Guelph... my chances?

[Prabhakar Ragde]

Horus @ Wed Apr 29, 2009 10:07 pm wrote:

I wonder if they teach how to use microsoft in ICS4M instead of programming. cause in TIK20 that's what I learned for most of the year b4 switching to turing and didn't even get into procedures.

There are curricular guidelines for ICS4M (vague though they are) that are supposed to prevent that, but abuses do occur. It's more likely that the mark is based on writing some big game using Java Swing classes or something like that. I've had students tell me that their ICS4M teacher just assigned readings in some book and left them alone in the lab.

Quote:

but i think they should look at which high school you are in to see if your ICS4M mark is valid. Like for example in the case of those 7 students' high school and just mark that school's ICS4M marks as invalid. so that for other students their ICS4M mark can still be valid and can still be big for consideration.

Won't help unless they know that the same teacher is teaching it in subsequent years using the same materials, and they know something about the quality of those materials.

Gandalf wrote:

Getting high marks in high school CS doesn't mean you'll do well in university CS. But, on the other hand, consider someone who takes ICS4M and gets 60%. That person more than likely has a much lower chance of doing well in first year CS than someone who gets 80-100.

A low ICS4M mark is more meaningful, perhaps. How often are these given out? I would think that ICS3M acts as a sort of screen. But I'm only seeing the records of people with 80+ high school averages.

Quote:

High school CS does mean something. If you count high school calculus for something, then you should do the same for high school CS.

The situations are not comparable. There are more teachers qualified to teach calculus, there's less variation in how it is taught, and more connection between the subject in high school and in university. But, yes, under the new Ontario curriculum, performance in Vectors and Calculus is less relevant than it was for OAC Calculus.

[Andrew_R]

haha, wow this topic has completely gone off on a tangent... I'd have to side with Gandalf though, at least for a group of students in the same class, with the same teacher. The ones who get higher marks are obviously going to do better then the other students... Also, I completely disagree with that "paper", or whatever you guys decided it was. Learning the basics like variables, arrays, functions, all that jazz is definitely going to serve as a good intro for university. I know what I've learned in CS has helped me understand syntax and structure in other languages... I can't see how someone with no prior experience would do better at least.

[[Gandalf]]

Prabhakar Ragde @ 2009-04-30, 7:21 am wrote:

Gandalf wrote:

Getting high marks in high school CS doesn't mean you'll do well in university CS. But, on the other hand, consider someone who takes ICS4M and gets 60%. That person more than likely has a much lower chance of doing well in first year CS than someone who gets 80-100.

A low ICS4M mark is more meaningful, perhaps. How often are these given out? I would think that ICS3M acts as a sort of screen. But I'm only seeing the records of people with 80+ high school averages.

Marks below 70 in high school ICS4M are pretty common, at least in my experience. It's just that those students don't normally end up going to university for CS, never mind Waterloo or similar.

As I remember, the people who are good students but don't take a real interest in CS get 70s, maybe 80s. The people with higher marks are those that have taken a liking to programming, at least. That leaves everyone else below the low 70s range. These are people who took ICS3M and decided that it was worth continuing, for whatever reason.

[Prabhakar Ragde]

Andrew_R @ Thu Apr 30, 2009 8:22 am wrote:

Also, I completely disagree with that "paper", or whatever you guys decided it was. Learning the basics like variables, arrays, functions, all that jazz is definitely going to serve as a good intro for university. I know what I've learned in CS has helped me understand syntax and structure in other languages... I can't see how someone with no prior experience would do better at least.

The blog post was a well-written report on actual experience, authored by a talented and thoughtful student. You are dismissing it on what basis exactly?

For an earlier offering of that course, I computed the average final grade for students who had ICS3M and students who did not. The ones who did not have ICS3M did slightly better.

There are no variables and no arrays in that course. No assignment statements. No loops. No print statements. No reading from input. One of the most common complaints I heard from students with prior experience was "But I can only do one thing in a function! How do I do two things?"

For CIS 1500 at Guelph, you are probably right, your high school experience will help. It just won't help everywhere.

