UW EE PMP
Program Strengths
This program is quite good. It carries the UW brand and is located in Seattle, very close to Microsoft, and it's also an MS target school. Plus, it allows 3 co-ops -- key point. The academic workload is very light. You can choose an all-software curriculum and have plenty of time for LeetCode grinding and job hunting. Last year's job landing rate was about 20% according to unofficial statistics.
Although ranked B- on Open CS, I think its job-hunting friendliness can be rated A+. First, friends in this program have basically felt no difference between EE and CS for job hunting. Many EE PMP students can get interviews from Meta and Amazon. Also, EE PMP allows co-ops -- in 2023, Amazon recruited nearly 10% of UW EE PMP students. Furthermore, UW EE PMP co-ops don't delay graduation (for example, if you enroll in Fall 2024, you can intern from August to November 2025 without delaying graduation). It's extremely suited for job hunting. UW HCI is harder to get into but also offers a six-month internship, requiring only 10 on-campus credits. And EE PMP can also take CS courses. If you have a CS undergrad background and don't want to take hardware courses, you can put together an all-software schedule, then grind LeetCode and build projects on your own time.
UW also has a co-op policy: as long as CPT time doesn't exceed one year, you can do full-time internships in semesters beyond summer. You can do 3 co-op terms, then graduate in the final summer semester. Co-ops can also be done in China -- co-op internships in China don't require CPT. In 2024, a senior student successfully did two consecutive semesters (June-December) of co-op internships in China and returned to the US without issues.
Useful Resources
Job Outcomes & Data Points
25 Summer: Amazon offers in bulk -- dozens of Amazon intern offers.
Software Courses
Data Structures and Algorithms for ECE Applications (Slaughter)
Deep Learning for Big Visual Data (Hwang)
Computer Vision: Deep and Classical Methods (Birchfield)
Large Language Models: From Transformers to ChatGPT (Mohan)
Tiny Machine Learning for Ultra Low-Power Edge Computing (TinyML) (Sahabandu)
PMP Recognition Concerns
Regarding concerns many people have about PMP, evening programs, and whether the degree would be flagged on resumes for domestic (China) recognition, I believe this is absolutely a non-issue. I've been through many interviews. For domestic interviews, they basically only look at the school's brand name and the candidate's technical ability. They barely look at the major -- as long as it's a related field (CS, SE, EE, ECE), HR doesn't care whether your major is CS or EE. Nobody cares about your major.
Admission Difficulty
The admission difficulty is moderate -- GPA 3.5+ is fairly safe. I personally think this program is an excellent safety school option. You could call it a comprehensive upgrade over USC CS32 (CS32 is too expensive, and in the Bay Area you'd be competing with Stanford, UC Berkeley, etc.).
If your GPA isn't particularly high, consider applying to UW EE PMP. It's a great job-hunting-oriented program choice.
25 Fall threshold has clearly risen. Many applicants with high GPAs and high rankings from CS backgrounds were rejected, possibly due to being overqualified. There were even cases of CMU MSIN admits being rejected by UW EE PMP. The days of using UW EE PMP as a safety school are over. It is strongly recommended to find another safety school option.