Best university for computer science

King Damager said:
If you can go there though, go to Cambridge. I have a friend there, who loves it. In the Cambridge CompSci careers fair, they have more companies there than students, and I'm not talking your small companies. We're talking ARM, Google, Microsoft etc..... His summer internship that he got through the University is as a researcher at CalTech....


But yeah, it's pretty easy to cut it down with ten simple steps:
1) Find a league table.
2) Work out roughly where you're aiming for based on your academic achievements, work out the best one you could get to purely on academic achievements and requirements.
3) Take that University and the 10/20 below it.
4) Re-rank these Universities by the things that matter to you (student satisfaction, careers prospects, distance from home etc.....)
5) Taking into account, academic achievements, requirements, student satisfaction and careers prospects cut your short list of 20 down to about 10.
6) Check the websites and look at the courses, and get a general feel of the unis.
7)Pick 3-7ish to go visit.
8) Put top 5 on Ucas application.
9) Get Grades.
10) Done.

I'm not sure what Universities opinions of BTECs are. I have to say, that especially in light of the announcement today regarding BTECs that unfortunately I think you may have been better off having done A Levels, but hey ho, what's done is done.

kd
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Won't he have to take the physics aptitude test for Oxbridge? I looked at it before, it is rock rock solid. You need to do further maths for it and you really need a personal tutor. It's solid, and by solid I mean so solid that a lot of A level physics teachers would struggle with.
You don't necessarily need to go to Cambridge to get that career fair, of course it helps being in Cambridge as ARM is next door but lots of other Universities offer something very similar :p.
 
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King Damager said:
If you can go there though, go to Cambridge. I have a friend there, who loves it. In the Cambridge CompSci careers fair, they have more companies there than students, and I'm not talking your small companies. We're talking ARM, Google, Microsoft etc..... His summer internship that he got through the University is as a researcher at CalTech....
kd
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We've got that at Warwick as well :o
 
Dont just go of league tables, pick a university which has an actual grounding in computer science and a course that is career focused. I went to glamorgan south wales and they have a huge comp science campus with a great forensic computing course too.
GCHQ get grads from there
 
RomanNose said:
Won't he have to take the physics aptitude test for Oxbridge? I looked at it before, it is rock rock solid. You need to do further maths for it and you really need a personal tutor. It's solid, and by solid I mean so solid that a lot of A level physics teachers would struggle with.
You don't necessarily need to go to Cambridge to get that career fair, of course it helps being in Cambridge as ARM is next door but lots of other Universities offer something very similar :p.
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That sounds painful. Nothing wrong with aiming slightly lower than Oxbridge. (like me) :p

Actually I just downloaded a specimen paper and I understand most of the stuff in there and I'm only halfway through AS year. I am doing further maths and maths granted though. Some stuff I haven't done yet so wouldn't be much cop on that. Quite a lot of it is AS further maths. Not as hard as I thought. Going to look at an Oxbridge maths entry paper and annoy myself by being stunned by the questions. :p
 
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My advice is don't do it somewhere poo. As others have said going to a 'top 10' in the subject is more than enough. Employers aren't bothered if you went to no. 4 for your course over no. 5. They do however care very much if you did it somewhere crap, because the course won't have covered enough detail and/or won't have covered it in enough depth. People say 'but it is a degree' - They are absolutely not all equal. Do it at a naff uni and you will get in with almost failing grades but you will be a bit shafted come getting a graduate job.

You will be paying a horrendous amount to go to uni. Do it somewhere decent or don't bother as it simply isn't worth your time or money.
 
Macky said:
That sounds painful. Nothing wrong with aiming slightly lower than Oxbridge. (like me) :p
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I think it is inherently unfair that they have questions from core 4, as not all schools offer further maths and express maths. This pretty much filters out a large % of students even when it is not their fault.
Anyway goodluck, if anyone wants to have a look here you go
http://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/PAT-2011-Paper.pdf
 
gord said:
Well, after you burnt down the majority of the ECS buildings in 08 all the new students have lots of shiny things... :mad:
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You do realise it wasn't personally me who burnt it down :D I couldn't get to any of my work for 3 weeks after that :(

Anyway, any university where your joined during lunch by Sir Tim Berners-Lee must be good :o
 
RomanNose said:
I think it is inherently unfair that they have questions from core 4, as not all schools offer further maths and express maths. This pretty much filters out a large % of students even when it is not their fault.
Anyway goodluck, if anyone wants to have a look here you go
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Yeah I'd be pretty useless on a question like that. It's logic more than anything I think. I think students aiming as high as Oxbridge to do anything will have had their sites set on those uni's for years. Before AS/A level and should have planned that. IE self teach the stuff they need or get a tutor. I'm not saying that's easy haha. I'm lucky that my college offers further maths. :)
 
