Let’s start by discussing a little about uWaterloo’s software engineering and computer science undergrad program.
Waterloo’s software engineering was the most hyped up software/cs program in Canada, at least that was still the case when I was doing my university applications back in high school. I am sure a lot of high school students who are interested in tech or are looking to pursue a tech career all heard about how amazing Waterloo’s engineering and co-ops programs are, and how they would pretty much be handed 10 different big tech offers after grad.
Quite honestly, that was the main reason I chose Waterloo SE over some of the other offers I received back then, like uToronto’s CS, uToronto’s CE, and UBC’s CS. I also believed that if I went with Waterloo SE, I could also work at Google, just like 10 other “friends’ kids” that my parents told me about (that was a bit of an exaggeration, but I hope you get the idea).
Waterloo’s computer science was, of course, also really famous for being one of the best CS undergrad programs in Canada. Back in my high school days, though, it wasn’t as hyped as SE. I did apply for both SE and CS, but ended up getting rejected by CS. It doesn't seem like there is necessarily a correlation between getting admitted to SE or CS if you applied for both. I know some people got rejected by SE but got admitted to CS, some the other way around, and some just get accepted by both.
From the admission perspective, I remember CS having fewer high school course requirements and a lower admission average of high 80s to low 90s, while SE had a lot more high school course requirements and a higher admission average of mid 90s, so SE was harder to get into back then.
It does not look like that’s the case anymore, looking at the Waterloo SE admission requirements https://uwaterloo.ca/future-students/programs/software-engineering now versus CS admission requirements https://uwaterloo.ca/future-students/programs/computer-science, although CS doesn't have course requirements like Physics or Chemistry, both have an admission average of low to mid 90s. Given the tech job market right now, I also would expect CS to be on the same level as SE.
There are tons of CS vs SE articles out there that go in depth about the differences between CS and SE and which one you should go with. I am not going to go into too much detail on those, but I want to talk a little bit about
TLDR my experience with SE was bad → mid, but part of it was my own choice to make the overall experience less enjoyable. I’ll start by doing the easier part: listing all the things that I felt made the experience not ideal.
There are almost no choices when it comes to course selection in the first three years. Most of the courses are pre-selected and mandatory, and we have to take 5-6 courses every term, with ~1 bird course. There are a few BS courses that we had to take, listed out a few here:
I didn’t really have any social interactions with a lot of people. I was never really a part of any clubs, social groups, or anything like that. I usually spend most of my study terms between these two places.
my apartment room on the first day of move-in
one of the engineering labs
Part of it was my own fault, I am not the type of person who just reaches out to people and regularly makes new friends. But I do feel like another part about it is the course load & co-op hunting. There is just so much pressure forced on you every study term, and the nature of the co-op program will inevitably incubate a toxic competitiveness among students. We would have to prepare for interviews, grind LeetCode, do interviews during midterm season, all while taking 5 courses with decent workloads.
The co-op terms were like a temporary 4-month escape I get after each study term. The co-op terms were awesome, I learned a lot about the industry each term, and I made most of my friends throughout my university years from the co-ops (I actually met my girlfriend on one of the co-op terms!). Check out this blog Some Thoughts After My First Internship where I talked about the experience I had with my first co-op term.
Overall, my first year and a half in Waterloo was just devastating. I was doing horribly in my courses, didn’t really have any social interactions with my peers, and I was close to getting depressed especially after Covid hits, everything just didn’t feel real to me. I decided to take a gap year and kept working as an intern at the same company after my first co-op term in Shanghai. Everything took a much better turn after I returned to school, starting from my second year. The courses are a lot more CS related, and I started doing a lot better in my courses. I made some new friends as well and learned how to adapt to Waterloo.