The Student Room Group

Do I have enough time?

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(edited 1 year ago)
Hey Toblerone_bear,

Have you gone to university before? or are you looking to re-enter education to get a comp sci degree?

I've gone through something similar, in terms of a career change to tech as well as cramming A-levels into 1 year, so I can only speak from my own personal experience, so feel free to take this with a pinch of salt.

Career change into Tech
In terms of making a career change into tech, i didn't do it via university. I studied Economics at University and after a few months working in a office, I decided to change careers into tech and have recently got my self a graduate job at a big tech company (I'm not gonna say the name of the company here).

The way I made the transition was through a coding bootcamp and then learning on my own for a while. I think I lucked out a little bit as I was able to make the transition but it was also a lot of hard work. I mainly learnt by building apps on my own, learning JavaScript and React as well as building up my portfolio and following online coding tutorials.

Only thing I can recommend is to keep your options open. If you haven't been to university before and want to go to get the university life experience as well as get a comp sci degree, then definitely go. I learnt a lot at university, not just my degree and the experiences you can get from it is worth it.

However, if you're just solely looking for a career change, you can always initially try and learn on your own first before quitting your job and going to uni. I don't know what a comp sci degree will be like, but drawing from my experience from economics in university, I learnt a lot of things that I will probably never use, even if I did go into finance. It made me lose interest in the subject and I didn't want that for tech. Also, because I've been to uni already, I can't get another student loan so it would be expensive as hell to do another degree.

However, I do admit that not having a comp sci degree did limit me when making the transition to tech. All the big companies like Facebook, google, amazon all wanted comp sci degrees tbf. However, there are still big companies like BBC and Sky which don't require you to have comp sci degrees, just some sort of relevant experience. The relevant experience doesn't have to be a tech role, I was able to apply after creating a few websites/apps from my portfolio and it was more than enough to talk about when applying for graduate schemes.

Cramming A-levels into 1 Year
In terms of cramming A-levels into one year, I also did that as well. At the time, I retook 10 exams for Maths, Economics and Biology and managed to go from D,D,D to A, A*, C. I'm not gonna lie, it was an absolute struggle, however, it's not impossible. You have to really commit yourself and be really organised. I spammed passed papers, read all the examiner notes for past years, had a tutor for maths, spammed TSR subject threads with questions. You just need to really commit yourself, which is easier said than done, but it is possible


Both points I've experienced were an absolute struggle and took a lot of time. However, I've been through it and made it out through the other side so it's not impossible. Just be prepared to work hard and grind for a long period of time. Once you do it, you have to make sure you commit
(edited 4 years ago)
I personally don't think it's enough time. I would look into 2021 entry or 2022, nothing wrong with starting a bit later. I tried to do all of physics in a year and even with a tutor i would not have gotten decent grades - it was a struggle. I can't imagine someone doing that with 3 new subjects in 5 months.

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