Online Computer Science Courses

<p>Hi. I'm not sure if this is the right place for this so please excuse me if this thread belongs somewhere else. I am a rising high school senior interested in majoring in computer science. I would like to take advantage of this summer by taking an online computer science course to advance my knowledge. I have looked into Codeacademy, Udacity, w3schools, MIT Open Couseware, etc. Does anybody have any experience with these websites? Are there any other sites that you would recommend? I'm not looking to get college course credit for this, but would this be something that I could put on an application as an EC? Thanks in advance.</p>

<p>Here are some CS classes from Stanford -</p>

<p>[Stanford</a> School of Engineering - Stanford Engineering Everywhere](<a href=“http://see.stanford.edu/see/lecturelist.aspx?coll=11f4f422-5670-4b4c-889c-008262e09e4e]Stanford”>http://see.stanford.edu/see/lecturelist.aspx?coll=11f4f422-5670-4b4c-889c-008262e09e4e)</p>

<p>I already had a CS degree, but was curious about how Stanford taught the material. I watched the Methodology and Abstractions videos all the way though. They were introductory CS, and I thought they were pretty good. </p>

<p>I tried to go through the Natural Language Processing videos, but too much was cut out for copyright reasons -</p>

<p>edX.edu
coursera .org (take out the space)</p>

<p>They are all different beasts, including the ones you listed.</p>

<p>6.00x Intro to Computer Science at edX.org. Upon completion, you get a certificate, although the next course ends sometime in December or January.</p>

<p>Udacity has a new one for an introduction to computer science in Java, I think they do an excellent job.</p>

<p>I am happy that you are using your summer wisely. All of the ones free online courses you mentioned shouldn’t be too bad they should help you get down the basics or fundamentals behind computer science and it is good that you are getting ahead now cuz in college you won’t have that much time. I’m speaking from experience having a CS major as my roommate at purdue university. He also got ahead during the summer before he came to college and still found it quite difficult but not too bad since he had gotten ahead. I would recommend that you look into what your first year courses will consist of at the college you will be attending. That is the best way to stay on top of things. Look into the computer language they are teaching freshman year and then try as much as you can to perfect it before you go into college that way it will be much easier for you to learn in the class, and you will ace your CS courses. Like if you will be learning C or C++ your first semester try to knock that off or at least as much off that off this summer. This is what my roommate did and although it was still difficult for him (cuz he’s doesn’t try that hard and partied a lot) he still did great. Other languages that you may want to look into are Matlab and Labview. Both are excellent to put on your resume.</p>

<p>Stray far from w3schools to learn.</p>