<p>Son has been waitlisted at SCS, wondering what the chances are.</p>
<p>Is the CS major going to be really hard (weed out)? Son loves programming (he is a web designer and iPhone app developer) but is quite laid back when it comes to doing school work.</p>
<p>I am wondering if CMU CS major is sooo good that he should drop WashU and USC and go to CMU if he gets in!!!!</p>
<p>In my opinion, when it comes to CS, no matter which school, it’s gonna be hard. Expect to work 40 hours per week if you want to graduate in 4 years and maintain an OK GPA.</p>
<p>It probably won’t feel that hard if your son loves it.</p>
<p>what were your son’s gpa and test scores?</p>
<p>3.5ish…2180…35…800,790.</p>
<p>I will be a freshman in fall too at CMU and I love programming as well. AP CS was a cakewalk, I slack off in school (moreso now) I also develop apps for Android and iPhone and I have been programming for 6 years now.</p>
<p>Why I am not doing CS and why your son should start doing work:
CS is NOT programming. My cousin at MIT told me that if I was going to be a CS major at one of the best CS schools in the world, I was gonna have to cut the ***** and work hard because I would not be just a code monkey and I was technically taking a math major.</p>
<p>His words were reconfirmed on a class I took. CS is REALLY about algorithms, data manipulation, encryption and math requirements up the a**. CS really doesn’t care what language you program in or if you can program at all. </p>
<p>You need CS to be a good programmer, and its idiotic to think you will be learning “programming” for 4 years. </p>
<p>As for his chances - I keep getting told that as long as you get an A in Intro to Programming (the weed out course I suppose, I know Intro to ECE is the weed out course for ECE majors) he can switch into CS.</p>
<p>I hate to be a buzzkill here but chances of getting in off the waitlist at ANY school, let alone CMU SCS are very small indeed.</p>
<p>I am going to be a freshman at SCS next year and when I attended an info session one of the first questions asked was about transfering into SCS. He very bluntly said that it is extremely rare for anyone to transfer into SCS, usually only about 3 or 4 transfer per year due to the number of requirements.</p>
<p>Hi Rewind…you made me laugh!! I know what you meant and my kid has heard this from me before.</p>