<p>Hey. I am a senior in HS right now, going to be a freshman in college next year, majoring in computer science. Recently, I've been considering the following first-semester course load for one of the colleges I'm likley to end up in next year (Umass amherst). Here it goes:</p>
<p>CS 201 assembly languadge/architecture
CS 250 Introduction to computation (basically discrete math for CS, with applications)
CS 240 Reasoning about uncertainty (various math for cs, mostly stats, with applications)
CS 220 programming methodology
Introduction to economics
Calculus III</p>
<p>20 credits</p>
<p>I'll be able to qualify for taking this course load because by the end of highschool I'll have ap crdit for CS 1 and 2 and calc 1 and 2, as well as 4 other unrelated classes. I like this corseload because it gets the core CS requirments for the major at umass out of the way, and allows me to take some interesting/advanced courses in my second semester, like algorithms, artificial intellegence, and operating systems, witch looks good when applying for internships/REU's/whatnot. I am however, for obvious reasons, worried about how realistic this workload is. I am capable of doing lots of work at a high quality and absorbing difficult material(taking 4 ap classes this year, including physics C and calc BC), especially if I enjoy the subject material (and I very much enjoy CS). I guess what I'm really asking is, how much of a time-commitment is this courseload for a very talented/interested person, and how difficult it would be (preferably compared to the difficulty of AP CS).</p>
<p>They’ll definitely tell you at your college when you go to orientation not to do that. I think you should do what you think you can do, because you know yourself better than anyone else, so don’t listen to them. Also, don’t follow what people here say without thinking heavily on it for yourself.</p>
<p>That said, I think you should drop one of those CS classes.</p>
<p>I’d guess these are sophomore level classes. I don’t know much about the UMass-Amherst curriculum, but offhand it looks like a challenging courseload. You could try getting copies of the exams and homework assignments from previous teachings of these courses and working on them over the summer, to see how they are. If you can get through them without too much assistance, then you’re probably in good shape to sign up for the courses, at least. There are some things that it’s not possible to know in advance, such as how the professor is going to grade, whether everyone else who enrolls in these courses is a ringer, how you’ll adjust to your first year in college, etc., so it’s hard to predict how well you’ll do.</p>
<p>Ditch a CS course. 20 hours is almost never a good idea, especially when you are just getting acclimated to college. Take an easier load and try to enjoy yourself some. College is about more than just classes, its about growing up and finding yourself too, and its a lot harder to get the experiences that allow you to do that if you are cooped up studying all day every day. Live life a little!</p>
<p>To try and make it a bit relative for you, physics c and calc bc are two of the hardest ap courses (amongst a few others), and generally I think most college classes at any good school will be just as hard. So if that was pretty easy for you to do, then see if twice as much as that wouldn’t give you much of a bother. Just something to think about.</p>
<p>If you’re very good at CS, I’d say do it. Some people just have the intuition for it, so it might come easy for them. Like others have said, you know yourself better than we do, though.</p>