[AYBABTME]

Congrats on the win, and cool publicity... but how can I get in there at 12k$ a year, plus a rent and food and other expenses. How much will it pay off, versus my education at the University of Ottawa?

Given that I learn much more by myself, reading reference books, taking online courses with coursera, doing projects by myself. Is there any return on investment that I could expect from an education there, instead of my current university?

[paulgb]

Waterloo has a co-op program where you switch off every four months between working and school. The co-ops can be very well compensated, so many students graduate with little or no student debt.

[speg]

Came here to say this. I finished w/ $40k in the bank but the experiences gave me so much more.

[MikeKusold]

How many years did it take for you to earn your B.S. with all the constant co-oping?

[kineticflow]

An example schedule for an Engineering student is:

Year 1: School, coop, School

Year 2: coop, School, coop

Year 3: School, coop, School

Year 4: coop, School, coop

Year 5: School, school.

4 years and 8 months. Order may vary slightly.

[nobodysbusiness]

It takes an extra 8 months to get your degree. Your 4-year degree basically turns into a 5-year degree.

[sliverstorm]

That sounds fantastic. When I graduated, I was absolutely thrilled to be working on "real stuff that matters". It would have been a great morale booster to be able to properly mix that in with school

[goosling]

It should also be noted that several programs at UW are offered in the regular sense (i.e. no co-op) as well. Engineering is the only faculty with mandatory co-op for all undergraduates.

[AYBABTME]

Got the exact same things in many other canadian universities. uOttawa has it, for instance. I'm doing it, too.

[akashVaswani]

The thing with the university of waterloo is the opportunity for where you coop. How many people at UOttawa get jobs with Facebook, google, apple, MS, twitter and various startups in the valley with jobs paying in excess of $30 an hour?

To give you an idea of how popular UW is in the valley, right now apple has 50~ interns, about 35~ of which are from Waterloo, and a couple from BC. The rest are from the states. And this is the case in many of the companies down here.

[amackera]

I'm a uwaterloo alumni. I have to say that the single greatest reason to attend a university such as Waterloo is to meet like-minded people who are as passionate as yourself. Learning is not just about knowledge, it's about building experience.

[cbhl]

I'm of the opinion that you learn way more by actually doing things at a start-up, small business, or Facebook or Google, and that Waterloo is great for giving you the opportunity to do that. Sure, the lectures are useful for theory of computing and algorithms, but if you're here wanting to learn how to program or how to write SQL, you're wasting your money and time.

That said, the last UOttawa student I knew who transferred to Waterloo failed their first term here, so don't do it just because people on HN said so.

[JL2010]

>doing projects by myself.

Probably not given that limitation. I didn't go to UofW but I spent about a year in Waterloo on an internship. In terms of the experience that you'll get out of it, one of their biggest assets is probably the type of students that they draw - if you won't be working and learning with/from them, then it probably won't be worth it.

[AYBABTME]

'by myself' I meant of my own initiative/not part of a course. I love working/learning from other people.