<p>Are there things you can do to improve your chances to get into a university's computer science program such as writing an app, developing a program, etc. or is it more that you get into the university, and you're in the program you want to be in? Thanks for any ideas.</p>
<p>It depends on the college. Carnegie Mellon has a separate school so it’s (probably) helpful to have done specifically computer science stuff in high school. Some schools (Berkeley, U of Washington that I know of) don’t have room for all would-be comp sci majors. But most places it’s not really an issue. That said, this is what my son did in high school: (He got into Carnegie Mellon and Harvard, but not MIT or Stanford.)</p>
<ul>
<li>took AP Comp Sci as a freshman</li>
<li>taught himself Linux</li>
<li>worked through some of MIT’s open courseware</li>
<li>took a course in Computer Graphics at Columbia sophomore year summer</li>
<li>job shadowed for a week sophomore year at his uncle’s company (they do websites and databases mostly)</li>
<li>impressed them so much that week he ended up working for them, part time during the school year full time during the summer (learned SQL) did work for some very well known firms</li>
<li>worked on a mod for Civilization 4 which got named the best mod that year by Gamer magazine</li>
<li>did some computer modeling for a Chemistry professor that got acknowledged in a paper and still is being used by that lab and other labs</li>
</ul>
<p>Oh and he played way, way too many computer games! I don’t think you need to do nearly this much - he was a bit obsessed.</p>
<p>It depends on the college what’s needed for admissions.</p>
<p>I think for almost all colleges the student doesn’t need any experience in programming and certainly doesn’t need to submit a program they’ve written. </p>
<p>This means it generally comes down to admission to the Uni in general with sometimes an extra cut to be admitted to the CS program (or School of Engineering if that’s where the CS program for the particular Uni resides). By extra step I mean sometimes higher scores. By scores I mean SAT/ACT, HS GPA, SAT Subject tests, and possibly some decent AP test scores and a rigorous HS curriculum to show the ability and willingness to be a hard worker.</p>
<p>Exactly what thresholds are needed of the above will vary by the particular Uni with the more selective colleges having a higher bar for admissions.</p>
<p>Even though one generally doesn’t actually need any programming experience to be admitted to the CS program, and they generally don’t need any before starting classes, it doesn’t hurt for them to have some before they actually start classes to help them be more competitive with classmates who have prior experience. After a semester or two it usually all levels out between those who started with some prior programming experience and those who didn’t. </p>
<p>Note the keywords of ‘usually’, ‘generally’, ‘almost’. To know more specifics see if you can glean more from the websites of the particular colleges of interest.</p>
<p>The best advice IMO - do as well as he can on the SAT/ACT and HS GPA to help position himself as best he can to get admitted where he wants.</p>
<p>BTW even Carnegie Mellon, a top comp sci program, accepts some students each year that have no experience at all. They recognize that some student really haven’t had much opportunity. If you haven’t had a parent, or gone to a summer camp, or been able to take a class to get you started, you are much less likely to have been sucked in. My son started learning Visual Basic in 2nd grade because he got curious about a program dh was working on at home for his lab. He was lucky to have a parent who could show him some things before he got good enough to teach himself.</p>
<p>I think for state schools you don’t need to have experience, but for tippy top schools you have to compete with so many talented kids you will be at a disadvantage without any experience.</p>
<p>DS only applied for comp sci some five years ago, and while he landed the one school he really wanted, we were no closer to determining what got him in there and what held him back at some of the others. His general credentials - ACT 35 and school rank in the top 5 out of about 350 were good, and a host of math/sci/comp sci APs starting from 9th grade with all 5s. His LORs were presumably good, he had his share of volunteering activities, and he had a dozens of math/gen sci/comp sci related activities from elementary school onwards, as well as a summer job as a programmer that he secured through an employer he met discussing his project in a local science contest, and his own SAT Math and ACT math/sci tutorial company that he ran. He was also full pay which we thought may also give him a boost.</p>
<p>However he was rejected outright by several schools; most surprising to us was Stanford given that his essay specifically outlined the influence of that school in shaping his interests. It was at their EPGY program that he formally learned programming; it was through the books of Donald Knuth that he learned the difference between comp programming and comp sci. And how his one experience working for a small company here gave him the desire to do so in others that Stanford was so ideally situated. When D-day came, he got a two line email from Stanford saying sayonara. Columbia, UPenn, and Dartmouth also either rejected or waitlisted. </p>
<p>So as a layman/parent I could say have good academic- and comp sci credentials, but clearly there’s more that I certainly haven’t figured out… Good luck.</p>
<p>and for liberal arts colleges with CS degrees you don’t even have to declare. Don’t discount those schools who don’t have a separate CS program or admission process. Check out the departments, staff and hire-ability of their graduates. (Colgate University, e.g. has a very small department, but their graduates had almost 100% job success post-grad over the last two years.)</p>
