Best CS school in the UK with FAANG ties

Hi everyone,

Could somebody please provide insights on which top university in the UK excels in terms of employment outcomes at FAANG companies and/or other software and deep tech start ups @ FTSE 100? Analysing LinkedIn statistics could provide some data, but it seems challenging to interpret (it appears Cambridge alumni are leading the list).

I'm particularly interested in understanding the strength of the ties between top schools and the IT industry. Is it true that recruiters and HMs have a bias towards certain degrees and schools, or they do provide "fair chances" for everyone?

Thanks

Reply 1

mnot

Universities Forum Helper

Do hiring managers have biases? Of course, that said in my experience what managers mostly care about is people who will have good “fit” i.e. integrate into team well & talent. However often entry level positions the hiring is controlled more centrally by hr early careers teams (it depends at every company).

Generally rule of thumb if you are talented, have evidence of impact are proactive & are a personable individual who has high integrity you will do well in graduate recruitment. There is also a huge amount of bias in that people who attend “top universities” are already capable, hard working individuals thus a big factor is correlation not causation.

One other thing is most students underestimate how hard the highest performing students are working, there is a small percentile of students who work extensively for 3-4 years at uni to build skills, have a portfolio of projects they can talk about in interviews & are comfortable under pressure, when ygo somewhere like Oxbridge more students are focused on this stuff, so there is a greater culture of putting in the work that is required that places you in a strong position for the graduate opportunities you want.

I do generally think university name matters less, motivation & work ethic really carry, proactive sharp students are quite easy to identify quickly. The big benefit of going Cambridge etc. is the culture/environment, you don’t need to be at Cambridge to have this though.

Reply 2

Labradoodle1

As mnot said, correlation is not causation and there are many factors involved. There are people who have attended universities that aren't so prestigious who have gotten jobs at FAANG. However, I was curious so I decided to check LinkedIn for the most represented UK unis attended by people working at FAANG companies in the UK (I only included the top 10 for each company to not make it too long, and I filtered for Engineering roles only, as I'm assuming you wouldn't be interested in the non-CS roles like Marketing or HR).

Meta: Imperial - 104, Cambridge - 74, Oxford - 67, UCL - 54, Edinburgh - 29, Manchester - 27, Bristol - 27, Warwick - 26, Southampton - 22, KCL - 21
Amazon: Imperial - 144, Cambridge - 93, UCL - 88, Edinburgh - 82, Manchester - 75, Warwick - 61, Open - 55, Roehampton - 50, Southampton - 48, KCL - 46
Apple: Imperial - 63, Cambridge - 53, Manchester - 26, Southampton - 32, Edinburgh - 30, Oxford - 25, UCL - 21, Nottingham - 17, Warwick - 16, QMUL - 15
Netflix: Not relevant for the UK
Google: Cambridge - 117, Imperial - 113, Oxford - 69, UCL - 46, Manchester - 42, Edinburgh - 32, Warwick - 30, Southampton - 27, KCL - 25, Open - 24

Reply 3

mscai

Thanks for the great answer!

Yes, it all makes sense, but in the modern world the path to success has become extremely meandering, non-linear, and non-obvious, and the degree could be that extra 2c to win the job. To the list of questions to bear in mind I'd add the dilemma of how to avoid the trap of being carried away by your own passion in that harsh, competitive and pragmatic tech world, where your previous job title or the name of your school can outweigh your genius pet project or area of scientific interests, sometimes it's just a luck (or its absence 😅). Probably the banal so-called "soft-skills" or "interview-skills" could be the real helper. The tech industry has lost its naivety and straightforwardness of early days, unfortunately.

I've chosen to pursue an MSc at Imperial, but my decision was driven mostly by the program's content, my interests and current market demands, rather than by Uni's brand or statistics (although it seems like it was a good choice anyway 😄).