Newbie Q. on CS

hay there, I'm only in year 12 but I have already set my sights on becoming a computer engineer or anythin at all to do with computer hardware/software etc.

My question is what is exactly involved in a computer science degree? is there any designing involved cause i've never written a program in my life but i have done loads of photoshoping and computer maintainence/building etc. what carrer oppertunities lie for me when I get my degree?

for a levels im studying maths,further maths, physics and chemistry so im guessing to drop chem. after the first year and focus on those 3 subjects would be sufficient enough to get me into uni's such as Imperial or UCL, (I dont want to go to a uni outside London so if you can give me any more top uni's in london it would be great!)

thanks for reading :biggrin:

Reply 1

gregmantis

yoshi_105

I can't tell you anything about London Unis other than I applied for Imperial, but then realised that the course looked far too theoretical and not practical enough for my tastes so I went to Bristol instead (after falling in love with the course and city on my open day). The following is entirely based on my own experience at Bristol doing a 4 year MEng degree.

maths is good, as is physics (though this is less essential). It doesn't matter too much what else you have, so just go with whatever you enjoy the most and you are good at. I don't know if this goes for all unis, but at Bristol they preferred well rounded individuals as opposed to the really hardcore focused geeks. In applying for jobs after graduating I found this to be the case too.

There were courses in 3D graphics and animation which were good fun, but the main focus was on software development or low-level architecture. They assumed no prior knowledge and started at a very simple level, but the course progressed very quickly. The first term or so was mainly dedicated to getting everyone up to an acceptable standard in programming in C, and a little bit in Java as well as a maths course focussing on aspects like Set Theory.

The rest of the course then made use of these skills applying them to bigger and bigger projects - writing assemblers and emulators for simple processor architectures and then having to implement simple algorithms in an assembly language was a favourite. We did two group games projects in the second and third years where groups were given only the specification of writing a game.

Other modules were things like compiler design, hardware verification, cryptography or AI. None of which were specifically programming related but courseworks were to implement various aspects using programming skills learned earlier.

The final year was mainly dissertation. I picked a module that I enjoyed and implemented a software system based around a problem that existed in that field.

As for job prospects - there are plenty. You probably wont be starting on an amazing salary though, but it increases fairly rapidly. There are hundreds of related fields to go into though. Most of my friends seem to now be software consultants, though personally I have no idea what one of those even is :smile:

. I enjoyed the low-level aspects much more (getting all down-and-dirty with the hardware rather than hiding in some abstracted away software-framework) and am a developer in the games industry. Another friend does some sort of software development at a bank, and another set up his own company and now employs a few people.

The job prospects are better with experience, so I'd recommend finding some sort of relevant work during your summer holidays, or considering a course that includes an industrial placement.

Reply 2

qlimax

yoshi_105

Other London uni is King's College London, it has quite big Computer Science department with 140 students intake per year for CompSci related subjects. I think the course is well structured and the balance is right between theory and practice. King's has very interesting options in year three and four! UCL degree is also quite good cause you get to choose options from other departments. Imperial's course is very intensive and quite theoretical.

I would say these three are the strongest ones. There is also Queen Mary, Brunel, City and others but they are not as good.

Reply 3

v2006

Kings are a joke to be honest. I went on an open day at Kings for Computer Science and they didn't even show us the lecture theatres or LABS!

Reply 4

qlimax

v2006

Kings are a joke to be honest. I went on an open day at Kings for Computer Science and they didn't even show us the lecture theatres or LABS!

So now you are sure that they don't have one... wise!

When I was on the inetriew at Imperial it was like: "oops we can't go there because of exam", "oops we can't see that because the room is busy". The only proper tour I got is in UCL, but that doesn't mean its better...

Reply 5

Babyangel452

qlimax

I think it depends on when you go. If they said the rooms where being used because of exams etc, that means you probably had ur interview around january (which is when there is a bout of exams for 1st years).

If you see it before xmas then you should be able to all the labs and probably most rooms.

Newbie Q. on CS

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