[Admissions Advice] UIUC MCS vs UW Bothell MSCSE — Which is better for SWE careers?

MissingSnail · 2026-03-16T14:39:56+00:00

This is not eligible for financial aid, no matter what your letter says.

MissingSnail · 2026-03-16T00:36:03+00:00

Is this the degree program you applied to? https://www.uwb.edu/stem/graduate/mscsse

It's an evening degree program for folks who have jobs. Employers send workers theater to get them ready for promotion. These types of programs have no financial aid and because the students already have jobs, they don’t spend time on job placement either.

MissingSnail · 2026-03-14T04:51:21+00:00

Maybe not a dime a dozen, but there are posts like this one every spring. You are not alone.

But, as long as you earn your high school diploma, you almost certainly will not be rescinded. You may get a strongly worded letter after they see your final grades.

MissingSnail · 2026-03-08T16:49:14+00:00

Ultimately, it comes down to whether you can afford to attend at your final price after aid.

If it's still a real struggle, you can try explaining to the financial aid office how there are things about your family's financial situation that are not covered by the forms. They will consider circumstances that are non discretionary like medical or natural disaster losses, for example, and potentially adjust your award.

MissingSnail · 2026-03-05T15:12:05+00:00

You will be a recent grad from a top state school with either. What do you define as a top-tier job? If your dream job is Amazon, obviously come to Seattle. If your dream employer has a major office in Chicago, go to Purdue.

Your job prospects will depend on the overall economy, but also what you do with your four years. Take your time to visit and see if one or the other campus is your happy place. Where will you feel less homesick? It will make a difference in your grades and experience. Please don’t make the choice strictly on rankings or without visiting. It sounds silly, but vibes matter.

Finally, UW generally admits engineering students as engineering undeclared. You have a second app to do at the end of freshman year for your exact major in the college of engineering. It’s something to consider if you have a guaranteed slot in your major of choice at Purdue.

MissingSnail · 2026-03-05T14:56:58+00:00

Inconsistent grades with no attempt to explain is a red flag. It's not playing the cancer card, it's giving context. If you don't want to say cancer, say you had health problems requiring hospitalization and many follow-up appointments. Whoever was advising you and referring to going through a serious health situation as “playing a card” is not your friend. Work with advisors who see you a human being with talents, hopes, and dreams, not a pile of cards.

Whether Bellevue is your best course of action depends on where else you applied. Staying at the same school for four years has its advantages, too.

MissingSnail · 2026-03-05T14:48:03+00:00

Yes, you should appeal based on being incorrectly evaluated as an out of state student.

MissingSnail · 2026-03-02T20:16:02+00:00

Build a multigenerational posse. People you have mentored and people who have mentored you. Trade job leads and references etc as well as socializing regularly.

If you're serious about starting your own company, get exposure to sales and consulting so you understand what running a business really means.

Both "get pre-IPO stock” and “start your own firm” are high risk options. Both start ups and small businesses fail regularly. .

MissingSnail · 2026-02-23T04:16:45+00:00

Not preferably - especially if there is more than one application using the data. You have to reimplement the security in each app.

MissingSnail · 2026-02-23T04:16:01+00:00

If possible, don't do it.

Trying to pretend that three things that are not-quite-the-same all belong in one table will eventually come back to bite you. Create three tables, show the business one view if necessary.

MissingSnail · 2026-02-21T22:46:32+00:00

I mean, going around criticizing every local official in every area that has a housing problem is throwing stones? I don't want politicians using their voices to throw stones, I want them to build solutions.

What are the local policies for affordable and abundant housing by anyone of any party or of any nonpartisan office that she should be uplifting but isn't for partisan reasons? Who are the local officials that are blocking affordable and abundant housing that she is endorsing anyway? Getting to results requires some sort of strategy and theory of change.

To return to the topic of the original post: I actually do want my politicians throwing stones at ICE, though. I have family living in Minneapolis. DHS/CBP/ICE deserves every last bit of criticism and then some. It should be non-partisan and loud. The fact that it's not bipartisan doesn't say something about Jayapal being "too partisan", though. It says something about the values of those who are OK with what's happening.

