to Gmail, and you spend the entire semester debugging concurrency, synchronization, and load balancing issues. CIS 5530 Networked System requires implementing Layer 3 routing protocol + Layer 7 distributed search engine, and every debugging session is a battle with the OS. CIS 5550 Internet and Web System is one of Penn's hardest courses -- it simulates Google Search Engine. This goes beyond a class project; it's truly hardcore and resume-worthy.