My son is a junior in high school this year and is considering Brown for Computer Science. I noticed on Brown’s site that the department is not very large. There are so many interesting classes in the bulletin and many seem to be offered this semester. Can anyone tell me if the classes actually fill and are held since there aren’t that many students. Are the classes that you want easy to get? How many students are typically in Comp Sci courses?
Who is doing the teaching? Is it professors and grad students? Are the undergrad TA’s there to run just the discussion sections for the INTRO courses?
Do the classes actually fill? Haha. My daughter is finishing her junior year and I don’t think she has had a course in her CS major that is fewer than 50 students. Yes, courses are pretty easy to get because the ones students would be taking the first couple of years are rarely capped. I think my daughter just encountered her first instance of a CS class that is capped for next fall because of classroom size.
Teaching is always done by professors in the CS Department. There are relatively few grad students at Brown, and the undergraduate TA program is what keeps the department running. The UTAs run the labs and review sessions, hold office hours and grade homework, projects and exams. This allows the professors to teach the courses at a rigorous level and the students to get a lot out of the classes because with the unending cycles of homeworks, labs, projects and exams, there are always UTAs providing support. In the first year CS classes there are office hours every day of the week, sometimes even including Saturday and Sunday. The Undergraduate TAs also run upper level courses (I don’t know if it’s all of them or just some). It works.
Here is the course website for the 2nd semester of the first year intro class CS 18 http://cs.brown.edu/courses/csci0180/home.xml
I would challenge you to to find a computer science program that is better designed, with better student support and more fun than Brown’s. My daughter and her friends wouldn’t trade it for anywhere.
Glad to hear your daughter is having such a great experience. How do the students decide on a particular focus within the department? There are so many fabulous sounding courses to choose from. Is the advising a help in that respect?
I think the decision on a specific focus is very individual. Advisors are probably more helpful in supporting an interest rather than discovering one. Some students come in knowing they love graphics or economics/computer science, for example, while others will discover an interest through courses, guest lectures, and research and internships. I’d like to ask my daughter this question, but she’s quite swamped with final exams and projects right now!
It’s not based on a ton of information, but I have a very good impression of Brown’s CS department.
I would give it a serious look.
Thank you. Best of luck to her!