Hi all,
I’m currently about to do my college applications from high school. I have been learning programming on my own on the side since many years ago, and have moved on to take a few master’s level and industry level courses on my choice of field online, including completing an edX MicroMaster’s program, which I found very easy, and a widely-recognized industry certificate (Side question: I’m considering taking two easier industry certs just to increase the quantity, so that I can have three sets of letters behind my name to make it more flashy - will this appeal more to colleges, or is it just a waste of time?). As of the moment, I know 12 different languages. Though I have considered going directly into the industry as a self-taught programmer, I don’t want to chance it, but I’m also afraid that I may not learn much if I were to take an undergraduate degree in Computer Science, as I have taken the AP CS class (supposedly an undergraduate-level class), and found it painfully boring. However, when I considered my options, I also noticed that most colleges don’t allow applications to their graduate school without an undergraduate degree from a related field. Is there a way to get around this? How do I show colleges that I am qualified to take their graduate program, and request for them to make an exception for me? When I call them on the phone or email them, they usually just repeat the rules, but I’m pretty sure it’s because the person answering the email or phone call doesn’t have the power to make an exception.
Thanks for your help!
Are you seriously comparing one boring AP CS class to entire 4 year program of CS major in college?
Then you are wrong. No AP class is extensive and thorough enough to make up for 4 year education. Also, boring classes are part of learning.
And No, you can’t get around the rules. Every graduate school requires bachelors.
I agree that your AP Computer Science class is in no way equivalent of a four-year college degree in computer science, and just because you were bored in a high school AP class doesn’t mean you’re ready to start graduate work in computer science. (For one, CS degrees are about way more than programming.) AP CS represents just one single very intro level class in a college CS curriculum.
Reputable graduate programs require an undergraduate degree. They’re called graduate degrees for a reason - they rely on a foundation of knowledge that you build in undergrad. They don’t really make exceptions for that. If a program was going to make a rare exception, it probably wouldn’t be for a high school senior who has taken one AP class and a bunch of online MOOCs (which most graduate degrees don’t give formal credit for yet, btw).
If you call a computer science department, the person who answers the phone is usually the departmental secretary. Departmental secretaries know everything - especially the ones who have been around for long time - because everything that happens in the department usually passes through their office at some point. If anyone has ever gotten in without an undergrad degree, they would know; so if they’re repeating the rules to you it’s because they’re trying to politely tell you that you’ve got to follow them.
If you called the admissions office…same thing. They’d know if a high school student was admitted straight to a master’s program without a college degree.
Concentrate on finding colleges with computer science degrees. If you’re this great, you should have no problem gaining admission to a CS BA program and finishing it up.
(Also, quantity of the “letters behind your name” doesn’t matter; the content and quality of the letters matters. This is especially true if the two additional certificates are essentially the same thing just with a different name or institution.)
AP CS is prob about the same level as half of the first CS course at UCLA. Lol you’ll need a CS degree. It’s so much more than “programming”
The posters above have given some excellent advice. It also stood out to me that you kept mentioning programming and how many languages you know, so I’m going to expand on @10s4life’s comment that CS is more than programming.
Computer science != programming. Yes, the study of CS often involves some amount of programming, but programming is simply a tool used in CS, it’s not the foundation of it. I think it’s great that you have so much interest and experience in programming, and I’m not saying that wouldn’t be beneficial if you pursue a CS degree, but you seem to be conflating CS with programming. CS is an applied math degree that examines the foundations of computing–things like data structures, algorithms, graph theory, logic, etc. It is not a degree whose goal is to teach people how to program. If you have a penchant for high-level and occasionally abstract applied math, then CS might be a good choice for you. If you don’t, then it wouldn’t.
Graduate study in CS builds upon these topics. Unless you have a good foundation in these things, it’s unlikely you’d be admitted to any graduate program, especially if you don’t have a technical undergraduate degree.
I agree with everything that’s been said above, especially about CS not being the same as programming.
Look, I’m going to level with you. No high school student is so advanced that they know everything they’d learn in a BS or BA Computer Science degree. The high school I went to offers courses in parallel computing, artificial intelligence, computer vision, etc. There are students there that have taken all the CS courses, and done research and courses above that, and guess what, they still go and get a CS undergraduate degree, and realize that they have barely scratched the surface. You are not qualified to go into a graduate program.
How many languages you know also does not matter. What languages you need to use on the job will change over the years, and the languages themselves evolve. At both of my internships (one as a research mathematician, one as a software developer), I had to learn languages I had not programmed in before, and quickly, in order to be productive and get my assignments done. In the job I’ll have after I graduate in May (BS in CS and Math, with 2 performing arts minors), I’ll have to learn and be able to use/understand many, many, more, some of which most programmers have probably never even heard of. When I graduated high school, I probably knew about 8 languages. At this point, I’ve used (for class, on my own, or for an internship) more than 20 languages. And I expect I’ll probably have to use dozens more over the course of my career (which isn’t even as a software developer; I’ll be doing specialized, technical work that involves both math and CS skills).
To give you an idea of how much there is in CS, here’s what’s covered in just the senior major seminar at my university (Design and Implementation of Programming languages). One of the main goals is to learn important principles and issues in programming language design. For this, we learned in detail how the following languages work, why certain choices were made, how these produce what some may see as quirks in a given language, and how this creates strength and weaknesses. The languages were: Fortran, Pascal, Ada, Smalltalk, C++/Java, Lisp/Scheme, and Python. We had to be able to program in Smalltalk and Scheme (all majors also already know Java and C++ at this point), and be able to understand/trace through the others. We had to be able to produce pseudocode of what happens when a function is called or finishes, know how run-time stack, heap, and memory in general are laid out in each language, and covered important features in block, functional, procedural, and object-oriented languages. We also studied formal languages, compilers/interpreters, and various important computability theory topics, such as the Halting Problem. All of these topics were covered in depth, and the smallest details, including exceptions to rules, tested. This is just a brief summary of what we covered. While this course does cover more than other courses in our major, this just shows how much is in a CS major. We’ve already had 3 years of rigorous courses in various topics (computer architecture, algorithms, computer security, etc), and there’s still this much that we have to learn. As tough as this course is, it’s nothing compared to graduate studies.
You can get a lot of credit through the CLEP and AP programs and graduate in less than 4 years, but an undergraduate degree is still required.
Note that such credit by exam (CLEP, AP, IB) is for lower level courses in college. Major-specific graduate programs (like CS) generally assume knowledge and skills that one learns in upper level undergraduate courses in that major.
It’s a waste of time. It’s like a welding certificate for someone going for a mechanical engineering degree, or a First Responder license for a prospective MD. It may show enthusiasm, but is not a meaningful preparation.
Yes, there is a way to get around this. You just have to convince a university to stake its reputation on the idea that a high school kid can compete at their school with top undergraduate degree holders. And that is very, very hard. Off the top of my head, I know of only one person in recent decades who pulled that off.
As others have repeatedly noted, you learn a LOT in undergrad, but I feel it needs to be emphasized that even if you DID somehow learn all that on your own, you would still need to demonstrate that knowledge so thoroughly that they would risk their individual and collective reputations on you. And you would need to do so in the face of the understanding that for every person who CAN make that jump, there are thousands who believe it, but are wrong. And that means demonstrating it in a public, verifiable, impressive way. Publications, patents, etc. 12 languages and finding AP CS easy are not nearly enough.