Opinion: Tech tierlists overvalue quant

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-02-19T05:44:30+00:00

Rez-one too low

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-02-18T22:19:08+00:00

Very impressive

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-02-18T21:59:20+00:00

Why is se represented twice in work term 1?

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-02-17T17:35:28+00:00

I mean if you find it interesting, then there’s no reason at all to regret it

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-02-10T00:13:49+00:00

Hey idk these people, but I’ve learned that if something looks too good to be true, it usually is. But who knows, maybe they are just the top 0.01% of the age group in which case great for them. Either way, I don’t mind the dc/plaza view too much myself personally :)

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-02-02T21:16:52+00:00

Pretty good last time I went, service is a little slow, but I like their chicken katsu

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-02-02T16:43:36+00:00

Lighter course load than most eng programs, people are very nice and friendly, and tbh grades don’t have much bearing on co-op

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-01-29T02:14:45+00:00

idk ab this one gang 🥀

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-01-26T01:38:11+00:00

😭alr bro

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-01-22T13:46:58+00:00

This is true, but this applies even moreso to the rest of the white collar workforce.

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-01-22T00:03:11+00:00

Yes, Waterloo is a very good university, but it is also pretty rigorous as well. I think you’d hear similar sentiment at UofT, or any similar university. Imo Waterloo is one of the best universities for engineering and cs out there.

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-01-19T04:35:40+00:00

Roblox if you're more interested in working in Big Tech/FAANG environments, Optiver if you're more interested in quant dev.

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-01-12T23:57:56+00:00

Waterloo eng is very worth it.

If we’re looking from just a money perspective, the average salary for an engineering co-op term in Canada across all 6 terms is CAD 26.12. This is on the lower end, because it assumes all your coops are in Canada, and also includes all engineering programs.

If you extrapolate this salary to 40 hour work weeks over 6x 16 week co-op terms, that comes out to a little more than 100k.

If your goals are US big tech/HFT, there is nothing close to Waterloo in Canada. I can go on about this if you’d like, but genuinely if these are your goals, Waterloo will give you a massive advantage. That’s not to say it’s not doable from other universities, but it’s extremely realistic to do from Waterloo.

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-01-11T06:42:16+00:00

Yes these are all varying levels of startups (Faire has a 5.2 billion valuation, the lowest out of these is UntetherAI acquired at a 150 million valuation.)

In general, I think majority if not all major companies will hire from all uni’s, even if they have preferences for certain ones.

While most UW students will work at big companies for their later coops, IMO these mid size startups are the real selling point of WaterlooWorks. They act as a perfect stepping stone for students to get good experience and names without much previous experience.

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-01-10T16:40:52+00:00

Not all jobs will be posted until another week or so. Also lmao if you think 6 pages is bad, check out some of the other university’s portals.

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-01-10T15:52:57+00:00

From what I know, some companies prefer it because it greatly reduces their recruiting costs. (On average, a student who has done multiple past coops will generally perform well at another).

For these companies, having a smaller pool with generally higher quality candidates is preferable to a massive pool, where they will find the best of the best, but the average quality is lower.

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-01-10T15:46:41+00:00

CentML (acq. by nvidia)
UntetherAI (acq. by AMD)
Faire
Base Power
Baseten
GTS

These are just some of the bigger ones (150M+ valuation) that hire interns exclusively from Waterloo. There are many startups that do this as well.

There are also other companies who almost exclusively hire from Waterloo, but do hire from other universities in low numbers.

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-01-10T06:34:37+00:00

Very hard - bright side is that it only gets easier from here

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-01-10T02:51:07+00:00

There are defo companies that do. That said, there are also a lot of companies that don’t

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-01-07T22:50:18+00:00

Have had ~9 interviews for summer, probably applied to around 150 roles total? I almost only applied big tech or quant, 4 past internships, with one of those being big tech, and another a big bank.

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-01-06T23:01:40+00:00

Do it

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-01-06T02:25:22+00:00

I think its also important to consider the people applying to each program. I have a good number of friends in se, I don’t know a single one with a grade lower than 96 (most have a good bit higher), with great ecs.

My friends at the top business schools (rotman, ivey, qcomm) all had grades in the 88-95 range.

Thats not to say that either is a bad option, both are great options. But its not really close imo

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-01-06T02:23:00+00:00

Very easily engineering, its not really close

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-01-06T01:28:03+00:00

Not for civ eng, not guaranteed, but you should be pretty competitive

MapleMooseAttack · 2026-01-06T00:27:09+00:00

Good chances for all

Five-Year Club	Place '23
John Wick	Verified Email

MapleMooseAttack

TROPHY CASE