Are you a computer science major?

[Dragonzeanse]

I'm curious to know how many people here are computer science majors and what their experience with college was like. I'm at a community college right now, and I've got a lot of math ahead of me if I want to declare CS as my major. I was thinking of attending the University of Washington until I got talked down by a friend who knows more about engineering programs than I do.

 

So, what was CS in college like? Did you get to apply your knowledge very often or was it all theoretical work? Ever get overwhelmed by mathematics? Did you go to a trade school instead?

[DevanArianne]

I'm just now working on majoring in Computer Engineering. I have a long way to go, but I love it too damn much.

[Flojer0]

I haven't gone much more than a year into a computer science degree but what I have done has definitely been useful. The breadth of topics covered has helped me better tackle new problem domains, and that coupled with some higher math classes has helped me finally under stand things like machine learning that I have wanted to learn for years. 

 

I would say it depends on the person but myself I fondly wish I had the time an money to finish school and be going right now. I'm stuck fighting for real world experience on my own.

[fizzlesticks]

I had to take 1 calculus coarse for my CS major and 5 years out of college I have yet to use any math above about a 10th grade level.

 

Theory wise I only had 1 class that was actually about theory. The rest were all different aspects of programming like data structures, data bases, algorithms, concurrency or game devery that were 99% coding.

[Heisenbleurgh]

I'm hopefully graduating from Systems Engineering this year, it's not exactly the same as Computer Science because I had less interactions with hardware (sadly a software-focused career was the only computer-related option available) but I also had to take a lot of maths courses. I had to re-take an advanced calculus course THREE TIMES before I passed it. It can be hard at times.

In my particular field there's lots of theory but just as much practice, we program A LOT and I grew accustomed to sleeping very late. However, I'm now working at a programming firm and at least from my personal experience it's been SO MUCH DIFFERENT from programming a college assignment.

 

I have a very strong love-hate relationship with it all. Nothing drives me mad quite like being stuck with a problem. I've wanted to pull my hair out so many times, but the satisfaction of figuring out those problems and getting large projects in a stable position is just immense. I personally believe anyone can become a 'techie' or knowledge in programming or hardware if you're into it enough. It's definitely not the easiest thing, but finding it interesting is what helps you keep pushing when you want to give up.

[Ssoele]

Keep in mind, every collage or university is different. One collage might suite you, another one with the same major might be completely different.

The major Computer Science is probably completely different from the one you're planning on doing.

 

My advice, talk to some old students of that major at that collage, they will give you a pretty good idea of how it is.

[Darren]

Currently studying a Computing and Math Sciences degree. The math was fairly straight forward, just some modular arithmetic, linear algebra, finite state automata. Haven't got around to using it much though (specialising in Networking).

[Dragonzeanse]

Keep in mind, every collage or university is different. One collage might suite you, another one with the same major might be completely different.

The major Computer Science is probably completely different from the one you're planning on doing.

My advice, talk to some old students of that major at that collage, they will give you a pretty good idea of how it is.

True, but a lot of colleges share curriculums. I'm curious what people have been doing specifically at their college and how it prepared them. These are interesting stories.

[Evolas]

I have very mixed feelings on higher education in Computer Science at the moment.  Here's why: 

 

While obtaining an Associates of Science degree from another community college, I was also taking CS classes at Portland Community College for 2 years.  This had the typical stuff you would find in a community college CS course - Microsoft Visual Studio, C++, and D2L for online communication.  Keep in mind all of my programming classes had to be taken online for this period of my education since I lived too far away to get to a PCC campus every day. 

 

After obtaining my Associates, I spent my first term at Portland State University (PSU).  I had heard nothing but good things from the CS curriculum at this school, so I was (and still am) very confident in pursuing a degree in Computer Science from this school.  However, my first term there was SO MUCH different from what I was doing in classes at PCC.  The standards for the programming classes were different, meaning that we weren't allowed to use an IDE like Microsoft Visual Studio.  Instead, we were required to do all of our coding in vi or vim on a linux OS.  Before this class, I had absolutely zero experience or knowledge in using linux to do anything, let alone programming.  I could tell that the students who have been with the PSU curriculum since their freshman years knew a lot more about certain concepts that I failed to grasp when I was at PCC.  This is why I am deciding to re-take those credits I earned at PCC at PSU in the future. 

