UW Foster Evening program is outstanding and exceeded my expectations

Experience during the program

The professors, especially for 1st year Evening students, are top-notch and very passionate about teaching. They know their material very well and are very enthusiastic to teaching both the theory and real-world applications in class. Most of our learning comes from a combination of lecture, HBR case studies, and team projects.

It is also worth noting that Foster is a strong research-oriented school. Therefore, it is not surprising to see a very significant number of faculty at the Foster School are senior editors in their respective research journals and collaborate with other professors in the top ranked programs.

Overall, the program is exceeding my expectations. I expected UW to have strong fundamentals in teaching theory, but I was pleasantly surprised about the level of engagement in terms of cases, team projects, and general coursework.

About professors, classes and curriculum

Your first year will be very tough, both in terms of adjusting to balancing your new life with school-work on top of your full-time job. The second aspect is the sheer amount of material coming your way and you have to absorb it quickly or else you can easily fall behind. That said, all of the hard work you will endure pays off and you will be able to apply it on your job immediately, which is something we can benefit that the FT students cannot.

About job placement process

Although it is labeled as an "Evening", don't let the "Evening" label fool you. The program is designed to be as close to the Full-Time experience as much as possible, with the one difference is that most students are already employed full-time with a higher percentage of career-enhancers rather than career-seekers. That said, there are a significant number of students who are looking for new and exciting roles, and the Evening and FT programs share the same career services and recruiting network.

The amount of time you will spend doing coursework per class is on par with the full-time students, if not even more challenging because most of us are juggling full-time work and school concurrently. Be prepared to treat this as a "Full-Time Plus" program and not a "Part-Time" program. The evening program has a 1/2 to 2/3 course load compared to FT students, but add in your day job in there and you will see how that quickly adds up.

Overall BSchool experience (5.0)
Schools contribution (5.0)
Classmates rating (5.0)

Strengths of the program:

Curriculum, Classes, Professors
Brand/Ranking
Culture & Student Support

Best fit at this program:

Consulting
Tech
Entrepreneurship
Management

Can be improved:

Alumni Network
Specialization in a particular area (e.g. Finance, Consulting, Healthcare, etc)
Meeting rooms are hard to get (compete with FT)