Is CS50 a semester-long course or a year-long course? Because it seems to cover a lot of topics, I was wondering if it is completed in a single semester or it extends further.
CS50 is a one semester course – and yes, it covers a lot of material.
^^ I was too late to add: Just as course rigor varies among high schools, there are also varying levels of course rigor at different colleges. Harvard – rightly, or wrongly – believes they are teaching to gifted and talented students, so to challenge those “best of the best” students, professors are encouraged to pour on the work. Some courses normally taught over an entire year at another college are taught during one semester at Harvard. CS50 is a good example of that; so is LS2 (Evolutionary Human Physiology and Anatomy), which is the Bio course recommended for students interested in pursing medical school: http://scholar.harvard.edu/adamfrange/files/life_sciences_2_evolutionary_human_physiology_and_anatomy_syllabus_2012.pdf.
CS50 is a semester long course. The course following CS50 is CS51. Around 75 per cent of the students in CS50 have not taken a computer science class. It is an introductory computer class. It is not universally liked by the Harvard students.
Its Q guide scores are not awful which basically means it is an average Harvard class. If you have a computer background before coming to Harvard you can skip it.
Yea, but if you look into the topics covered by this course…it’s a lot! For example, I had a fair CS background in high school. But I was never taught advanced topics like JS or Ajax. I learned it all in my college sophomore year…and these topics are broad man… and the folks at Harvard teach it for like a week! Do they just skim it…??
From what I think, In order to skip this class, you have to have a very strong programming background (just my assumption I don’t know what cs50 looks like although out of curiosity I just enrolled myself to cs50x) .
Meh. This from CS50’s FAQ page: https://cs50.harvard.edu
I have personally known a number of kids who skipped CS50 who had a computer background before going to Harvard. They did just fine. @gibby do you have any personal knowledge in regards to CS50 ? As stated before about 75 per cent of the kids in CS50 have never taken a computer class before Harvard
^^ No personal knowledge, but CS50 does count towards the GenED requirement of Empirical & Mathematical Reasoning, which may explain why so many non-majors take the course (besides the fact that it has become the quintessential Harvard course to take). And, FWIW students with no previous CS background usually choose the “standard” edition problem sets, whereas those with some CS background choose the “hacker” edition. Much I think depends on the depth of CS background a student has had in high school and how confident they are about being competitive at the college level by skipping the intro course.
Who presumably took the quizzes as indicated on the website and did fine.
Regardless, the question of whether or not one can/should skip CS50 is moot on this thread. If and when the OP gets accepted to Harvard and decides to attend, there are ample advising resources to assist in answering the question.
Pretty much. I’m CS at Harvard, and I thought CS50 was good but not great. The first 7 weeks in which we delved deeper and deeper into C were the most instructive. The last third or so where we “learned” Ajax, PHP, JS, etc. felt rushed and sort of shoved-in just to say they taught them (I mean, you do learn some, just without much depth at all). The exams were also kind of silly–the first one was way too easy, so everyone killed it, and then they made up for it by creating the most ridiculous second exam (which had like a 50 average).
But yeah, I wouldn’t recommend skipping it unless you’re very solid with your fundamentals. That said, I don’t think this course is a crazy amount of work or anything; it’s par for the course for CS (and not nearly as hard/time-consuming as it gets). I definitely wouldn’t say it’s a year’s worth of material.