Son is taking some comp sci classes.
Just wondering, is the CS 2110 OO programming and data structures
a course that is intended to “weed out” CS students ?
My son was admitted, IMO, on the strength of his liberal arts and social science skills,
originally intending to study economics. He is considering transfer to ENG to study CS.
I myself have a degree in CS ( from many years ago). Appears to me that this class covers
a great deal of material, teaches little (left students to figure out everything on their own, TAs said
to google entire subjects covered in the class because they did not know the subject well). While
he did well in CS 1110, CS 2110 was much much tougher.
Also the required math and science classes have been tough for him.
As a parent, I wrestle with advice I might provide.
On one hand, he gets amazing feedback from Econ profs, yet
struggling with STEM classes.
On the other hand, hard to tell a kid not to focus on stem,
nor focus what he likes (even if not his greatest strength).
Kind of goes against today’s conventional wisdom to advise
him to stay with econ, and he was getting bored with subjects where he
was very strong.
So wondering how much of his struggles is Cornell rigor,
or classes intended to weed out, or is he just heading down the
wrong path. To a certain extent, If I knew he wanted this path,
might have sent him to another smaller school where he would get more
personal attention and learn more as a result. I think he can pass classes
at Cornell, but not sure he is learning enough due to falling behind his peers
in these classes, and due to the typical large college neglect of fresh/sophs in
intro classes. I am wondering if this will only get worse in terms if difficulty,
and he’ll ne sorry he switched? I assume the personal attention issue may improve
with smaller upper level classes, but not sure that will overcome the difficulty
he has faced. That said, yes I know ENG students at many colleges are used to
struggle and bad grades after hard work. Maybe this has little to do with Cornell nor my
son, and just ENG education style.
I don’t know about this particular class because my own kids didn’t attend Cornell, but one of my older child’s best friends went in to Cornell for CS. This kid was brilliant and chose CS because it wasn’t a typical female type of program. She thought choosing it as a major would better her chances for acceptance. She wound up failing one or two of these “weed out” classes, as her parents called them and being dropped from the program and the school. She returned home and attended community college for one year and then reapplied to Cornell in a different program. She eventually graduated from C and now does scientific research of some sort but never took another CS class again.
2110 isn’t necessarily the ‘weed out’ class; most of the assignments revolve around implementing and then using data structures–the implementation is taught in lecture and many times the professor will give students the ‘pseudo-code’ or several ideas for implementing these structures in Java. 2110 is a class that gives students the background they need to starting writing real-world programs and, in a sense, get in the mindset of a computer scientist.
The main weed-out classes are 3110 and 3410. 3110 is the more popular ‘weed-out’ class because that’s when students get involved in functional programming. 3410 is involved with systems organization and works on topics like computer logic, memory etc.
As for 2110 TAs, most TAs I went to for assignment help knew how to help me with problems without giving me the answer, which I found invaluable. The professor came off a little rude at times but was always there for help too. I never saw anyone tell a student to google any answers, although I’m sure there are some TAs that don’t take as much time as they should to help students. I feel this is less prevalent in 2110 since almost all the assignments have been basically unchanged for the past 5-10 years; so TAs/professors usually know the common issues students will have and how to work on it.
Part of his problem was taking 2110 in summer, moving through the material very fast, and probably not the usual set of TAs as they would have in fall or spring. He was mostly on his own with the TAs and the pace is so fast in summer, little time to think and reflect, you just move from topic to topic. He regrets doing this in summer.
His problem is that he was guided to take certain classes, and then formally apply to transfer into COE.
Timing of the transfer app dictates when you can stop taking courses in your prior college (must take at least 1 each semester to be in “good standing”. He has to either have one foot in each school unti he is sure, or make the leap having not made it through the weed out classes.
I tried to guide him towards CAS instead of COE so he has the option of CS or ECON, instead of
moving from ILR to COE, where he may face having to transfer colleges yet again, if this does not work out for him. He preferred more math/science, less foreign language (despite his stronger liberal arts skills). He’s gone far down this road, taking Chem and registered for physics, not taking any foreign language so far.