[tenniscrazy]

I read the article. I think that even if you do pick up some bad habits from high school, it can't be worse than not having any programming experience. I mean, how stubborn do you have to be to not be able to learn how to optimize code and comment and whatnot. but it's obvious that they need a much more regulated curriculum. I couldn't imagine working at a university and trying to decide how to weigh the comp sci marks of students applying. We have had sufficient comp sci teachers for most of high school who at least have a background in programming and computers, but i feel sorry for kids who don't

[Andrew_R]

Prabhakar Ragde, I don't think you understood me, I wasn't dismissing it, I just thought it was absolutely hilarious that people on here were arguing over the use of the term paper. I don't know, maybe it's just me. lol

[Andrew_R]

I mean, common! The whole computer science discussion has very little to do with the original topic (well a little, but not much), let alone a discussion on the proper use of "paper". I don't care at all, just think its funny

[SJ]

ok
1. andrew, i think you'll be fine for guelph. cross your fingers and sit tight.
2. i agree that high school cs is a good intro, but, each class in 3m and 4m has students with very different interests (ie those there for marks or those there for knowledge), and the teachers' skills vary too much, the material covered in different schools vary too much. this much variation means that you cannot guarantee anything about your performance in university. PR, if you look up the ics3m/4m grades for the top students in your class, i think they'll be similar to those of the bottom students you analyzed. Furthermore, I have a feeling that that holds for any 8 randomly selected students. if that's true, then that's a solid demonstration of how little the correlation is between high school cs grades and uni cs grades.

[Prabhakar Ragde]

Andrew_R @ Thu Apr 30, 2009 9:12 am wrote:

Prabhakar Ragde, I don't think you understood me, I wasn't dismissing it, I just thought it was absolutely hilarious that people on here were arguing over the use of the term paper.

If you think that, then maybe you should say that instead of what I quoted in my 8:40am post, which is pretty clearly dismissing the content of the blog post rather than being amused at how people are referring to it.

tenniscrazy wrote:

I read the article. I think that even if you do pick up some bad habits from high school, it can't be worse than not having any programming experience. I mean, how stubborn do you have to be to not be able to learn how to optimize code and comment and whatnot.

I love all this simple denial in the face of evidence. The social-science summatives you guys write must be about three sentences long.

There are many kinds of stubborn. You're thinking of the "won't apply prior knowledge" kind. You're not thinking of the "insists on applying prior knowledge when it doesn't apply" kind. Then there's the "There's no Microsoft certification in this so it's useless, but I need the diploma so I'm just going to try to pass the exams" kind, the "I can't posture about this with my online friends so I'm going to neglect my assignment in favour of something I can posture about" kind, and the "I can't Google the answer to this so obviously no one cares about it except my fellow students from whom I will get the answer" kind.

People with no prior experience tend to accept what's being taught, hunker down and do the work, and do well in the course.

[Prabhakar Ragde]

SJ @ Thu Apr 30, 2009 10:00 am wrote:

PR, if you look up the ics3m/4m grades for the top students in your class, i think they'll be similar to those of the bottom students you analyzed. Furthermore, I have a feeling that that holds for any 8 randomly selected students. if that's true, then that's a solid demonstration of how little the correlation is between high school cs grades and uni cs grades.

Yep. Graph attached (if I can get it to work). But that mark distribution among the top students doesn't negate the hypothesis "High school CS marks are a good predictor of university CS marks". Among the bottom students, it does.

[SJ]

true. interesting graph. i can't plot a curve to that haha. the data is pretty spread out (wow the bottom of the class actually failed by a lot!). now i'm just a little intimidated. i rmbr the lowest mark in my ics4m class was somewhere in the high 70s.

[Andrew_R]

Well guys, I got in, just thought I'd keep ya updated guess i might see u around somtime jernst!

[Dusk Eagle]

Congratulations Andrew!

[jernst]

Andrew_R @ Wed May 06, 2009 5:24 pm wrote:

Well guys, I got in, just thought I'd keep ya updated guess i might see u around somtime jernst!

Awesome, congrats...my office is on the third floor in one of the wireless labs, feel free to drop by sometime..ill probably be there everyday starting in sept.