I’m a senior in high school and I was just accepted to UChicago. I don’t have any computer science experience (never taken a course, whether online or at school), but I’m interested in the subject. Do I have to have previous computer science experience if I want to take computer science courses/possibly major in computer science at UChicago? Thanks in advance!
No experience required!
Confirm that. No experience required. A few noteworthy things to say about UChicago CS, in my opinion. It has been highly “theoretical” in the sense that courses focus on the “why” behind the software–particularly the math. This relates to how CS got started at UChicago. The second is that this focus is evolving away from such a pure theoretical focus to a combination of theoretical / practical. A third point to make is that CS is being invested in pretty heavily. This is evidence by, among other things, the renovation of the CS space in the CS library, the hiring of Michael Franklin from UC Berkeley as the new Department Chair, and a recently announced (April 2016) series of gifts from the Neubauer and Liew families to improve CS at UChicago. Bottom line for a novice CS person, I think these developments are favorable. Good luck to you.
No prior experiences are required. However the kids I know of who have graduated from the program were experienced programmers before entering and some have sold software before entering the college. You have to work double hard if you choose to enter the program without experience. Good luck.
What I understood about UChicago CS is he same as @kaukauna which is that is heavily theory based. In my mind this is a negative but it sounds like things may be changing there. Good luck!