I hear that CS at CMU is very stressful and rigorous in general. Would it be even more so for those with no prior CS experience before attending? Is it disadvantage when many students have had a lot of prior experience already?
No prior experience in CS? No, not really. No prior experience in Math? Yes. Hell Yes. But you probably won’t get accepted if you lack Math.
If you don’t have credit for AP CS, you will have to take intro to programming course, which has significantly more work, but it doesn’t really give you a disadvantage.
If you are a CS major with no 5 in AP CS, your first CS class will be 15-112. The course website is one of the first results if you google that number, and if you look in the schedule, you can pretty much see exactly what you will be getting into. (There’s even videos)
Mathwise: Generally (nearly everyone) has taken AP Calc, a few students have taken higher
Prior Experience wise: Around 20% of incoming CS doesn’t have significant programming experience – your first class will be 15112 – this is a pretty fast paced class, but after it you’re at the same “playing ground” as everyone else, so there is no real difference