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Stanford MSCS

Program Overview

The best of the best -- the only program with no drawbacks. Unbeatable location (California sunshine and ocean), prestigious school name, top CS ranking, right next to Meta and Nvidia (a 10-minute drive). If you intern at Meta or Nvidia over the summer, you don't even need to find separate housing (just stay in your existing dorm). Job outcomes are also incredible -- almost every classmate I know has gotten an Nvidia interview. If you want to transfer to a PhD, you need to reapply. Course quality is excellent: CS229 Deep Learning Systems, CS231 Deep Learning for Computer Vision, CS224N (NLP) are all household names that virtually every CS student has taken. You can also take some leisure courses like horseback riding, archery, or Japanese, and live a balanced life. Dorm conditions are unbeatable.

Admission Preferences & Representative Data Points

Requires a target school background. For mainland China undergrads, that means Tsinghua, Peking, and the C5 (top 5 Chinese universities). For Canadian applicants, top 2 schools plus strong candidates from other schools. For US undergrads, top 30 + strong engineering schools + strong liberal arts colleges. Overall, almost everyone has a high GPA (3.9+). Very few mainland China undergrads are admitted -- the vast majority are US undergrads. A significant portion of students have research experience with published output, and some have worked in industry for several years before returning to school.

  1. Tsinghua CS undergrad, GPA top 5% (female), Citadel SWE intern
  2. Tsinghua CS undergrad, GPA 3.9, Stanford UGVR summer research, three strong research recommendation letters
  3. UW CS undergrad, GPA 3.99, Meta intern
  4. CMU CS+Design major (female), two years of research experience
  5. UCB CS undergrad, GPA 4.0, Nvidia intern
  6. Caltech CS undergrad, three years of full-time work experience at Microsoft
  7. UIUC ECE undergrad, multiple startup experiences
  8. Harvard CS+Physics undergrad, GPA 3.96, two Amazon internships
  9. Peking University Geology undergrad, transferred to UIUC CS, Dean's List, applied to Stanford part-time MSCS after three years of work and was admitted
  10. UofT ECE undergrad, GPA 3.9+, AI minor, one year Intel internship, one year MLE internship at a Canadian research institute
  11. UTD CS undergrad, GPA 4.0, 8 months RA at home institution, PayPal SDE intern
  12. IIT CS undergrad (female), GPA top 5, three-month RA at the University of Tokyo
  13. Columbia CS undergrad, GPA 3.9+, RA at Caltech, two years of RA experience at Columbia
  14. Zhejiang University ECE undergrad, GPA 3.97, three-month internship at ByteDance
  15. Tsinghua Engineering undergrad, GPA 3.83, one year full-time work experience at ByteDance
  16. Rice CS undergrad, GPA 4.0
  17. UofT Math+CS undergrad, GPA 4.0, two years of research intern experience at Vector Institute
  18. UCB CS+Economics undergrad, GPA 4.0, six-month internship at ByteDance, ten-month research internship at Tencent, three-month internship at Goldman Sachs in New York
  19. IIT EE undergrad, GPA 9.8/10, CS minor, one and a half years of RA experience, four-month internship

TA/RA Opportunities

TA: There are a large number of CS TA positions (e.g., CS224 has 24 TAs). Being a TA covers tuition and pays a salary ($10k/quarter) -- very generous.

For international students, you need to pass an English test to get a TA position. Every Stanford student I know (across CS, EE, and ICME) has been able to secure a TA or RA position.

Job Outcomes & Data Points

Almost everyone lands an offer. FAANG+ and Bay Area startups can basically absorb all MSCS students. You can pass the resume screening at essentially every company. I know several people who landed offers even without prior internships. Some students prefer to start their own companies or go into quantitative research -- those are outliers.

  1. UW CS undergrad, landed Citadel SWE intern
  2. UCB CS undergrad, landed Google DeepMind
  3. UCB CS undergrad, Alibaba intern, landed BBG as new grad
  4. HKUST CS undergrad, Microsoft and Meta internships, landed BBG as new grad
  5. Stanford CS undergrad, Point72 and Nvidia internships, landed Meta
  6. Harvard CS+Physics undergrad, landed Google
  7. NTU undergrad, one year Microsoft internship, landed Bay Area AI startup intern in San Jose
  8. UTD CS undergrad, GPA 4.0, 8 months RA at home institution, PayPal SDE intern during undergrad, landed SF MLE as new grad
  9. IIT CS undergrad (female), short-term internship in India, landed Nvidia SWE intern and successfully converted to full-time, went to do Gen AI as new grad
  10. Columbia CS undergrad, small company internship experience, landed Scale AI MLE as new grad
  11. Tsinghua Engineering undergrad, one year full-time work experience at ByteDance, landed Meta SWE intern and successfully converted to full-time (also received Bloomberg offer)
  12. Rice CS undergrad, QD internship in Texas, landed Meta SWE intern and converted to full-time
  13. UofT Math+CS undergrad, two years of research experience, landed Tesla MLE
  14. UCB CS+Economics undergrad, long-term internships at ByteDance, Tencent, and Goldman Sachs in New York during undergrad, landed Nvidia Research intern
  15. IIT EE undergrad, CS minor, four-month internship, landed Nvidia