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NWU MSCS

Program Review​

Evanston has beautiful scenery, good safety, and the school is well-funded with nice facilities. Lake Michigan is gorgeous.

The program is 4 quarters / one and a half years. There are three tracks: thesis, project, and course. The thesis and project tracks require finding an advisor to write a paper or do a project. The advantage is you can extend up to two extra quarters to graduate (i.e., 6 quarters / two years). During those two extra quarters, you only need to take one placeholder course at $100 -- but overall it's still not cheap.

The downside is that tuition is very expensive, at least $76K+ total.

Admission Threshold & Data Points​

High GPA from a US undergrad is a safe bet. Joint programs may not be as convincing as a full four-year US undergrad degree. Official emails explicitly state they prefer high GPA + strong research backgrounds, with zero mention of internships. Therefore, if you want to come to NWU MSCS, doing research and getting high grades is recommended.

  1. NWU CS undergrad, GPA 3.95
  2. UCI CS undergrad, GPA 3.85, one and a half years of RA at UCI + CUHK
  3. University of Rochester CS undergrad, GPA 3.6
  4. Beijing University of Technology, Information Management undergrad, GPA 3.92

Job Outcomes​

Career services are essentially useless. Job outcomes are mediocre -- this program is actually better suited for PhD applications / transferring to a PhD.

  1. NWU CS undergrad, had Tencent internship based in Thailand and several small company internships based in Thailand, landed Amazon intern and converted to full-time
  2. University of Rochester CS undergrad, no internship, landed small company internship
  3. NYU Shanghai undergrad, had Apple China internship, landed small company internship
  4. VIT CS undergrad, had 6-month internship at an Indian small company, landed Ecrio new grad
  5. University at Buffalo CS undergrad, had Research Intern experience, landed small company SWE intern
  6. University of Miami CS undergrad, had Bosch and small company SWE intern, landed small company SWE intern
  7. University of Toronto CS undergrad, no internship, landed Fortinet Embedded Software Developer
  8. Beijing University of Technology, Information Management undergrad, had LinkedIn China PM internship, landed Amazon SDE intern