I'm looking to start studying Computer Science at UCD, how do you guys find it?

DavidPH

How hard is it to get in? It's 100% the course for me but I'm afraid my points due to not doing irish and not being good in english might draw me back big time

I'm quite scared because I have no clue what I'll do if I don't get into a CS course and all of them in different colleges have about the same requirements.

I can say I can get between 390-410 points but I'm not sure how I'll improve that

Just want to talk and hear your opinions, sorry if it's the wrong place.

Aspiring

DavidPH wrote: »

How hard is it to get in? It's 100% the course for me but I'm afraid my points due to not doing irish and not being good in english might draw me back big time

I'm quite scared because I have no clue what I'll do if I don't get into a CS course and all of them in different colleges have about the same requirements.

I can say I can get between 390-410 points but I'm not sure how I'll improve that

Just want to talk and hear your opinions, sorry if it's the wrong place.

I'm doing computer science in UCD. I really like it, at times it's quite challenging and difficult, but overall if you're decent at maths (even if you're not, if you put enough work in you would be fine), you like problem solving (this is a big thing), and you put the work in you'll do well.

That can probably be said for any computer science course in the country though, so I wouldn't be stressing about getting into UCD, especially if you're worried about getting the points.

Just on the points thing, you still have a lot of time to study. You will probably do a lot better than you think, just keep studying, especially maths if you're doing HL for those extra points. Most people I know got 50-100 more points than they expected to get. You'll probably get into a computer science course, maybe in UCD, maybe somewhere else but at the end of the day it'll all work out wherever you go. Other options for your CAO would be software engineering courses, or something along those lines. The points will be a bit lower so they'd be good to have down just in case you don't get the points for CS somewhere, but the content will probably be quite similar.

Hope this helps.

OneOfThem Stumbled

Aspiring wrote: »

especially maths

IMO it's not so much that maths is inherently important in computer science (which ultimately it's not unless you're going into either graphics or, in particular, cryptography) but rather that there a couple of pretty difficult maths modules in the first couple of years that you have to take and have to pass. This is true of a lot of degrees that call themselves "computer science" in the old fashioned sense that it's more science, and less computer.

Courses which are otherwise IT or software engineering related in other 3rd level institutions may be a very different story however.

Aspiring

OneOfThem Stumbled wrote: »

IMO it's not so much that maths is inherently important in computer science (which ultimately it's not unless you're going into either graphics or, in particular, cryptography) but rather that there a couple of pretty difficult maths modules in the first couple of years that you have to take and have to pass. This is true of a lot of degrees that call themselves "computer science" in the old fashioned sense that it's more science, and less computer.

Courses which are otherwise IT or software engineering related in other 3rd level institutions may be a very different story however.

I mentioned maths particularly because of the extra points you get for doing HL, which would help with getting into a course.