University Choice

Why did I choose FinUniver for my bachelor’s degree? The answer is simple: time. That’s it; you can close this note right now.

To go into more detail, I chose this university because of its low academic workload, which allows me to spend time on my career and pet projects, as well as work full-time starting from my second year. I can study interesting CS at the university while working on complex systems at my main job, which is obviously very cool and rewarding.

I scored 291/300 on the USE (Unified State Exam, the “Russian SAT”), which placed me in top 0.1% of students and gave me the opportunity to enroll in almost any university in the country. I received offers from BMSTU and HSE, but I didn’t want to rot studying theory 60 hours a week, so I stuck with FinUniver, which is still a top-10 university in the country.

It doesn’t really matter which university I study at if my main education happens at work and through MIT courses (which I plan to complete). If I can get a bachelor’s degree without the pain, then why wouldn’t I? I plan to do a Master’s in the USA anyway, which is better than any Russian Master’s by definition.