You don't have to go to London to get a good university education. For CS, I would recommend the following places (assuming you like cities):

1) Edinburgh
2) Manchester
3) Birmingham
4) Southampton (though I'm not too sure whether this should be included in this. I'm just going off what I've heard from other students.
5) Leeds

Reply 4

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

21

Original post by ~Redhood~

I cant apply to them sadly because i have an acces to he diploma and they dont accept those qualifications.

Frankly I think even UCL is somewhat more average for the subject than generally considered. It's just seen as UCL and being in London as being better.

Realistically as above, most of the better universities for CS are not in London anyway.

I would be surprised if neither would consider you for CS with an Access course plus A-level Maths and FM (you would need to take those separately of course).

If you aren't aiming for a very mathematical/theoretical course anyway though then your best bet is probably a degree apprenticeship regardless (in which case the company you are doing it with matters more than the educational partner).

Original post by ~Redhood~

The above question.

Hello 😊

Ultimately, it is difficult to say which the best universities are as this would really depend on the factors that are important to you. I would recommend researching which institutions offer computer science within the geographical area you'd like to study in and ranking them on the factors that are important to you. For example, student experience, course layout or entry requirements.

If you're struggling to find an institution that feels like a good fit in London, an alternative route you could explore is online degrees. Our online BSc and MSc courses offer a wide range of flexibility so they can provide structure when you need it whilst fitting in around your lifestyle. If this sounds interesting to you, you can read more about them here - https://bit.ly/47WCGZR

I hope this helps!

Thanks,

Becky

Reply 6

PQ

Clearing and Applications Advisor

21

Original post by ~Redhood~

The above question.

What career are you interested in doing?
CS isn’t a particularly employable degree because it’s too broad for most jobs.

Reply 7

vnayak

16

Original post by PQ

What career are you interested in doing?
CS isn’t a particularly employable degree because it’s too broad for most jobs.

Really? I wasn't aware of this. On the contrary, I thought it was quite the opposite. I know many people who have CS degrees but have entered markets in quant trading, investment banking and many other areas. I understand that CS is quite a saturated market now and the value of the degree is a lot lower than what it was previously since industries care more about your skillset than anything else.

If you are going into a CS-oriented career, would university still be worthwhile? I was looking into either becoming a software engineer or something in cybersecurity. I have offers from Imperial, Edinburgh and Manchester (and maybe Durham depending on what their decision is. I'm still waiting on them). If not university (and please specify which university you think would be worthwhile my time attending because of the value of that place and the opportunity available), what alternate path do you think I should consider and/or take? I was briefly considering apprenticeships but I know a few people that have had bad experiences post-apprenticeship where they haven't been able to get jobs afterwards and on paper, they have loads of skills which the industry is looking for.

Reply 8

BreadForce

11

Original post by vnayak

Really? I wasn't aware of this. On the contrary, I thought it was quite the opposite. I know many people who have CS degrees but have entered markets in quant trading, investment banking and many other areas. I understand that CS is quite a saturated market now and the value of the degree is a lot lower than what it was previously since industries care more about your skillset than anything else.

If you are going into a CS-oriented career, would university still be worthwhile? I was looking into either becoming a software engineer or something in cybersecurity. I have offers from Imperial, Edinburgh and Manchester (and maybe Durham depending on what their decision is. I'm still waiting on them). If not university (and please specify which university you think would be worthwhile my time attending because of the value of that place and the opportunity available), what alternate path do you think I should consider and/or take? I was briefly considering apprenticeships but I know a few people that have had bad experiences post-apprenticeship where they haven't been able to get jobs afterwards and on paper, they have loads of skills which the industry is looking for.

That's interesting. Was this for big companies? I understand that if you follow the university route and in your spare time let's say you have built a really good application you will have an advantage. But then I don't know if you beig a brilliant software engineer you still have to go through endless video interviews after another 1-1 interview, assessment centres etc. I know of people that the only thing the company wanted was lots of code and being able to explain and/do pass programming tests but not all those big banks or technology companies.

