<p>I have heard computer science requires alot of self studying. How much freetime do you think one can get majoring in CS at a school like UCLA or berkeley? and still end up with good grades?</p>
<p>My uncle and his friend were telling me that CS will require so much studying that you will rarely have time to go out and have fun...</p>
<p>Is this true? I still want to have freetime and fun besides studying in college but I really want to be a CS major at a great school...</p>
<p>Depends on the individual really. I’ve never really had to study that much for CS classes at Berkeley but math and physics on the other hand required hours of “digestion” and tinkering.</p>
<p>Ya this is a really hard question to answer. There’s a huge difference in how long it takes a great programmer to get something working vs. an average one (or even a good one for that matter). </p>
<p>I didn’t have any programming experience before I went to college, so the classes were fairly time consuming for me. Still though, I knew people that needed a lot more time than I did, as well as kids that finished all of their assignments the day they were assigned and just chilled out for a couple weeks after :P</p>
<p>If you haven’t programmed before and/or haven’t shown any special aptitude for problem solving/algorithms, I think you can expect CS to take a pretty substantial amount of your time. However, I think everyone still manages to go out on Friday/Saturday nights (for the most part).</p>
<p>Also, I think CS majors tend to spend a lot less time studying and a lot more time programming. For more theoretical classes, still there is generally not a lot of pure information to know, its more about how cleverly you can apply the things you’ve learned to new problems that come up on exams, etc.</p>
<p>spending 30 hours studying for a midterm won’t be as helpful as it would for a history exam.</p>
<p>I agree 100% with BigMike. For the more theoretical classes, it depends less on studying and more on how cleverly you apply your algorithms/proofs etc.</p>
<p>Most assignments have to do with understanding and sometimes implementing algorithms. The concepts you have to learn don’t usually take up much space in a book, so there really isn’t much reading; however, it can take quite some time to wrap your head around a particular idea. The most time-consuming part of the major, for most people, is translating an algorithm from paper to code. If you can boost your programming skills a little during your free time your assignments will take much less effort.</p>