Yeah I came in thinking it would be easy after crushing the programming pre-req tests. Was in for a complete surprise - they don't mess around at UChicago.
In the masters program you can somewhat build your own degree after taking their core classes, so you can at least study what you're really interested in (or avoid the hard stuff like a lot of people did). Most of the profs had real industry experience too. A C++ class for example was taught by a guy who sold his company, now is a research fellow at a huge lab, and sits on the standards board. We got to bounce questions off Bjarne Stroustrup. Was pretty cool.
In the masters program you can somewhat build your own degree after taking their core classes, so you can at least study what you're really interested in (or avoid the hard stuff like a lot of people did). Most of the profs had real industry experience too. A C++ class for example was taught by a guy who sold his company, now is a research fellow at a huge lab, and sits on the standards board. We got to bounce questions off Bjarne Stroustrup. Was pretty cool.