Reply 9

PQ

Clearing and Applications Advisor

21

Original post by vnayak

Really? I wasn't aware of this. On the contrary, I thought it was quite the opposite. I know many people who have CS degrees but have entered markets in quant trading, investment banking and many other areas. I understand that CS is quite a saturated market now and the value of the degree is a lot lower than what it was previously since industries care more about your skillset than anything else.

If you are going into a CS-oriented career, would university still be worthwhile? I was looking into either becoming a software engineer or something in cybersecurity. I have offers from Imperial, Edinburgh and Manchester (and maybe Durham depending on what their decision is. I'm still waiting on them). If not university (and please specify which university you think would be worthwhile my time attending because of the value of that place and the opportunity available), what alternate path do you think I should consider and/or take? I was briefly considering apprenticeships but I know a few people that have had bad experiences post-apprenticeship where they haven't been able to get jobs afterwards and on paper, they have loads of skills which the industry is looking for.

It’s not a new thing. CS has the highest unemployment rate of any subject and has done for over a decade.
the government reviews encouraged more placement years but that doesn’t help much with degrees that are heavily theory based or with a focus on learning a specific code and not the tools to quickly pick up new code and document well. Add in that lots of CS students simply don’t bother to get work experience or develop their “soft” skills or industry awareness and things aren’t improving.

I can’t tell you which university is best for you - but it needs to be somewhere that you can thrive AND get involved in opportunities and work beyond your course. If you know you want to work in SE then it makes sense to do a SE degree instead of CS. Likewise there are only a handful of degrees accredited for cybersecurity so that’s key if you’re looking for a career that way.

I am sceptical of apprenticeships - around 50% of people who start don’t complete them. That’s not a glowing endorsement.

Reply 10

vnayak

16

Original post by BreadForce

That's interesting. Was this for big companies? I understand that if you follow the university route and in your spare time let's say you have built a really good application you will have an advantage. But then I don't know if you beig a brilliant software engineer you still have to go through endless video interviews after another 1-1 interview, assessment centres etc. I know of people that the only thing the company wanted was lots of code and being able to explain and/do pass programming tests but not all those big banks or technology companies.

Yeah so one of them completed the work experience programs on theforage.com and did some other things Economics-related (I think they did Econ A level so they had some level of understanding as well) and they landed a job at J.P Morgan Chase. One of my other friends started off as an SE at Goldman and then switched to investment banking (I don't have many details as to how but I'm guessing this is quite a rare occurrence).

Reply 11

vnayak

16

Original post by PQ

It’s not a new thing. CS has the highest unemployment rate of any subject and has done for over a decade.
the government reviews encouraged more placement years but that doesn’t help much with degrees that are heavily theory based or with a focus on learning a specific code and not the tools to quickly pick up new code and document well. Add in that lots of CS students simply don’t bother to get work experience or develop their “soft” skills or industry awareness and things aren’t improving.

I can’t tell you which university is best for you - but it needs to be somewhere that you can thrive AND get involved in opportunities and work beyond your course. If you know you want to work in SE then it makes sense to do a SE degree instead of CS. Likewise there are only a handful of degrees accredited for cybersecurity so that’s key if you’re looking for a career that way.

I am sceptical of apprenticeships - around 50% of people who start don’t complete them. That’s not a glowing endorsement.

Also, that's partly why I'm doing Bachelor's and then doing an MSc after gaining experience. After 3 years, I want to gain experience in industry for a few years before coming back to do an MSc (where I will choose something more specific). As for SE vs cyber, I'm not sure which to pick so I spoke with my CS teacher and he told me that it's better to go with a general degree if you aren't sure because you can always specialise afterwards. However, if you go with a specific degree say cybersecurity and it turns out you don't like it, you are stuck with a course you don't like and you'll probably drop out.

