<p>Hello,
I am enrolled as a Freshman for the upcoming 2010 Fall semester and as of now I am going in University Studies. As of now, I am leaning towards switching into the Computer Science major; however, I see that it is part of the College of Engineering. I know that if you want to switch from undecided to Engineering, that you need to take engineering classes off campus to get the required credits. Does the same apply for if you want to switch from undecided to a Computer Science Major? </p>
<p>I started out as university studies going for engineering as well back in 2006. I was able to take all of the same classes as freshman engineering majors except for “Intro to Engineering” ENGE 1024 or something like that (name/number may have changed). You don’t want to take that at Virginia Tech anyway, my friends did and some had to take it again. Virginia Tech uses the first few intro to engineering classes to “weed” out people as awful as that is. </p>
<p>I took “intro to engineering” at a community college over the summer after my freshman year and got an A and got credit that way, although the grade doesn’t transfer, just the credit does if you get a C or higher. </p>
<p>I then transferred into computer engineering for 2 years and decided it wasn’t for me. A lot of it had to do with awful professors in those intro level 1000/2000 classes and flaws in the ECE department in general but that’s a different story. </p>
<p>Anyway now I’m in Computer Science and took all CS courses this past Spring as a senior and am currently taking a full load of summer classes as well.</p>
<p>Make sure you know Java programming really really well. Their intro to Java course (CS1114) is not intro at all, and is another weed out course. A lot of the students who did well (B or above) had prior programming from high school. Just a heads up.</p>
<p>CS so far seems much much better than ECE although it does have it’s share of bad professors in their intro classes as well (a lot of engineering departments do since it’s research focused ect.) but I’ve had some pretty good ones this summer. Just do research or let me know what you’ve got and I can tell you which ones to avoid. </p>
<p>The negatives about CS so far is that they seem to have gotten rid of a lot of good courses they use to have. They got rid of their Unix course which is a must for the real world, and they have no web programming courses at all as of now. Every time I go to see my advisor to chart out my 4000 level courses to take, either the ones I am really interested in are not being offered that semester or are canceled completely. So just beware of that, hopefully it will get better by the time your a junior/senior. </p>
<p>Also beware of their C- policy, CS will not take a C-. You must get a C or better in all your CS courses. In ECE they allowed C-'s. Every department has their own policies so make sure your aware of them.</p>