The UW

My first exposure to the UW (yes, that's what they call it, the UW) was back when I was at Texterity. We were doing some kind of format-recognition system, and we worked in conjunction with staff from the UW. ...It didn't go well, and we abandoned that in lieu of a system developed in-house (and we hired staff to do it).

Thus, my confidence in their CS department is less than optimal. : )

I like their selection of majors. A few really cool concepts in there that I haven't seen elsewhere. What I don't like (at all) is that they don't have a CS department per se, but instead have two programs: Applied Mathematics and CS&E. Applied Mathematics is perhaps the least interesting form of software engineering for me, and Engineering doesn't whet my appetite, either. ...But digging around, I see that the CS&E actually contains a couple of interesting research branches:

• Programming systems (languages such as ZPL and WASP)... I could do this.
  
• Software Engineering, with a few interesting projects going on--"program restructuring" is one that I'd be interested in (I like the concept of Refactoring).
• Data Management and Intelligent Internet Systems, which is still too math-y for me. :)
• Graphics, Vision, and Animation... which is absolutely what I would choose.
• Computational Molecular Biology, which is all math...
• And, of course, AI.

The Art program doesn't have a Computer Graphics focus, but does have reasonably-sized focuses in Painting and Drawing, Sculpture, and Photography, along with some others I'd be less interested in. I notice more overtly sexual themes in their art examples than at other Universities.

They have what appears to be a very tiny undergraduate biochemistry major. Oh well: the graduate program seems quite robust. None of the focuses made me jump out of my seat, but it seemed to be a decent mix. The program does have two Nobel laureates on staff (and another past-student), so they do seem to be pretty serious. ; ) They also have a PhD program in Neurobiology and Behavior, which has a focus on endocrinology.

The UW has a sizable Linguistics department too. A good mix of focuses there. One of their faculty (though he's listed as a "visiting assistant professor") is into NLP, which is something I would get into if I were there for CS work.

They have a huge Music department.


All in all, I certainly wouldn't mind being here, though I suppose I'm less excited about it than I expected to be.