Also, my Edinburgh course has a placement year and the Imperial course has many cybersecurity and software engineering modules which are available in the second and third years respectively so I don't think it's a problem there. It's the same with the Manchester course but you have a greater choice of modules you pick up. Also, Imperial does this thing called I-Explore which is like a second accreditation so I can pick up any degree program for a year and I can do this for all of the years I am on the course and pick up a different specialism every year. This could be something Computer Science related or it could be something completely unrelated to CS (since there are many other universities nearby which offer other courses. For instance, I think there is the opportunity to do Law at UCL briefly if you want to as part of the I-Explore program. I remember this vividly because it was mentioned at the opening talk on the day of my interview.) I won't get an official degree certificate for it but it's up to my discretion whether I want to mention it on my degree certificate. However, if I pursue the I-Explore program for the 4th year, I not only get the degree certification for the specialism I choose for the MEng but also for the I-Explore program I've chosen (and I can also add the accreditation from the I-Explore courses I have done from first, second and third year).

This is why I'm looking to get into Imperial and not only this, the industry connections are insane! I think that in my free time, I've picked up the necessary skills for industry and have already completed industry standard projects. For instance, I created a bot using a machine learning algorithm that works out whether there has been a significant change in the stock price and if so, it sends out an email to all the clients on a mailing list. It can also work out the best time to invest in certain stocks using financial modelling. This was all done for an independent client, whom I was able to approach through my work experience company and it's been implemented. I've also helped re-design some websites for companies (for free in some cases) with their teams. This involved a complete re-design of their user interfaces and the database systems.

Reply 12

BreadForce

11

Original post by vnayak

Yeah so one of them completed the work experience programs on theforage.com and did some other things Economics-related (I think they did Econ A level so they had some level of understanding as well) and they landed a job at J.P Morgan Chase. One of my other friends started off as an SE at Goldman and then switched to investment banking (I don't have many details as to how but I'm guessing this is quite a rare occurrence).

Thanks and congratulations on your offers. I am personally not interested in getting into Finance. I was wondering about the people who completed tech degree apprenticeships but were let go after the end and couldn't find work later. It doesn't sound good. Was this from big companies like the ones you just mentioned?

Reply 13

vnayak

16

Original post by BreadForce

Thanks and congratulations on your offers. I am personally not interested in getting into Finance. I was wondering about the people who completed tech degree apprenticeships but were let go after the end and couldn't find work later. It doesn't sound good. Was this from big companies like the ones you just mentioned?

Ah ok so one of them was for Deloitte but that was down to the reference they received (it wasn't amazing to say the least). For the other person, I can't remember the name of the company they did it for. It's not one of the big, well-known companies but it's a medium sized company. They were involved in the web dev side of things for the company (minor outages, things like that). Now, once the apprenticeship was over, they got a good reference from the company and had loads of skills. They were proficient in Javascript and many of the frameworks, modules (or whatever they're called in Javascript. It's the one language I'm not actually too familiar with and it's on my to-do list. I have some experience with web dev but it's deffo more with HTML and CSS stylesheets. I definitely have more of a Python, C++ and C# background) like React and Flutter and many of the other ones but they were unsuccessful when it came to applying for other jobs and I think it was more to do with a question of experience. I would say that a degree is still required to get some jobs because you need that foundational understanding but experience also matters a lot (I would go so far as to say it matters more than the degree itself because there are so many instances where people have done no degree, do a few bootcamps to gain certification and then get jobs afterwards).

While university is definitely more research-oriented, they also have many useful industry connections, which can be tapped into for jobs, not to mention the immense networking opportunities available. Internships are available throughout your time at uni so as long as you pick up the necessary skills along the way, getting jobs shouldn't be too problematic.