<p>
The OP asked about chances of ‘getting into’ a CS program and generally no programming experience is needed to be admitted and this includes the top CS programs in the country.</p>
<p>GladGradDad, in my mind I’m think of top programs are MIT, Stanford, and CMU because I’ve already covered UCB, UCLA, etc, in the state schools comment.</p>
<p>^^ mathmom already said CMU accepts students with no prior experience, the last I heard you don’t declare the major at Stanford until after the first year or so, and MIT states the following -
</p>
<p>Some more info (DrGoogle got me curious as to the details) - </p>
<p>From Stanford -
So for Stanford, like MIT, it looks like the admissions criteria is the same for CS as it is for any other major.</p>
<p>From CMU -
I couldn’t find details on CMU’s website as to their admissions criteria for CS. If it’s handled like some other top colleges they’re looking for students who have an excellent foundation and high scores in HS/AP level math and science courses but not necessarily programming experience although maybe they handle it differently.</p>
<p>Again, since the OP’s question ‘depends’ on the particular college, it’s best to check the particulars of the specific colleges of interest.</p>
<p>Schools like UW-Madison, which has good comp sci, admit students to the university as a whole. It does not matter what the intended major is. Many entering college freshmen will change their major. It is good to not have your acceptance contingent on your major. Also, being admitted to the major is dependent on your course grades in the major in college. Only some majors limit the number of students due to facilities limitations.</p>
<p>You want the best credentials to get into the colleges of your choice regardless of your proposed major. Not all HS students have the fantastic opportunities available to them that some do. </p>
<p>Do not worry if you haven’t exceeded expectations for a HS student applying to colleges. You don’t have to do the work before you get to college, you need to be prepared to do the work IN college.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info…all very helpful. He’s planning on applying at Carnegie Mellon and Vanderbilt, and two state colleges as his “safe” schools.</p>
<p>For Carnegie Mellon, you have to apply and be accepted to their CS program as an incoming freshman. The admission counselor said it was very difficult to transfer into the CS program as they limit it to a specific number of students. The only way to transfer in is if someone in the CS program transfers out. He said chances were slim to none of that happening. CS is the most competitive program to get in.</p>
<p>
DS has a friend who started in ECE and mid-stream decided to double major in SCS. So technically he may not have transferred in, but the end result was he ended up with a degree in CS too.<br>
Floridamom, DS did something similar - got accepted at safety Penn State rolling admission early on and then focused only on reaches was lucky enough to snag the one he really wanted.</p>
<p>My D just graduated from MIT in computer science and entered without having ever programmed anything (except for a bit of HTML website stuff). Her only science activities in High School were the ecology club and one chemistry competition where she got to the regional level but didn’t place or anything.</p>
<p>I still have this sneaking suspicion that she got in because they saw raw material where MIT would make a difference as opposed to some applicants who are already very accomplished. </p>
<p>I don’t have any idea what the key to admissions is at highly selective schools, but I know that doing things that matter to you and being able to write/talk about them well seem to work out better in the long run than doing things you think you have to or that you think will make you look good to others.</p>
<p>It is possible to transfer into CMU’s CS school, but they only take a few, and you have to take the necessary classes and do well to even be considered. My S opted not to do that because that’s too many “maybes”, and he chose another school. If you want to get in as a freshman, which is the best way, you really need some cs experience, as mathmom said. They only take a small percentage of kids who don’t have prior experience. It also helps not being a white, middle-class male.</p>
<p>There is always more than one school to get a top education in any field. Keeping one’s options open as an entering freshman is a good idea. Being able to enter a program after experiencing courses at the particular schools seems better than limiting a program to those who knew exactly what they wanted while still in HS. Be sure to see how any school works for plan B- changing the planned major.</p>
<p>As others have said, you can be accepted into a very selective CS program without any direct programming experience. My son was accepted to CMU, Stanford & UCB, and what got him there was high SAT scores/GPA, good recommendations, and apparently an essay that they liked. No different than any other major. That being said, programming experience DID make a difference halfway thru his freshman year as a CS student… By that time he had taught himself a good amount of programming and done some independent projects. When he applied for internships in January, that extra experience helped enormously. A lot of those projects were started during the spring/summer of his senior year of HS, when he had the extra time.</p>
<p>My S was accepted into CMU with all of that too until they “sculpted” the class, and he ended up on the cutting room floor according to what admissions told our college counselor. It is definitely harder when you’re a white male. </p>
<p>Just sayin’…</p>