Stanford’s Department of Management Science and Engineering
32 comments
·July 29, 2025apparent
m-ee
I’m not sure how it factors into the overall admission statistics but getting accepted for a coterm is, or at least was, significantly easier and more straightforward. In my time it just meant a GPA above a certain cutoff, a letter of rec from a professor, and non embarrassing GRE scores. A very good letter of recommendation could make up for deficiencies in the other two. It’s not exactly a super selective elite club like the article implies if you’re already there for undergrad.
TMWNN
Can Stanford undergrads coterm in MS&E with any undergraduate major?
m-ee
Yes, I knew people who cotermed in MS&E (and other masters programs) with a different undergrad major. I think you just need to make sure you fulfill whatever prereq courses they ask for but my knowledge is old at this point. I imagine you’d be fine going from any engineering major to MS&E, but if you were an English major who happened to take a bunch of math and physics that would probably work too.
mathattack
I've met several of these students. It's like an MBA, but less social networking and more math. (And can be done co-term or in a year)
So does it add some value to someone who is already getting a bachelors in EE, CS or similar? Sure.
Would I put a history major with an MS&E degree in charge of anything significant? Probably not.
I suspect that the admissions rate of 7% is independent of coterms.
fernirello
Has anyone seen publicly accessible content from the startup-ish MS&E courses? I think Coursera had a MOOCified version of “Startup engineering”, but that was over a decade ago and it didn’t last long anyway. It was great back then.
MADEinPARIS
I met a guy who raised $250MM, and dropped out of the program. Spoiled.
coupdejarnac
I've taken a few graduate courses at Stanford MS&E through their non degree program, and I give the experience three thumbs up.
curioustock
Yes some people actually go NDO->part-time-> full-time. It's rare but possible.
TexanFeller
> Management Science
It’s jarring and galling to see management and science put together in a way that’s suggestive of management being a science. It reeks of stolen valor.
Obligatory Feynman on “sciences”: https://youtu.be/tWr39Q9vBgo?si=SYTZSNA0G-RZDguA
cschmidt
I think in this context Management Science is an older term that was synonymous with operations research. The flagship journal of Informs (the institute for operations research and management science) has the same name. Studying how to optimize thing, lots of statistics and math. Stanford was at the forefront of the field from George Danzig onwards. So not trying to make management a “science” in this case.
cschmidt
I’m not sure about this masters program, but the undergrad program seems to be proper ORMS.
null
constantcrying
Maybe it is because I am not from the US and from a country with a very different work culture, but this whole thing seems ridiculously narcissistic. A person with such a degree becoming my coworker or my boss seems like a nightmare. Even talking to someone who "made it through" such a degree is something I would rather avoid.
mocmoc
this industry is rotten
lenerdenator
Things rot from the head down, and Stanford arguably counts as the head.
lisper
This particular clickbait title formula -- The X No One Has Heard About -- drives me nuts because it is so manifestly self-defeating. Obviously someone has heard about it. At the very least, the author of the piece has heard about it, and now all of their readers have heard about it too.
tomhow
We've de-baited the title now.
alankarmisra
It's like the secret beaches in every south-east asian nook and crany. They're so secret there's signs pointing to them every where and they are overrun with tourists.
sas224dbm
Tony Wheeler has a lot to answer for
junar
Pretty sure any Stanford student would have heard about it. For students graduating in 2023-2024 year, Management Science and Engineering was the 9th most popular bachelor's degree and 7th most popular master's degree.
cadamsdotcom
Ah, the classic “no one goes there anymore, it’s too crowded” :)
HN titles generally shouldn’t be clickbait.. what would you suggest instead?
hyghjiyhu
> no one goes there anymore, it’s too crowded
This seems like a paradox but actually isn't.
The trick is to correctly interpret what is actually being said. No one goes there anymore - this is clearly meant in a casual imprecise way not literally 0. So how can we precisely state what is meant?
I would interpret it as the proportion of some group of people going there is now very low.
On the other hand that it is crowded is a different thing. It says that the absolute number of people going there is too high. Furthermore, those people may be different from the group in the first part.
Two example scenarios:
* None of my friends go there anymore, the number of tourists is too high.
* As the city has grown, the place has reached capacity meaning that a smaller proportion of the city can visit.
lisper
In this case I would have gone with something like:
Management Science & Engineering (MS&E): Stanford’s interdisciplinary hub
dylan604
You could have gone with something a bit catchier, "The Stanford Program that few people know about" which would have the same sentiment and would definitely get more clicks than your suggestion.
taude
ha, no one would have clicked on that title. Needs some cta and pep in it.
But Claude gives me:
"Stanford's 230-Student Program That Produces More Unicorn Founders Than Most Schools"
"Why Stanford Engineers Are Choosing MS&E Over CS: A Technical MBA That Actually Works"
"Stanford's MS&E: The 7.8% Acceptance Rate Program Behind Instagram, Gusto, and Sourcegraph
"How Stanford's MS&E Became Y Combinator's Secret Feeder Program"
"
ujkiolp
[dead]
Obscurity4340
This is an extremely amusing turn of phrase
dylan604
Oh man, if you liked that, then you should read up on more Yogisms:
ujkiolp
[dead]
Of the famous founders, over half were Stanford undergrads and therefore likely were "coterm" students. That means they just added a year to their degree and got this degree tacked on. That saves lots of time and money compared to going to Stanford as a master's student. There are a lot of things that are "worth it" if you don't have to move apartments/cities and get it for half the price — but which are not nearly as worth it if you're paying double and add the friction of moving to the area in order to enroll.