Reply 14

BreadForce

11

Original post by vnayak

Ah ok so one of them was for Deloitte but that was down to the reference they received (it wasn't amazing to say the least). For the other person, I can't remember the name of the company they did it for. It's not one of the big, well-known companies but it's a medium sized company. They were involved in the web dev side of things for the company (minor outages, things like that). Now, once the apprenticeship was over, they got a good reference from the company and had loads of skills. They were proficient in Javascript and many of the frameworks, modules (or whatever they're called in Javascript. It's the one language I'm not actually too familiar with and it's on my to-do list. I have some experience with web dev but it's deffo more with HTML and CSS stylesheets. I definitely have more of a Python, C++ and C# background) like React and Flutter and many of the other ones but they were unsuccessful when it came to applying for other jobs and I think it was more to do with a question of experience. I would say that a degree is still required to get some jobs because you need that foundational understanding but experience also matters a lot (I would go so far as to say it matters more than the degree itself because there are so many instances where people have done no degree, do a few bootcamps to gain certification and then get jobs afterwards).

While university is definitely more research-oriented, they also have many useful industry connections, which can be tapped into for jobs, not to mention the immense networking opportunities available. Internships are available throughout your time at uni so as long as you pick up the necessary skills along the way, getting jobs shouldn't be too problematic.

Sorry, but your skills are proper programming languages and sound very impressive compared to javascript. Not that it's not useful! If internships are anything like apprenticeships where you have to show at every stage how much you have researched the company and not any real, practical skills and projects I don't know what to expect. I hope it's different. When I asked out of interest what the interviewer at JPMorgan does he said I wouldn't understand. Then when I asked about some apprenticeship details to find out how the programme works he didn't know about the scheme. After this of course I didn't dare ask what languages they use and I felt nervous and embarrassed. Maybe university is the way for me.

Reply 15

vnayak

16

Original post by BreadForce

Sorry, but your skills are proper programming languages and sound very impressive compared to javascript. Not that it's not useful! If internships are anything like apprenticeships where you have to show at every stage how much you have researched the company and not any real, practical skills and projects I don't know what to expect. I hope it's different. When I asked out of interest what the interviewer at JPMorgan does he said I wouldn't understand. Then when I asked about some apprenticeship details to find out how the programme works he didn't know about the scheme. After this of course I didn't dare ask what languages they use and I felt nervous and embarrassed. Maybe university is the way for me.

Thank you for these kind words but other than C++ (and maybe C# for game dev but Unity is better though it does have a structure similar to C# ), I don't think that I have that many employable skills.

Internships are sought out in two ways. At University, the departments have industry connections and certainly at the top universities (I'm not too sure about the mid-tier ones since I neither visited them, nor applied to them), companies come in and advertise for the positions. They put out a list of skills required for you to be picked up. There may be an interview for particularly popular ones (for instance, at Imperial, there are frequent SWE internships for Google and at Oxford, Apple, Amazon and many others frequently contact departments and students) where they sort of test your problem solving skills, programming skills and logical thinking (think of the Leetcode challenges).

The other way is through approaching companies yourself. This is partly why I have established my LinkedIn profile and GitHub accounts this early. It will mean I won't have to create and spend time on it when it comes to applying for these internships and it also provides me with a platform to demonstrate some of my skills through an online portfolio. Granted, some things will have to change and be removed from my profile but it's better than having to create a profile. Also, through LinkedIn, I'm able to network with loads of people, which will only raise my chances of securing an internship, should I put a post out saying that I'm open to them. Now, chances are you won't get anything from a simple LinkedIn post but it is one strategy of a multi-faceted approach.

Some interviewers are genuinely nice. For instance, for my HSBC internship in year 12, I had to do an interview to show that I was a worthy candidate (I got it in the end and I completed it) and my interviewer was SUPER nice! They were extremely welcoming and I was calm at once so I performed well in that interview. My Imperial interview was the same. My interviewer genuinely seemed interested in what I had to say and about the things I've done. I initially thought that this interest would be put on to find out more about me but it was a genuine interest and I could see that. However, not everyone has the same experience so it's the luck of the draw and how prepared you are. Prepare too little, you'll be ripped apart. Prepare too much, you'll sound robotic and there'll be no originality. You have to tailor your answers to your situation.

I would say that internship interviews are far nicer than the apprenticeship ones though.