Waterloo Computer Science without Computer Science in High School???!

[sunnydee]

Hello,

I am applying to waterloo computer science course. I have a very good average and high marks in all my math courses (Advanced Functions and Data Management). My high school dosen't offer a computer science course and I was wondering how hard it will be for me in my first year of university since I will be so far behind? Any advice would be appreciated!

-Will

[wtd]

Read some tutorials here. Challenge yourself to learn a programming language. See if you like it.

Of course, programming isn't what Computer Science is about, but programming languages are the language of CS.

[Tony]

Since Computer Science quality differs so much among high schools, most Universities try to have minimal requirements for the first year. In some cases it will be harder (if you need to start from the very basics) and in some cases it will be easier (sometimes no CS is better than bad CS. Some high schools teach bad CS). If you are interested in the subject and put in the work, you can quickly catch up.

[sunnydee]

Alright thanks alot guys!

[hallowon]

If you are going for the Waterloo Computer Science course. It is better you don't take High School CS. The curriculum is very much different than what you learn in 1A waterloo. Many people who took High School CS and excelled at it, including me, ended up not doing too well in CS 135, not to bad either. The Ontario curriculumn is more based on imperative languages. Racket(aka Scheme) is a functional language. The only thing you should ever bring to the CS 135 is determination, logical thinking and hard work.

[Ultrahex]

I agree with tony on this for sure, there is some high-schools that teach CS well, others that really do not. Unlike hallowon I did extremely well in CS 135 but maybe my own learning was very different then normal for highschool though.

[A.J]

I disagree with hallowon. I feel that high school CS gives you a huge advantage for some of the university level CS courses, in the sense that you learn how to code in a language (so you get a feel of programming). The CS145 class teaches you a completely new functional language called Scheme (and so do CS115 and CS135). CS145 goes into C a bit (memory management, garbage collection, etc...), and the other courses just focus on Scheme.

Having said that, there are still people who haven't done CS before and take it in their first year, as Scheme is a completely new language for most people and because the classes start at a pretty basic level (as they assume that you haven't programmed before). So you should be fine.

[Cool.Breeze]

I wouldn't worry about it. I finished with a 91 in CS 135 and I didn't take any computer science in high school. I did have to work really hard though.

[Sur_real]

Not to hijack your thread but I didn't think this warrants a new topic...

anyways...I was just wondering, did Waterloo just upped the admission average for comp sci or has it always been mid-80s? I swear it was low-80s last year...
here's the link.
I'm sh*tting my pants right now cuz my average is in the mid-80s atm.

[Tony]

It might have been "low to mid 80s". It's all rather vague and changes from year to year, as the published numbers are the cutoffs that happened _last_ year. The year you're applying will depend on all the other students that are also applying that year.

[Sur_real]

that's true...for the last few years, the admission averages were always the same so I thought this year would not differ. I guess more and more people are applying to comp sci at waterloo so they raised the avg this year.