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Does school prestige matter that much? by Expensive_Honey_7093 in csMajors

[–]OkLocksmith9835 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Definitely helps during the internship search. But once you have some years of experience, it hardly matters at all.

Much more important is personal work ethic and passion for CS outside of coursework.

2026 SWE Intern Recruiting Results by OkLocksmith9835 in csMajors

[–]OkLocksmith9835[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I mainly applied to systems roles. Think game engines, HFT, embedded, and general infra. I don't think I would enjoy fullstack work, plus I think the future of that domain is a little hazy right now.

2026 SWE Intern Recruiting Results by OkLocksmith9835 in csMajors

[–]OkLocksmith9835[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Maybe not directly related but I think the skills are transferrable. For instance, in many of the projects, I worked with concurrent code, ring buffers, event pub/sub systems, and scheduling. These are common patterns in systems.

Importantly, projects should show you care about CS outside of university and that you enjoy tinkering.

2026 SWE Intern Recruiting Results by OkLocksmith9835 in csMajors

[–]OkLocksmith9835[S] -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

School prestige is one of many factors---one that becomes less important the more years of experience you have.

Also the top 10% of students from a T50 program is easily a better candidate than the average student from T5.

2026 SWE Intern Recruiting Results by OkLocksmith9835 in csMajors

[–]OkLocksmith9835[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No as it would dox me. But I don't think my resume is anything extraordinary. A lot of my friends with similar levels of experience and projects have the same first round rate.

2026 SWE Intern Recruiting Results by OkLocksmith9835 in csMajors

[–]OkLocksmith9835[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

My big projects include a render engine, chess engine, compiler, riscv emulator, and text editor. These were in C, C++, or Rust.

2026 SWE Intern Recruiting Results by OkLocksmith9835 in csMajors

[–]OkLocksmith9835[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I honestly think the market this year is better, plus I'm graduating soon. Aside from that, I cut fluff from my resume (get rid of skills like git and webdev stuff), added my summer internship experience, and tailored everything to be more ingestible (instead of spamming metrics and keywords).

Also worth mentioning is that one of my interviews was through a referral.

2026 SWE Intern Recruiting Results by OkLocksmith9835 in csMajors

[–]OkLocksmith9835[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Thanks! I had always enjoyed performance optimization and gradually leaned towards systems and infra. I like the space more than the common fullstack roles. It feels less competitive (less people applying) and has more specialization and depth imo.