<p>I got admitted to the SCS and would like to know what the general environment is like and how difficult the classes are. How much care from the school and teachers is there? What % of students get As, Bs, and Cs?</p>
<p>Congratulations.</p>
<p>Current CS sophomore here. The environment is fantastic. Classes are very hard, although the nature of the CS curriculum allows you to take easier semesters if you so desire. Most students don’t. While almost everybody struggles and is challenged by the curriculum, it is by no means competitive – most CS classes allow you to work with a small group while solving problems, so long as you wait a few hours before writing up your solutions. Everybody is friendly, and wants everybody else to succeed. You’ll likely find it easy to get tech internships or a summer research position after your freshman year (I did this).</p>
<p>Your freshman classes will mostly be large lectures – but the lectures aren’t the point. Spending hours and hours solving the weekly problem sets is. One of the required courses freshman take is notorious for assigning questions that you would typically encounter a few weeks into upper-level math classes, on weekly homeworks! The idea is to get you well-acquainted with problem solving in a domain that is beyond your depth. You’ll be asked to start from almost nothing and derive fundamental results in graph theory, abstract algebra, probability, combinatorics, game theory, complexity theory, etc. Of course, this will be less traumatic if you already have exposure to rigorous, proof-based mathematics. </p>
<p>A large percentage of CS undergraduates are teaching assistants for cs classes (I did this) – many people care very much, and spend lots of time, helping their peers learn. If you want to do research, there are over 200 faculty in SCS doing cutting-edge research in systems, theoretical computer science, machine learning, robotics, natural language processing, computational biology, programming language theory, etc. You can very easily get independent study credit to do research (I did this). After freshman year, you’ll likely be on a first-name basis with several faculty members. Upper-level classes are (generally) smaller. One of my classes this semester has ~10 students. Most of the professors are incredibly competent at what they do, and awesome people as well.</p>
<p>The top floors of the computer science building are restricted to faculty, graduate students, and cs undergraduates after hours. There are many tiny nooks with whiteboards for collaborating. You’ll spend lots of time there. </p>
<p>I don’t know know what the distribution of grades for CS students is – but you’ll be challenged. Many students come in with perfect academic records, and suddenly start failing tests and midterms (I did this). </p>
<p>It’s worth stressing that computer science is not programming. Computer science, at least as I view it, is problem solving. The core curriculum is very heavy on theoretical computer science, discrete mathematics, logic, etc. If you want to do software engineering – that’s not really what most students spend their time doing. (although the 6-figure starting salaries in Silicon Valley seem to attract most of the class after graduation)</p>
<p>So… that’s CMU SCS in a nutshell. You should come visit, if you haven’t already.</p>
<p>(and writing that accounts for a healthy dose of procrastination… whelp)</p>
<p>^ @gajolo one of the best and most accurate descriptions I’ve seen so far. 
Especially the “It’s worth stressing that computer science is not programming.” part. </p>
<p>(procrastinating from 210? 
)</p>
<p>Yup. I should do that…</p>
<p>I’ve heard that 30% of freshman got an F on a certain math course. Is this true? What % of the class usually fails a class and how do you deal with the impacts for graduate school and jobs later on?</p>
<p>It was probably 15-251, a course on discrete mathematics which is very difficult and will cost you many hours of work. I’m not sure how many actually fail, because a lot of people will drop courses like this if it looks like they are going to fail. You are given the opportunity to drop a course until about a week or two after you get your mid semester grades, and then that course doesn’t appear on your transcript at all.
I’m in 15-251 right now and while it is very challenging and requires a lot of effort, it is not impossible. You just need to make sure you take it with somewhat easier courses, because you basically work on the problem sets every night of the week (at least you should).
That being said, when I attended the career fair, a lot of employers were familiar with 15-251, so if you get a C (and a C is entirely reasonable given you put in the effort), they’ll probably realize why. Even so, it’s just one course. If you don’t neglect your other courses, you won’t be destroying your QPA. They don’t expect you to have a 4.0 coming from one of the top CS programs in the country.</p>
<p>Oh, also, in 251 you work in groups on the homework. I would recommend you find people on your floor or in your building, as it will be easier to meet at random times and get in more work. I know it’s benefitted my group a lot, as a lot of night we’ll just meet for 30 minutes when we are free to talk about a single question instead of trying to tackle it all at once.</p>
<p>I don’t think it was 251. I believe it was 15-151, the intro discrete math course offered to only CS freshmen for Fall 2012 and Fall 2013. Only around 85 out of approx 130 students passed 151 last semester, and I was not one of them. It was a very challenging course for the majority of us, because we haven’t seen proofs before, and we were immediately thrown into an environment that demanded rigorous, deeply knowledgeable proofs out of us. It was very difficult, and I’m not surprised so many of us struggled. It’s a notorious class, but it won’t be offered again because the instructor who created and taught the course (Adam Blank) is graduating in less than a month. </p>