What should I look for in a Computer Science course?

[SebKom]

Hello people! My first post here, asking for your help, I have been following the blog for a long time though. Oh, almost forgot: I am Greek, hope it doesn't matter...

Well, I am not really sure on how to begin this thread but I will do my best. Here we go:

I am a greek high school graduate and I am currently doing a foundation course in UK. I was planning to stay on the university I am right now and follow their Computer Science course but, after around 2 weeks here, I am having some doubts about my final decision. Good thing is that I can transfer to some other Universities. Bad thing is that my high school marks aren't that good for the so called "good" universities and they are most probably not accepting me after a foundation year neither.

You may wonder why I didn't stay in Greece: The fact is that 90% of the greek universities are really bad and it's difficult to get into the reamining 10% (mainly because it reduces to around 2 or 3 choices if ie you only want to study Computing/IT).

You may also wonder why I am dissapointed about the university I am currently in: Well, it's only a foundation year but my idea of a good university consists of teaching staff that are really interested in you and are always there to hear you and generally consider you as someone with ambitions. Things weren't like that and today it got worse: We had our first Programming Lab and to my great disappointment we were "thrown" in a big class with PCs, were given a bunch of papers with C++ examples (but no explanation, just the code) and were told to write what we read. So, I spent two hours of my life copying C++ code without understanding 99% of it. I understood 1% of it, but that's because of my knowledge and if it is about to go on like this I can return to Greece and spend my family's money in another way...

So, here I am, alone in UK with no idea on what to do. I am really disappointed that I sometimes think it was a big mistake coming here. It's not just a money matter, it's that I am probably wasting a year of my life.

I am really lost as you can probably understand. Any piece of advice?

P.S 1: I don't want to write the university's name, just in case I am really wrong about it.

P.S 2: Only encouraging thing is that Steve Jobs had eduaction "issues" too so I can hope...

[Dan]

Most of the users here are from canada so i am not shure how much adivce we can give you on what university or corse is better then another in the UK.

Since it is only your first programming lab, i suggest trying to hold out a bit longer and see how it goses. It could just be that is how the prof is introducing you to the IDE and everment and in later labs you will be going threw each line of the code and expaling it.

If university education is anything like it is in canada you are not going to find a big diffrence simpley chaning universitys. It could be that you are in the worng program for what intrests you. It might help if you say what you know to do affter university or for a job in the futtuer.

[SebKom]

I am not asking about university suggestions, I am just trying to understand what's wrong, me or the specific course.

Regarding my future plans, I am not quite sure, I am only 18 years old. BioInformatics Research sounds interesting but I don't really know.

[Tony]

Well the first year is generally pretty simple. It could seem like a waste of time, but you can take this opportunity to adjust to the University life, in a new country it appears.

I think it might be a good idea to find some upper year students from your program of study, and talk with them for a bit. Find out what kind of things you'll get to do later, and see if things change for better. Or not.

[SebKom]

Tony @ Thu Oct 04, 2007 4:42 am wrote:

I think it might be a good idea to find some upper year students from your program of study, and talk with them for a bit. Find out what kind of things you'll get to do later, and see if things change for better. Or not.

That's what others also told me to do so I think I will follow your/their advice.

But, apart from that, are there any general standards for a CompSci course to be good?