Am I prepared for a CS major?

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>Ok, I am a senior planning in studying at a university, probably computer science. I feel I am pretty prepared for a CS major, but I wanted someone else's opinion, preferably someone who has worked in the software industry for a decent amount of time.</p>

<p>Here is my "resume", if you could call it that:</p>

<p>High school math up to Honors Precalculus (All As)</p>

<p>University Computer Science course in the language Scheme at the Institute of Math and Computer Science (IMACS)</p>

<p>Engineering Scholars Program at FAU twice:
Web Design with AJAX - final grade A
Android App Development with Java - final grade A</p>

<p>Florida Virtual School Computer Programming 1 and 2 (Python and Java) - final grades - A</p>

<p>Math SAT - 680</p>

<p>How prepared am I? I want your honest opinion. Also, is there anything I could do to be more prepared for a CS major?</p>

2

<p>Did you have to put a lot of effort into programming, or did it come ‘naturally’. When you got stuck (as we all do), were you able to resolve it with help from the web or by reading documentation, or was it ‘OMG time’??? How did you compare to your peers? </p>

<p>And, of course… Do you know what Fry’s is :)</p>

3

<p>I don’t mean to brag, but the majority of programming came naturally. The only thing I really got stuck on was making programs that drew stuff… I have terrible spatial reasoning skills. I’m pretty good with algorithms. The majority of programming problems I was able to solve myself, but some of the time I had to turn to the web. I really don’t like freaking out over a program not working… I like to save the “OMG time” for the big things in life. I think I could hold my own with my peers, although I had some damn smart kids in my Scheme class.</p>

4

<p>There’s drawing and there’s drawing. Typically one uses some kind of library to do the heavy lifting (OpenGL, etc) so it’s more what to draw, not how to draw it. We don’t draw all that much at the low level. Heck, last time I drew pixels the President was busy invading some place :slight_smile: And I do user interface code for a living.</p>

<p>The natural part can’t be overstated. CS is all about seeing the forest and the trees, zooming in and out as needed. Most people generally see one or the other.</p>

5

<p>Looks like you have plenty of computing and programming experience that should help you with the introductory CS courses.</p>

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<p>Did this course use this book?
[Welcome</a> to the SICP Web Site](<a href=“http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/]Welcome”>http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/)</p>