BackOn Waterloo

As of writing this, I'm in my final semester studying CS at the University of Waterloo, and on track to graduate on time. Whenever I visit my friends who are at other schools, with a more regular semester schedule, I am reminded of how strange Waterloo's college experience can be.

Just to illustrate, it's been more than 2 years since I was last back on campus for a full-time study term at school. And throughout my time in college, I've had the fortune of living in many metropolitan cities, including Tokyo, New York, San Francisco, and Lausanne.

In total, I've spent slightly more time away from Waterloo than in Waterloo, which is very strange as I've been a full-time student here for 5 years.

Co-op is just goated

The main thing that creates this experience is the co-op program at Waterloo, which mandates 6 x 4 month work terms interspersed through regular school in the 5 years of the degree.

The face-value result of this is that Waterloo students are insanely employable. They are the most employable university students in math/engineering/science in the entire world because they're graduating with 2 cumulative years of full-time work experience.

After going through the gauntlet of countless rejections, applications, interviews, and actual jobs (both good and bad), there is no contest. Waterloo students are generally much more connected to industry and less academic.

Nomadic life

I think what is less talked about are the second-order effects of this system. At Waterloo, you have to get very comfortable moving every 4 months, moving away from school into a job or vice versa. My personal opinion is that this forces a lot of personal growth early.

Moving to a new city alone, and having to figure things out—including very boring things like finding a place to stay all encourage personal growth. It is very hard to live in a bubble at Waterloo because you're forced against reality every time you apply for jobs, and you get to actually travel and see how big the world is.

There are downsides to always being on the move. You're getting uprooted every couple months and never have a permanent base. For one, it makes dating a lot harder and long-distance is common.

The upside is that you get to make friends around the world, and go on adventures with your friends from school in foreign countries. In general, I notice that Waterloo students are among some of the most adventurous, life-maxxing people I've met. On exchange, this was very obvious (compared to exchange students from other schools).

If you are Canadian, this is an objectively good deal

Waterloo students are often able to come out net positive from their degree because they can pay down their tuition with their internship earnings.

And Waterloo has a very good reputation in tech. Financially, it doesn't make much sense to indebt yourself thousands of USD just to go to an American college.