 

So, based off of my experience, the only advice I can offer is that you get a good knowledge base of what the courses are going to look like at whatever university you wish to attend.  If you're transferring credits from a community college, keep in mind that the studies could look very different if the school you're going to does things a bit different.  I full-heartedly regret taking my programming classes online while going to community college because I didn't learn anywhere near what was required to be proficient in the higher level courses once I got to university.  Sometimes, saving some money at community college isn't the most cost-efficient. 

[Andinet]

I will graduate with a Degree in Computer Science in a few moths. My advice like all the others is get the actual curriculum from the university of your choice, because it odes vary from one university  to another. It even varies within the same university when their is a curriculum revision (for example the curriculum i enrolled in has been updated two years ago, so the students that enrolled two years after me are using different curriculum that the batch of students that enrolled with me are learning).

 

During my 4 year, there were 6 courses that can be considered maths or math-related out of 40+ courses, so nothing major to worry about.

 

And if you make up your mind about which university you want to go to and would like to some pointers on how to get started, or if you want me to share my experience with you PM me or post a reply here.

 

That said, CS is a field where you can have a lot of fun or get board out of your mid depending on your personality and patience. Sometime you need to power of your Monitor and go out partying with your friends or just walk around town in-order to solve a problem you been stuck on for days. I remember times when i have spent days with only 1-2 hours of sleep a day working on a computer during the past 4 moths just because i had to to finish my graduating project but even though it was hard i enjoy it.

A good friend of mine is currently a 3 year Med student and the course load he is taking is mad. He is able to handle it b/c he is committed to becoming a doctor like i am committed to cs and he does not mid sleeping 1-2 hours a days for the next 6-7 years. I could have enrolled in medicine instead of cs but i chose CS b/c i enjoy programming, technology and after seeing what medicine students go thorough i decided it is not for me.

I would have enrolled in Computer Engineering but at the time i enrolled the university i was going to did not have that department (it was started the year after i enrolled at that time it would have been a wast of a year of my life to start over so i decided not to do it).

 

Basically what i am saying is make your mid up on which university you went to go to, the curriculum that is implemented and i am happy to help you in any way i can.

[Dragonzeanse]

Sometimes, saving some money at community college isn't the most cost-efficient. 

That's true, but the thing is that I'm attending a community college in order to prepare me for a university. I hardly have the transcript to earn me admittance into a university right out of high school. Especially since I don't have college-level math skills. I'm entering intermediate algebra this upcoming quarter.

 

 

And if you make up your mind about which university you want to go to and would like to some pointers on how to get started, or if you want me to share my experience with you PM me or post a reply here.

 

Basically what i am saying is make your mid up on which university you went to go to, the curriculum that is implemented and i am happy to help you in any way i can.

Much appreciated. I'm split between either the University of Washington or Washington State University. My friend has told me about someone he knew involved in engineering (an instructor of some sort, I can't remember the details vividly). Basically, what he told me was that the University of Washington is not a very good school to attend. Oh sure, its computer science program is regarded as one of the best in the nation. It's also poorly managed, accepting applicants once every year and the admission rate is really low. Even if you get accepted into the university, your chances of getting accepted into the program are small. He even had a friend who wanted to go into computer science but got turned down by the program and he was left without many options. I feel for him; too bad he didn't have a Plan B.

 

Plus, Washington State University has more "applied" programs. In other words, they take what they learn and utilize it in labs more often than UDub (as it is colloquially known) does. It's less "theoretical." Besides that, the opportunities for scholarships are much greater at WSU. Short of being someone who has a shot at an Ivy League school, I don't think you could get a scholarship from UDub without extreme patience and effort. I want to do more research on this subject, but all Google searches ever yield are "UDUB IS BETTER THAN WSU." Uh-huh, of course it is. Can it kill someone to be a little more objective?

[Nallown]

Nope, I'm a 100% self taught programmer.

In my opinion graduating college means nothing, some people tend to learn better from them selfs I mean as long as you learn then its fine right? I myself couldn't learn from school, all I learned at school was something called ICT(Information Communication technology) so basically the way businesses use a computer. This was never interesting in my opinion so and went and spend most of my time sitting at home and teaching myself most of the basics and once I was able to learn the basics I wanted to learn what happens behind the scenes and after this I was pretty much able to learn anything computing related at ease. So now I'm pretty much a self taught programmer with advanced knowledge.

