As always, another wandering soul~

[cheese_cake]

SOooo, i got into waterloo CS (i applied so because my teacher encouraged me & i had an interest in computers) but i still am not entirely sure of what i want to do in the future. however, i most definitely want to going into something which would allow me to develop things, preferably physical things. i guess my biggest concern is what my options are. i took a look at the plans offered & they seem rather narrow... i suppose i'll start by asking what i could branch out to without transferring (unless transferring does gives me much more options).

i am also curious as to what kind of jobs a CM student could start with or eventually hope to get.

[Tony]

CS is rather flexible in terms of the number and types of elective courses that you could take. Enrollment into Engineering classes will likely be restricted by capacity though.

As for developing physical things -- look into picking up an Arduino dev kit http://www.arduino.cc/

[cheese_cake]

aside from electives, i was wondering about what route/programs/plans would open more career options. like, according to (http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/current/courses/checklistsandsequences.shtml#checklists) i seem to be restricted to computer science, bio informatics, business, digital hardware, software engineering.

is there a simple way to understand what i could possibly do in the form of a tech-tree similar to those in games?

[Tony]

cheese_cake @ Mon Jun 06, 2011 2:49 pm wrote:

bio informatics, business, digital hardware, software engineering.

Besides options, you could also pick up a minor in just about every discipline.

It's all essentially electives. It's just that a certain combination of electives will add an "with an option/minor in ..." to your degree. Though if you are in co-op, your work experience will have a _far_ greater impact on your career opportunities, than what your degree will say.

[cheese_cake]

should i just go with the flow & see what pops up @_@?

[Tony]

You will still have the core courses of your major keeping you in check. For the rest of them -- my personal suggestion is to take a course from every other program, and see what interests you.

I found that I enjoy Philosophy and some Psychology. Ninja edit: and I wouldn't have thought of either when first applying to Universities.

[cheese_cake]

you you by any chance know what (http://ugradcalendar.uwaterloo.ca/page/MATH-Digital-Hardware-Option-1) would eventually lead to?

[Tony]

You'll get to... take the ECE courses listed. Presumably you'll get to go a step closer to the hardware than a typical CS student. I can't really say much more.

[cheese_cake]

are that a lot of people who are admitted into uW CS(regular/co-op) each year? roughly how many? & what academic averages do they tend to sport?

[Tony]

I thought it was maybe ~400 at Waterloo. After the first 2 years, about half will not continue to pursue a Computer Science major (so upper year classes get to be reasonably small in size). Academic averages at admission time would be the published "cut-off" mark and up.

[cheese_cake]

oh sorry, i meant to ask what averages they get while at waterloo.

[Tony]

~15% drop from the admission average is typical. Some profs would try to adjust the curve so that their class would average out at ~70% (which is considered to be a decent mark). 80%+ means that you are doing really well.

[cheese_cake]

ic... & for those who decide not to continue with a computer science major, what is usually the reason? where do they usually go? also, how about drop out rates in the math faculty?

[Tony]

The drop-out is defined as "no longer pursuing", but that also includes everyone who simply changed to a different major. First year is pretty much the same for everybody in Math, so it's fairly easy to switch to a variety of other programs. Some might find their electives to be interesting enough to change the major. And naturally some simply can't keep up with the workload or find CS to not be what they imagined it to be. I don't know what the breakdown of those reasons is, or what the numbers average out to be for the whole faculty.

[cheese_cake]

say i want to do a minor, is there a checklist available ?