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Harvard CSE

Program Overview​

Extremely flexible -- you can choose a one-year (course-only) or two-year (thesis-based) track, and MIT courses can be cross-registered. Many students take MIT CS and Sloan courses, and you can even attend MIT's Career Fair. From personal experience, even with the two-year track you don't actually have to write a thesis -- just schedule your capstone for the last semester.

The program is positioned more toward mathematics and computational science. It's not a pure CS program -- somewhat like MIT's CSE next door, but more friendly to CS undergrad applicants than MIT CSE. Every year there are mainland China CS applicants who receive offers.

One downside of the program is that there are some computational mathematics course requirements, which can be tough for pure CS students. However, the good news is that course selection is very flexible. Energetic students can take extra MIT special topics courses as well as HBS courses.

Admission Threshold & Data Points​

Target school + CS/DS/Math background + top GPA

Annual enrollment is only a few dozen, so the admission threshold is high. Basically everyone admitted is a top-GPA science/engineering student from their respective school. Most students in the program are US undergrads, with a particularly large number from UCB.

  1. Wake Forest undergrad, CS+Math, Meituan LLM intern, three years of RA experience
  2. HKUST CS+BA undergrad, GPA 4.0/4.3, UMich exchange GPA 3.838, IELTS 8.5, GRE 330
  3. Indian student, ME undergrad, three years of work experience, six publications (checked -- not from low-tier venues), two years of RA during undergrad
  4. Dartmouth CS undergrad, one year TA, three-month Capital One SDE intern
  5. NEU EE undergrad (the one in the US), three publications, one and a half years AMD SDE intern
  6. NYU Math undergrad, GPA 3.88, Amazon SWE intern
  7. Top 2 (China) CS undergrad, GPA 3.95, TOEFL 116
  8. C9 (China) CS undergrad, GPA 94+, TOEFL 107, strong research recommendation from an overseas professor
  9. UCSD DS undergrad, GPA 4.0

Job Outcomes​

Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Airbnb, Snapchat, Databricks, Nvidia. Some go to top hedge funds like Jane Street, Two Sigma, Citadel, and DE Shaw as quants. Those targeting quant roles typically take some MIT financial mathematics courses. Getting into the tech companies mentioned above is relatively easier. Getting into hedge funds is harder -- you may need to supplement your math background significantly, and undergrad pedigree matters. The classmates I know who made it to the final round at top hedge fund quant positions basically all had prior experience interviewing at such firms during undergrad in the US.

RA & PhD Transfer Opportunities​

The CSE program does allow you to do research, especially if you choose the two-year thesis track, which requires writing a thesis, so many students choose to do research with professors. Harvard's CS department itself isn't huge -- the number of professors doesn't compare to Stanford or CMU -- but many professors working in AI, ML, NLP, and numerical computing are very willing to work with students. You can also find MIT professors to do research with.

Harvard also has its own Data Science PhD, and some CSE students have transferred into that program for further study.

Life Experience​

Academic pressure is intense, especially in the first semester -- you're basically spending 7 days a week, 10 hours a day in the library. But as long as you put in enough time, getting an A / A- is quite doable. A B means you either didn't study much or bombed an exam.

Here's another perspective: if you plan to do the two-year track, you can actually take only 2-3 courses per semester and fill the rest with a placeholder course. Students doing research can also register for independent study courses. This way, the course workload is actually quite light. For students who just want to use this program as a stepping stone to work or pursue a PhD, finishing homework and reviewing for finals is usually enough to get a decent GPA. The rest of your time can be spent on job hunting / research / having fun. The overall experience is really quite free.

Harvard has an incredibly strong academic atmosphere, with resources that are practically overflowing. Beyond courses, the school hosts tons of celebrity talks, alumni events, and various dinner networking opportunities. But if you just bury yourself in homework, you might find that four months have passed and you haven't even been to downtown Boston (yes, this actually happens to people).