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Stanford ICME

Program Overview​

Has very high math background requirements. If you took a lot of DS courses during undergrad, or if you majored in DS, you should consider applying to the ICME DS track. It's very flexible -- you can go into quant or fall back on SDE. ICME has four tracks: General, Data Science, Imaging Science, and MCF. Admission difficulty: MCF > General > Data Science > Imaging Science

Admission Threshold & Data Points​

You almost certainly need to be from a target school. Domestically (China), that means Tsinghua, Peking, and C5 (mainland China undergrad enrollment in previous years has been essentially just 1 person -- for mainland China applicants, the difficulty of getting into ICME may be comparable to SSS-tier programs). In the US, you need to be at least at the UCSD level or above. Schools that typically produce more admits include HYPSM + Caltech, plus UC schools, CMU, UIUC, etc. In Europe, it's Oxbridge + Ecole Polytechnique. In Canada, it's UWaterloo and UofT. There are scattered admits from other schools, but they need to be exceptionally strong in other areas (very strong recommendation letters or good connections).

Class sizes differ by track: Roughly MCF 10, General 20, Data Science 20, Imaging Science 0-5. Overall, there's a preference for students with solid math backgrounds.

The DS track is suitable for career changers to CS and students with ML/AI backgrounds.

2024 Fall admission stats: PhD admits: 10

Master admits: ~50 (fairly stable year to year)

Previous data points:

  1. Columbia DS undergrad (GPA 3.9), Google intern
  2. Princeton Math undergrad
  3. Ecole Polytechnique Class of 2022, ranked 1st in Mathematics
  4. UCB DS+Math undergrad
  5. University of Stuttgart undergrad, GPA 1.3/1.0 (equivalent to US GPA 3.9+)
  6. UCI Math + Quantitative Economics undergrad, GPA 3.9
  7. UWaterloo Pure Math + Stat + MathFin triple major + CS minor undergrad, GPA 3.95+
  8. UWaterloo Stat + FARM undergrad, GPA 3.95+
  9. Tsinghua undergrad, Outstanding Graduate
  10. UIUC Math + Stat + CS undergrad
  11. UIUC CS undergrad
  12. CMU Math undergrad, GPA 3.8+
  13. CMU Computational Finance undergrad, 4 YOE trader at NYC investment bank / small hedge fund
  14. RUC (Renmin University of China) undergrad, GPA 3.9+

Job Outcomes​

Everyone I know has done very well. A small portion go into the Quant Finance Industry (generally PhDs): Citadel, Jane Street, Jump Trading, ArrowStreet, Vanguard, Squarepoint, etc., plus various sell-side firms. The majority go into the Tech Industry as SDE/DS/MLE/AS/RS at companies like Google, Facebook, NVIDIA, Snowflake, Netflix, Amazon, TikTok, etc., plus some unicorn startups. A small number go to Research Labs near the Bay Area, though after Trump took office, Chinese nationals now need a green card to do so.

RA & PhD Transfer​

Before 2022, transferring from Stanford ICME to PhD was friendly, and Stanford also had a dedicated RA research program where the school would match you with an advisor. Professors like Fei-Fei Li and Diyi Yang were among the available mentors, though whether you could match with them depended on ability and luck. Back then, quite a few people transferred to PhD. However, after 2022 you need to reapply for the PhD, though ICME students do have an advantage.

Oh, and a decent number (50%) of TA/RA positions come with tuition waiver, plus a salary of $12-14k per quarter. Very nice. For TA positions, you need a high grade in that course. For RA positions, if you have a strong background or good connections, they're not too hard to find, but you might have to work for free for a few months first.