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CMU MSMITE

Program Overview​

The full program name is Master of Science in Mobile and IoT Engineering. It's not a CS title, but that's not a big deal since job hunting mainly depends on your personal experience and resume fit. When applying for jobs online, you can only list your major as CS anyway. MSMITE spends the first year in Pittsburgh and the second year in Silicon Valley, which is quite nice -- you get to experience two different places. Course selection is very flexible; you can go easy or take hard courses, giving you plenty of freedom to develop. You can also do a one-semester practicum, partnering with companies like NASA and Adobe, which you can put on your resume. Job outcomes are solid -- see the official report for details (the real numbers should be better than reported, because INI has this annoying policy where once you report an offer you can't change it. If you receive a better offer later, you can't switch. So some students wait until all offers are finalized before reporting). Top Employers: NVIDIA, Amazon, Apple, TikTok.

Admission Data Points​

If you apply for MSIN and don't get in, there's a chance of being redirected to MSMITE. The admission threshold should be slightly lower than MSIN.

  1. CUHK-Shenzhen CS undergrad, TikTok iOS internship
  2. Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications undergrad (likely used UCI exchange visa), six-month UCI exchange, GPA 92+, National Scholarship, Kuaishou internship
  3. SJTU-UMich joint program, SJTU GPA 3.4, UMich GPA 3.8, small company internship
  4. Mid-tier 985 undergrad, GPA 3.8, TOEFL 105, small company internship
  5. NYU CS+Economics undergrad, GPA 3.85, one year of business analytics internship in China during undergrad
  6. Chinese University of Hong Kong ME undergrad, GPA 3.93, four years of full-time work experience
  7. Nanjing University, GPA 4.54/5, exchange at Berkeley
  8. Zhejiang Sci-Tech University honors class, GPA 3.9+, rank 1, Tencent internship
  9. City University of Hong Kong EE undergrad, GPA 3.64, three-month internship in Hong Kong

Job Outcomes & Data Points​

Looking at the results across the different programs within INI, there's not much difference. After all, once you're in the US you realize that job outcomes correlate about 95% with personal effort and macroeconomic conditions. The remaining 5% comes from the school's resources and the courses you take.

Some big companies do targeted recruiting at CMU -- for example, Databricks, Snowflake, NVIDIA, and Apple. The ones I just mentioned will conduct on-site interviews and hand out interview invitations on the spot. CMU's career resources are really quite good.

Historical employment data:

MSIN = 103/109, MSIS = 46/50, MSIT-IS = 41/47, MSMITE = 45/48

  1. NYU CS+Economics undergrad, GPA 3.85, one year of business analytics internship in China during undergrad, landed Goldman Sachs SDE
  2. UCSD CS undergrad, had internships at a Swiss startup and IBM, landed Google
  3. Tongji University Software Engineering undergrad, four years of work experience at SAP, landed Bloomberg intern and converted to full-time
  4. Zhejiang Sci-Tech University honors class, GPA 3.9+, rank 1, Tencent internship, landed TikTok
  5. City University of Hong Kong EE undergrad, GPA 3.64, three-month internship in Hong Kong, landed a startup (quant dev)
  6. UMich CS undergrad, had Baidu internship, landed AWS intern
  7. CMU ECE undergrad, had Mastercard and Intel internships, landed startup new grad

Course Selection​

Starting 22 Fall, MSMITE's degree-specific core added SCS courses: Distributed Systems, Advanced Cloud Computing (ACC), Cloud Computing (CC). Taking these 3 courses no longer counts against the 24-unit electives quota, so you can use the saved credits for other SCS courses (e.g., 15445).

  1. 15213: The legendary CSAPP -- a prerequisite for almost all systems courses. Can be taken in summer or the first semester. Medium workload. The vast majority of SDE-oriented students take it; even HCI students have to take this course.
  2. 15440: Distributed Systems -- practical for job hunting. Be careful not to take the DS offered under the INI department; its teaching quality isn't as good as the SCS version.
  3. 14776: A business/management easy course. You can get an A just by attending class and doing homework. Many tasks but the actual workload isn't heavy. A balanced-workload schedule is suggested later in this guide.
  4. 15619: Cloud Computing -- a classic course. Very heavy workload. Reviews are polarized. Labs cover many technologies. Many students also complain online about spending a lot of time and effort only to end up with a 0 on the project.
  5. 18709/15719: Advanced CC -- a reduced-workload version of CC. Take ACC instead of CC during your job hunting semester to give yourself more time for LeetCode grinding and interview prep.
  6. 10714: Deep Learning Systems -- build a PyTorch implementation. Very practical course. Taking this course makes you a strong fit for NVIDIA.

Course Planning​

Chill Mode (Pure Job Hunting Version)​

25 Summer: Internship, LeetCode grinding, resume editing, projects, fun 25 Fall: 14776 (Business/Management), 14740 (Network), 15513 26 Spring: 14741 (IS), 14744 (Mobile Software), one elective 26 Fall: Two Degree Specific Core courses (e.g., 14848 - Cloud Infra)

Medium Workload - 1​

25 Summer: 15513 25 Fall: 14776 (Business/Management), 14740 (Network), 17514 (Software Engineering) 26 Spring: 14744 (Mobile Software), 14741 (IS), 15640 (DS), one mini course 26 Fall: 14848 (Cloud Infra)

Medium Workload - 2​

25 Summer: 15513 25 Fall: 14776 (Business/Management), 14740 (Network), 14741 (IS) 26 Spring: 14744 (Mobile Software), 15640 (DS), 18709 (ACC), one mini course 26 Fall: 14848 (Cloud Infrastructure)

Heavy Workload​

25 Summer: 15513 25 Fall: 14776 (Business/Management), 14741 (IS), one elective 26 Spring: 14744 (Mobile Software), 14740 (Network), 15640 (DS), 15618 (PP) 26 Fall: 15619 (Cloud Computing)