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CMU MSIN

Program Overview

Flagship career-oriented program under the INI school. You can piece together a course schedule nearly identical to CMU MSCS, making it essentially the ceiling for mainland China undergrads applying to US CS master's programs for job placement. The program is hardcore with in-depth course projects, and past cohorts have had excellent employment outcomes (see details below). If you decide to attend, you'll be required to take CMU 15213 (CSAPP) over the summer. This course is a prerequisite for many other courses. However, you can skip it over the summer and take it after arriving in Pittsburgh. If you feel your foundation is strong enough or you took CSAPP during undergrad, you can even skip it entirely -- CMU doesn't strictly enforce prerequisites for graduate students. Basically every CS course a CS student could want (ML, Storage, ACC...) is available. If you plan to take the distributed systems/OS/storage trio, this program only has two more easy courses than MSCS (business and security), making it essentially a mini-MSCS.

Representative Admission Data Points

The program values essays highly. There's no traditional SOP -- instead there are several short essays. It's recommended to write about systems, networking, and competitive programming (XCPC) topics.

  1. UESTC CS undergrad, GPA top 5%, ICPC Gold Medal
  2. JLU Software Engineering undergrad, GPA 3.8, one small company internship
  3. Nankai Business major, career change to CS with a CS double major, CS major GPA 94+
  4. SJTU Software Engineering undergrad, GPA top 1, multiple big-name internships
  5. Indian undergrad, GPA 9.33/10, 5 years full-time at Cisco
  6. UCSD Math + CS undergrad, GPA 3.905
  7. IIT CS undergrad, had GSoC internship, 2 years full-time at Oracle
  8. Tongji CS undergrad, GPA 91.3, had ASML internship
  9. UWaterloo CS undergrad, GPA 95
  10. HUST CS undergrad, GPA 3.97/4
  11. ZJU CS undergrad, GPA 3.95, had Alibaba internship

Career changers are welcome -- there's a data point of a medical student (5-year clinical medicine undergrad) who completed CS prerequisites and was admitted to MSIN.

Intern Job Search Outcomes

Based on data points observed around me, HR doesn't seem to care much about which school within CMU you're in, nor can they distinguish between CMU's various programs -- as long as you're from CMU, they assume you study CS. After asking friends, the 25 summer INI landing rate is roughly 2/3. Some people who initially didn't land offers eventually did after Amazon started sending out interviews. Companies like Snowflake/Databricks specifically recruit from CMU -- if you're in INI and have taken DB (15445), they'll collect resumes and schedule interviews (at least they did for the 24 Fall cohort).

2024 summer (23 Fall enrollment) job search outcomes -- that year was the most brutal for job hunting with many companies not hiring at all, but the intern data was still decent, with Amazon leading in offers.

  1. UESTC undergrad, had Xiaomi and China Telecom internships, went to a California small company SDE intern
  2. Indian undergrad, GPA 9.33/10, 5 years full-time at Cisco India, later went to Cisco California for internship
  3. Shenzhen University CS undergrad, interned at Tencent for 4 months, TikTok full-time for 9 months, landed Meta SDE intern, new grad returned to TikTok
  4. Tongji CS undergrad, had ASML internship, landed Snowflake
  5. UESTC CS undergrad, 7-month Microsoft internship, landed Databricks and returned
  6. UWaterloo CS undergrad, had eBay co-op and Canadian small company co-op, landed NVIDIA and returned
  7. HUST CS undergrad, 6-month Lenovo internship, 5-month Alibaba internship, went to Apple MLE intern, new grad went to Databricks
  8. Soochow University CS undergrad, had small company DB internship, landed Amazon Data Engineer intern
  9. ZJU CS undergrad, GPA 3.95, had Alibaba internship, landed Apple SDE intern

New Grad Job Search Outcomes

Even for the class of 2024 during that brutal job market, new grad outcomes were solid. On one hand, CMU CS's reputation is recognized nationwide, and on the other hand, admitted students are capable enough. The percentage of those who found jobs is 91%. Many landed at top companies, such as Apple, Oracle, TikTok, and Adobe. For 25 new grads, many INI and SCS graduates landed at Databricks and Snowflake.

  1. UESTC CS undergrad, 10-month Microsoft internship, 8-month Amazon internship, landed Google

PhD Pathway

The PhD pathway is also strong, with admits to Columbia PhD, CMU PhD, and Yale PhD.