One thing to keep in mind though is that not everywhere you are required to to have a certificate, at some work placements certificates mean nothing, skill is what matters and where I work right now skill matters more then a piece of paper indicating how much you know also from the looks of it, my knowledge that I taught my self is sometimes better then the knowledge people gained from graduating college since I had no limits when teaching myself.

[Andinet]

Nope, I'm a 100% self taught programmer.

In my opinion graduating college means nothing, some people tend to learn better from them selfs I mean as long as you learn then its fine right? I myself couldn't learn from school, all I learned at school was something called ICT(Information Communication technology) so basically the way businesses use a computer. This was never interesting in my opinion so and went and spend most of my time sitting at home and teaching myself most of the basics and once I was able to learn the basics I wanted to learn what happens behind the scenes and after this I was pretty much able to learn anything computing related at ease. So now I'm pretty much a self taught programmer with advanced knowledge.

One thing to keep in mind though is that not everywhere you are required to to have a certificate, at some work placements certificates mean nothing, skill is what matters and where I work right now skill matters more then a piece of paper indicating how much you know also from the looks of it, my knowledge that I taught my self is sometimes better then the knowledge people gained from graduating college since I had no limits when teaching myself.

 

Teaching yourself is sometime better than what you learn @ school most of the time from my experience. I knew more about programming from what i learned myself than what i learned @ university but this differs extremely from university to university and from curriculum to curriculum. The curriculum i learned is extremely theoretical, i can say we almost did not learn anything practical b/c of the curriculum and some bad teachers we had. But the revised curriculum fixed the problem to some extent.

The university teachers will not and you should not expect them to teach you everything their is to know about programming in a certain language but they should at-least teach from the basic to medium level. But more often than not the teachers i encountered didn't even finish the basics.

In my country if you do not have some sort of certificate no one will hire you.

 

Dragonzeanse: Yes having a plan b & c is a very good idea since you don't know what will actually happen. In my case, i was petty-much guaranteed to get in to a university i chose but even then i did fill fin two other universities as a backup.

And to be perfectly honest what people say and what stats say are sometimes not correct, it does not matter whether a university is said to have the best cs department in the country. It is the students and how it helps the students that make a particular department the best. You can have university that is the best in the world teaching the smartest students in the world. And they would probably be the best in the world but give the same teachers average students and they might completely fail. I have seen this happen. That said learning with smart classmates is sometimes better since they can guide you and overtimes if you are not careful you can burn yourself out of college trying to keep up with them. In my batch their are students who study from 7:00 AM till 3:00 AM every day with class and other necessities in between but when it comes to actual programming and problem solving they are not good at it.

 

Personally i am a average to lower-upper student based on my grades but i am easily the best programmer in the entire computer science department (not bragging). And the best student based on grade in cs is not that good @ programming. So what i am trying to say is the piece of paper they give us @ university is not an accurate representation of our actual applicable skills but a rank based on criteria that they think are enough and if the curriculum is not designed appropriately it will be incorrect to the extent of being useless.

Note: I do not claim to know all their is to know but from what i personally noticed sometimes a person who has a college/university degree is not worth the price of the paper the certificate is printed on when it comes to actually applicable knowledge and flexible thinking that is needed in programming.

[rockking1379]

Like andinet said at the end the paper isn't accurate. As a freshman in my CSCI department I could write cleaner faster and all around better code than the more "experienced" seniors. I want my senior project to be insane. Like deploy GRID insane. Because I want the challenge. Yes I am a CSCI major. I enjoy it but keep one or two personal code projects on the table at all times. When your bored or have free time work on them. And do your design work! Think out larger projects before you start, will save you a lot of headaches

[Giddyguy]

Hi! I'm a high school senior and I'm going to UC Santa Barbara to major in Computer Engineering (a combo of comp sci and electrical engineering). However I also did get into Udub and am turning it down for the same reasons. At Udub, you only get to apply for your major starting from your sophomore year and for computing, it is very selective (only about 37% per year get it I think, its on their website). So far I'm not sure what CS in college will be like but as others have said every college is different. In my case the University of California colleges (UC's) are supposedly more theoretical whereas Cal Poly Slo (a very selective California state college and my first choice - got denied  ) is supposed to be more applied with their cs curriculum. Most colleges however should provide a good cs education if it is credited.