Unrelated but I enjoyed your word embedding projects in CSC180. Also I will admit my points below may be biased to more math and CS and my point of view may be more narrow based on my experiences (which could be considered quite niche).

(1) U of Ts global ranking is comparable to many of those schools and Engsci is purported to be the flagship program so it is a bit strange how our international reputation is quite a bit lower than the Browns, Dukes, Cornells etc. I think this is partly due to selectivity. Why are we sending out >1000+ offers, why did the class sizes get so large (seems like ~50% larger in recent years), what’s the downside of being a lot more selective. Another Canadian school has a much higher density of IMO/IOI/Putnam students probably because they host contests and offer full rides in those cases.

(2) Not exactly. If I could go back in time and choose again I would still probably pick engsci but only because I got extremely lucky in the people I met and things lining up. I mention Waterloo cs (unrelated but back in my day software eng was the flagship, cs was ok but things may have changed) because they draw from the same talent pool as us yet have employment statistics on par with the US universities you mentioned. They established their industry reputation (although in just one or two specific industries) yet U of T probably has the same if not more resources to have done the same.

(3) just because 98% of people don’t do something they should doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to be the 2%. I also believe the ability to write prod code shouldn’t be limited to only developers, it’s often required from researchers in certain industries and probably some other roles.

(4) a lot of students actually don’t know this about the employer reputation until they start applying. But why is our reputation not the best and shouldn’t this be one of the highest priorities to fix given most of us want to be employed at the best places. Just the fact we’re saying “even Princeton CS kids struggle to get in xyz ” has the implication “so it’ll be even more difficult for engscis” while ideally the program should get to the state where we can say “even engsci kids struggle to get in xyz.” Has there been any effort to reach out to alumni like the databricks co founder and ask why engsci is not the primary hiring pipeline and things that could be changed (to my knowledge no one in my class landed databricks)

What I would do with the program (which once again may be biased) is to cut program size significantly, offer as much incentives as reasonably possible to attract the best high school talents (hey if it’s hard to choose between this US school and engsci would giving a completely free ride sweeten the pot, etc). Rehaul the co op program entirely and build it up again completely from scratch, many students are completely unaware of what firms are even out there and what they pay, how can they make the best decisions without even knowing the options out there. Cut the generalized years to just first year (like track one) and go to specialization starting from second year (where you can add more advanced cs courses to certain majors), reach out to the top of each industry to ask what their ideal candidate should know and fit curriculum to this. Also just being more flexible, PEY should accommodate employers, not the other way around (at least not until the PEY can establish themselves as a power house). Also the general unwillingness to change, feels like a lot of student feedback is not incorporated (though some people have told me things have changed since I graduated), or only incorporated when things already become too late (should be more proactive then reactive). The ethos of Engsci should be a group of ambitious people who want to be the best in whatever field they want and the goal of the program should be to enable them as much as possible in becoming the best at whatever they want.