One of

CS 115 Introduction to Computer Science 1
CS 135 Designing Functional Programs
A 300- or 400-level CS major course in addition to those required below

One of

CS 136 Elementary Algorithm Design and Data Abstraction
CS 145 Design, Abstraction, and Implementation

This means that you can take CS 145 and CS 300+ to fullfill that requirement.

FYI admission to CS 145 is by instructor consent and is limited to top students. Also you can't take it if you're in SoftEng or CompEng.

Just out of curiosity, what are the criteria for "top students"? High English marks? *rolls eyes*

^^ http://www.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs145/prospective.shtml I looked up on quest and CS145 & MATH 147 are not showing up for the winter term so they are probably not being offered in the winter unless they are going to be added at the last moment

Programming contests are, paradoxically, even further from being good predictors of performance

Excellent marks in ALL high school courses. Weaknesses in communication or an inability to appreciate subjects besides math and CS should be considered warning signs that CS 145 may not be appropriate. Students taking this course should have an open mind and should value diversity.

Being female. If you're female and you're reading this page, chances are that CS 145 is right for you. Women tend to underestimate their abilities and turn down opportunities like this when they shouldn't. In past offerings of CS 135, women (both CS majors and non-CS majors) have been among the top students in the class. (Conversely, men tend to overestimate their abilities and believe they're entitled to such opportunities. If you're a male reading this page, think carefully about this.)

I read that page and I almost find it a bit disturbing...

Uh-oh... kill me now...

To be fair, the approaches to good contest scores are very different from what one might want to see from a Computer Scientist or a Software Engineer.

The way most contests are set up, one would get the top marks for writing fast solutions in "good-enough-to-work-right-now" quality of code based on algorithms recalled from memory.

There are no mathematical proofs. There is no code readability.

What the quote is saying is that there isn't a strong correlation between the two. Someone who has trained for such contests might not handle the concentrated Math and expected software practices. And someone who does well in CS145 might not have sufficient training to perform well on contests. (although obviously there will be people who will do both well)

Whaaaaa... ?

I doubt that MIT is biased, although I think you might be right

Rather, I believe the tone suggests that there is a negative correlation.

Just out of curiosity, what are the criteria for "top students"? High English marks? *rolls eyes*

Well, I am in high school and I want to take CS 145 and Math 147 this winter term (I don't know if it is offered then). I have completed all the Math and CS courses offered by my school have passed with an overall average of 98%+ every year. Is it possible for me to take these courses?

Who on earth wrote this anyway?

Mind sharing the URL

And, is it possible for me to sit in your lectures (albeit being in highschool)?

That's the first test of suitability for the course.

Well, I found it under my bookmarks (I now remember me looking at your course a year ago):
http://www.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs145/prospective.shtml

That's the first test of suitability for the course.

I did.

I was just a bit startled by what you had written; the page is screaming at me "this course is not right for you"

I have been assured by some students in CS 145 that you are a cool guy and that you don't really "believe in marks".

Then maybe it's not right for you.

And I don't believe that one should chase marks to the exclusion of all else. I think that at the university level, if one pursues knowledge, marks will more or less follow.

@Analysis Mode: The speedtest result you have in your sig, is that your residential connection?

(For example, is high school CS typically even CS? If not, does a student's mark in high school CS reflect anything useful?)

My experience at waterloo so far:

cs 135 -> way too easy, and the speed is really slow but I think it's getting harder

TA took off 5 marks for missing 1 final step on a question out of 8, not sure if I just got a very bad TA, or everyone marks this harshly in uni. (my high school teacher would've given me 7.5/8)

In my experience, no and no. (There are rare exceptions.)

The people who flunk miserably out of our first university CS courses usually have really high grade 12 CS marks.

I think high school marks are often one-way indicators. If you have them, it may not mean much. If you don't have them, something is probably wrong. (And, yes, there are unfair/random teachers, but more often than not there's either an attitude or an ability issue.)

My experience at waterloo so far:
cs 135 -> way too easy, and the speed is really slow but I think it's getting harder (I got 15 on senior CCC last year and is ranked 100 sth on dwite, just a reference of my CS skills)
math 135 -> much harder than gr 12 math, at a speed that i could just follow with almost no time to slack off (I've never tried in gr 12 math, was slacking off for the entire year) got 52/58 on the first assignment, TA took off 5 marks for missing 1 final step on a question out of 8, not sure if I just got a very bad TA, or everyone marks this harshly in uni. (my high school teacher would've given me 7.5/8)
math 137-> same as 135, at a speed I could just follow. Didn't get my 1st assignment back yet... (just a reference of my math skills: i got 74 on euclid, 51 on COMC)
phys 121->gr 10 stuff, I can't help falling asleep in the lecture...
Psych 101-> it's been rumored that class avg for this course is very high. Didn't do much so far.

CS 251: [...] To be honest I donot know why this is a mandatory course for CS'ers. Nothing in the first 3 weeks is remarkable, there is some good stuff but 80% is crap which goes into one ear and comes out of the other. This course should be mandatory for EE or CE not for CS.

CS 241: After just a couple of weeks of taking this class I have learned a lot more than I did in any of CS first year courses, for example now I understand how a stack truly works and appreciate it whereas before I always thought of stack as a redundant data structure conjured by people with too much time on their hands.

Math 135 is actually pretty boring, imo.

That's pretty funny considering that you're not taking it.

Math 135 is the one course in the entire Faculty that I would defend to the death (and that includes the courses I've designed). That said, there are those for whom it might be relatively easy (which does not translate to "boring"), and for whom Math 145 would be more appropriate.

do you waterloo students mind posting some of your assignments or tests from math/cs courses?

CS 145: [...] I also think that it is easy to draw parallels between other programming languages and scheme eg. loops are quite similar to recursion. A person who knows loops, can understand recursion faster than a person who doesn't know what loops are.

Professor Ragde said that last year many people did well in CS145 without having any previous experience, so I guess you might survive without any if you are really smart.

If this were the case, then students in a typical "CS 2" course would have no problem with recursion, but it is a major stumbling block for most of them. The fact is that loops are equivalent to a certain restricted form of recursion (plus loops don't produce values but get things done via side effects, which makes it even harder to draw the correspondence). I've seen many students who keep trying to think in terms of loops (which they think they understand) run into difficulties in the early parts of CS 135 and CS 145.

I didn't say "many". I said that there were people who did well in CS 145 without prior experience. Obviously the right kind of prior experience will help. I just don't see a lot of students coming in with that kind of prior experience. --PR

I think students would have a problem understanding recursion with or without knowing loops. For me, it was not a particularly easy concept to understand. However, I think that knowing loops would probably help them understand it faster, because they have seen something similar to recursion. The students which you say were trying to think of recursion in terms of loops, may have had difficulty understanding recursion even if they didn't know what loops are. I found it easier to learn recursion by relating to the basic knowledge I had of loops (just grade 10 computer science).

Correct me if I am wrong, but you also said that 60% of the people in CS145 last year were not CS majors. How many of these non-CS-majors would have prior experience? It also seemed to me that the "no prior experience necessary" part was one of the major advertising points you had for CS145.

I got early acceptance to the honors math and honors CS program about a week ago.

I was wondering whether I should Major Math and Minor in CS or vice versa (although I am leaning towards the latter).

Also, all I have to do now is fill up the AIF form (since I already got accepted, I am exempt from the application process) .

@CodeMonkey2000- I don't even think that there's even a 10^-100% change that I'll make it to MIT (as my SAT marks aren't even close to the expected Ivy league level). However, I am still giving it a go (as my interviewer thinks that I should make it)...