My daughter was initially accepted to CAS and just recently transfered to COE (taking 2110 now in summer school). It’s very difficult to keep a foot in both places because the requirements are so demanding. She gets better grades in liberal arts classes than most of the engineering classes but this is what she wants. I think the students need to decide for themselves unless they’re failing and need serious intervention.
The bar for GPA has been considerably lowered since high school
@Renomamma Our kids are probably in the same class right now, finishing their last project !
As far as GPA, this is fairly typical of ENG colleges. I went to a very similar university, and the
kids in their COE usually graduated with a full 1.0 GPA lower than A&S.
I am OK with the grades, and I agree unless failing no reason to stop them from pursuing their dream.
Just hard to listen to the struggles after getting a “Dean’s list” congrats in ILR.
The grades in ILR were starting off almost as good as HS, but clearly not going to happen in COE.
I can live with that if my kid can. The only thing that concerns me is he was always talking PhD,
which made sense for him in Econ that he had been pursuing, but with lower grades in COE,
I don’t see that happening.
Also as a CS graduate myself, I was very impressed with how much material is covered in the course,
but very upset as a tuition paying parent at how little “teaching” is done vs self-teaching.
I have another son at another engineering college, and they have “instructors”. Not all teachers are
researchers there, less graduate focus. Also ILR seemed better in that respect, much more personal
attention from profs.
Yes they must be in the same class@blevine! Final project is tomorrow:) This course is apparently very time-consuming during the school year so there isn’t nearly enough time to teach it all in 6 weeks. Hence, my D and her friend have been spending a lot of time with TAs in office hours learning what can’t be taught in class.
Sorry I don’t know what to tell you about your son’s situation. If he’s confident in his decision, that’s probably right for him. If he wants your advice, then by all means give it. If you intervene more than he wants it may not have a positive effect anyhow.
Best of luck. It will all turn out fine.
PS a lot of people go on to get very good jobs in engineering and CS without graduate degrees these days.
I would advise him to stay in CAS to possibly double major in CS and Econ instead of transferring to COE. COE is very hard, especially CS. If he knows for sure he wants to be a developer or an engineer then it may be a better school for him, but if he should want to go into consulting or finance, he will need 3.5 GPA or better to be considered.
OP - you have a CS degree, so you know it takes a certain mindset to be a good programmer. You need to be analytical, very detail oriented because you are programming for that .001% of possible failure. Some people can see the solution right away and some just never get there. I have been managing high level programmers for 15+ years, and I do not think it is for everyone.
@oldfort He is in ILR, due to his interests 3 years ago when visiting campus in HS. He says after a few classes that his interests have changed. We discussed transfer TO CAS or COE to focus on CS, and math. He seems to have lost interest in econ, mainly due to the classes not being challenging at all to him. He wants more challenge and hands on accomplishment.
He wants to go COE since he already tool lots of liberal arts, soc sci and bus classes, wants all STEM now. He took AP Calc in HS and got a 5.
He took an MIT MOOC (intro programming in Python). Has since done ok in multivariate calc and learned java on campus this summer.
He wont be on deans list in COE as he was in ILR, but he’s ok with that. He has no interest in finance/mgmt consulting career, though grades are always helpful to open doors immediately after graduating, for many reasons.
I personally think at another U he could do CS no problem, but I am concerned Cornell is a huge challenge. I am also concerned he gave up econ where he was an outstanding student, but hard to steer a kid from CS to Econ, given where the jobs are upon graduation.
DS took this class last spring. I do think it is a tough class. I also heard that his prof said that these are basic classes and students need to score well on this since rest of CS builds on it. Data structure is very fundamental to understanding CS and is very abstract to understand. So, I think some of the challenge is course itself. I suspect that would be true for any univ - not just Cornell.
Also, you can do CS from CAS - you don’t have to transfer to Engg - which has it’s own pre-reqs. If he ever decides to do Econ, being in CAS will help to change majors easily - rather than transfer.