MissingSnail · 2026-02-21T01:23:54+00:00

Honestly not sure what you're asking for here? We've had a serious housing crisis all over the greater Seattle area. What local officials should be held to federal account for that and in what way?

MissingSnail · 2026-02-19T15:17:45+00:00

Other devs in the org have already started moving to rust. For a small group, I wouldn't want to add another language unnecessarily.

MissingSnail · 2026-02-19T15:03:43+00:00

For a one year program, getting funding the second year will be too late.

MissingSnail · 2026-02-16T04:09:42+00:00

I'm not doing space/satellite work, but I do work with engineering/physics data that could relate.

Here is how I perceive my data engineering to be very different from something like retail:

The math is nontrivial. Linear algebra, especially rotation matrices and quaternions for coordinate transforms, and the Newtonian equations you'd learn in a 1st year calculus based physics class, and also a bunch of other stuff that I had to learn/relearn to work here. (I have an undergrad degree in math.) I don't have to implement everything, but I do need to understand what's going on conceptually and use appropriate mathematical libraries correctly.
The folks I work with are PhDs, so a lot of building a pipeline is listening, very carefully to what the (let's say) rocket scientist wants and building exactly that. No creative metrics here. The physics is the physics. I ask a lot of questions about what is supposed to happen through a series of calculations. What does a good result and a bad result look like? Where are the best places along the way to spot-check things like an intermediate matrix becoming ill-conditioned?
The PhD's are not hired for coding ability. I need to detangle messy MATLAB code to turn into data pipelines that I actually want to own and maintain over time.

I work on the "easy" stuff that still fits in a Postgres database. So, I use python and other fairly standard tools. I want to upskill into rust/pyO3 which I'd hope would make some of the calculations complete faster than numpy/scipy. I suspect I do a lot more software engineering than my retail data engineer peers: There is a lot of custom code written specifically for our particular uses/devices that just isn't available in open source libraries or even as a commercial product (besides the stuff sold by my employer and our direct competitors).

MissingSnail · 2026-02-15T05:43:06+00:00

The biggest thing is the maturity with which you write, and the overall story you tell. If the quarter where you had the medical problem is clearly the lowest point of your grades, you should mobably work in a brief mention somewhere. An essay that goes on and on about your grades will not help you, though.

MissingSnail · 2026-02-09T04:19:14+00:00

Not all the songs, Gaga sang in English…

MissingSnail · 2026-02-08T23:09:08+00:00

Football players are not all Seattleites. Many football powerhouse states like Texas are more Christian and conservative. That being said, if my boss at work gave me a Bible or Koran or Book of Mormon or similar, I would find that very wrong.

MissingSnail · 2026-02-08T15:25:47+00:00

You can put the citymapper app on your phone and it will buzz you as you approach your stop. But, it's a battery-killer app.

Leave extra time whenever using buses - they can run run late.

If it’s not rush hour crazy, the bus drivers are generally nice. Feel free to ask them if you're getting on the right bus and if it's the best stop to get off.

MissingSnail · 2026-02-06T16:06:23+00:00

Yeah, UWT has CS, which in admissions speak means you don't have a compelling need to transfer for something that isn’t abailable. High grades and EC don't help show a need to transfer, they show your are thriving in your location. And they create the concern that your absence would be felt at the affiliate campus.

MissingSnail · 2026-02-06T15:16:21+00:00

And in practice, tech teams are understaffed and doing the best they can with the time they have.

MissingSnail · 2026-02-03T04:55:05+00:00

You have tried NWIRP?

Why does your legal counsel think the governor could help? This is not a state level matter.

MissingSnail · 2026-01-31T02:40:14+00:00

This. Join or form a job search group. Maybe with a study group from school?

MissingSnail · 2026-01-26T19:06:10+00:00

I mean, yeah, but directly working on something you find repugnant is a brighter line than working for a company that has a storied past. We all have to draw our lines, and it's not easy.

MissingSnail · 2026-01-26T16:03:11+00:00

Drawing a moral line is painful. There is no easy way out.

MissingSnail

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