[vacheron]

> Here in Canada a good grade in academic-stream high school math was simply mandatory for admission to any BSc program

Perhaps that's why I've always found excellent engineers from Canada's flagship schools (U of British Columbia and U of Toronto) :p

More seriously though, I have an advanced degree in Math and seldom needed it for development work, even when I was working in more quantitative roles. And whenever I did need the knowledge I would just look up and learn again. Glad you're doing well without a traditional background.

[cmrdporcupine]

If I were to pick flagship schools for Canada for computer science and engineering, it wouldn't be those two... it'd be U Waterloo and U Alberta. Well, ok, U of Toronto, yes, but UBC doesn't come to mind.

But in Canada generally we don't have the same level of status game around school reputations that Americans seem to have. Certainly grads from U Waterloo do very well, but they may have as much to do with their excellent intern program than anything else.

[vacheron]

Interesting. Alberta is really only known for reinforcement learning as one of the leading academics relocated to Edmonton, but they're not known for much else. You won't hear of Alberta much in academia or in Silicon Valley, and the only reason I know of them is due to prior interactions with Richard Sutton.

UBC and UT certainly receive more funding for computer science and engineering and they're generally well regarded research schools and highly recruited from. UT seems to be slightly more prominent but I'd wager it's a result of the school being much larger with multiple campuses all considered the same school. Same story with Waterloo's computer science faculty being many times the size of UBC with mandatory internships in its undergrad program.

Perhaps the reputation of schools domestically in Canada is different than their brand overseas, as UBC is known even in Switzerland and Sweden, but Alberta and Waterloo are completely unheard of. Even now as I relocated to the USA, UBC comes up often (despite the relatively small Computer Science faculty) and all the past companies I used to work for across quantitative finance and autonomous vehicles recruited from them.

[cmrdporcupine]

There is a reason why Google's (by far) largest engineering office in Canada is located in Waterloo region.