RomanNose said:
Won't he have to take the physics aptitude test for Oxbridge? I looked at it before, it is rock rock solid. You need to do further maths for it and you really need a personal tutor. It's solid, and by solid I mean so solid that a lot of A level physics teachers would struggle with.
You don't necessarily need to go to Cambridge to get that career fair, of course it helps being in Cambridge as ARM is next door but lots of other Universities offer something very similar :p.
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Doubt he'll have to do the Physics Aptitude test, but may well have to do a tailored Compsci one - it'll most likely depend on the college he applies to. But yeah, they do tend to want A Level Further Maths At Cam. And I'm not saying that the companies perhaps stand out, more that they have more companies turn up than students who are on the course.

LordSplodge said:
Imperial, if you can get in.
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Ironically, carrying on from the friend above. Cambridge wanted, I think it was A*AAAA, Imperial wanted A*A*AAAA, he was offered both, and told Imperial to sod off xD

kd
 
RomanNose said:
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I think it is inherently unfair that they have questions from core 4, as not all schools offer further maths and express maths. This pretty much filters out a large % of students even when it is not their fault.
Anyway goodluck, if anyone wants to have a look here you go
http://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/PAT-2011-Paper.pdf
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Core 4 is a standard A-level module. None of the questions in that link involved further maths level knowledge, many could even be answered with GCSE knowledge.


Macky said:
Yeah I'd be pretty useless on a question like that. It's logic more than anything I think. I think students aiming as high as Oxbridge to do anything will have had their sites set on those uni's for years. Before AS/A level and should have planned that. IE self teach the stuff they need or get a tutor. I'm not saying that's easy haha. I'm lucky that my college offers further maths. :)
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Starting to look at Universities at the start of A-levels is all that is needed. That particular question is quite straight forward, but takes a while. Yes its quite a lot of logic, but I haven't met a single university mathematician that doesn't excel at logic, in fact we're not allowed to take some of the philosophy logic modules because they are considered too easy for mathematicians here.
 
OpenToSuggestions said:
My advice is don't do it somewhere poo. As others have said going to a 'top 10' in the subject is more than enough. Employers aren't bothered if you went to no. 4 for your course over no. 5. They do however care very much if you did it somewhere crap, because the course won't have covered enough detail and/or won't have covered it in enough depth. People say 'but it is a degree' - They are absolutely not all equal. Do it at a naff uni and you will get in with almost failing grades but you will be a bit shafted come getting a graduate job.

You will be paying a horrendous amount to go to uni. Do it somewhere decent or don't bother as it simply isn't worth your time or money.
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rubbish. Uni's dont teach u jack, if you want to achieve something in uni you have go about doing it on your own learning and thinking outside of the box.

for instance, i did computer science at westminister. they only taught us the very basic of java yet by the end of my 3 year course i self taught myself j2se and swing and made a Instant messanger program with a client, server and admin app(allows you to ban, suspend people).

it even had a real time dynamic friends list.

All done on my own
 
KCL is enjoyable so far. There are enough people on my course into the big boy banks (2nd year internships) as well as people with IBM/Google(final stages)/Accenture. I'm not quite of that calibre, not going to lie, but I am doing decently in the degree and interning with a web development company in the summer.
Our 2nd year group project, which is programming autonomous vacuum cleaners using SLAM algorithms in teams of 8. We have a full scale software development project done by the end of year 2, including research, proposals, design(UML etc), implementation and testing. God knows what I would say in an interview if I hadn't been doing this.
It's done in collaboration with Credit Suisse (we present our project proposals, design plans and eventual implementations to senior credit suisse technical staff) and they actually help grade our projects, which is rather cool. Certainly puts you in at the deep end to be put through a 10 minute Q+A grilling on your algorithm design.
We have investment banks inviting us to fairs and networking events on a weekly basis and I know of a fair few who are already in internships with DB, JPMorgan, BT etc

League tables aren't everything, if you talk to the right companies, they'll tell you what type of graduates and the relevant universities they want. UCL trump us in ratings, but from the employers i've talked to we are pretty much on par.
If you've got the right mind for programming and a solid basis in maths, pick and choose as you like.
 
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MrMoonX said:
as stated btech is barely worth the paper its written on when applying to uni, get some A- levels if you want in to a top university
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Idiot.

I did a BTEC, got into a top engineering university and now have a very well paid job with a highly respected company.
 
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