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comment July 09, 2020 Score: 3 u/BraavosiSwagger

Comment_fxefj27

Be prepared, this will be a long read about CS in general and Hunter CS specifically.

As long as you’re willing to accept the fact that you’ll have to put in a lot of work outside the classroom and are prepared to do that, you’ll be fine at any CS program. When it comes to CUNY, you’re not gonna really have school name or prestige on your side anyway. And of course there’s gonna be mixed reviews about every CUNY school. Professors A is good, Professor A is bad, class C is easy, class C is hard. Who are you gonna trust? The answer is: yourself. Don’t depend on your professor, classmates, or whoever else to get things done. You gotta take ownership of your education.

Don’t understand something or having trouble following along in class? Start reading/studying ahead. You’ll be amazed how much more you can absorb during class when you do.

Professor’s teaching style clashes with your learning style? It’s still your responsibility to learn it. Go to office hours, tutoring, ask questions, and whatever else you need to do. Your grade will depend on it.

Professor announced a lab, assignment, or project, get it done ASAP. Other things from other classes can and will start piling up. Don’t get overwhelmed, get ahead. Getting things out of the way and not have it burden you is a wonderful feeling. You’ll either learn to secretly enjoy seeing your classmates stress over having to start the project during the last minute, or you’ll be the class superstar for helping others since you figured it all out first. But that doesn’t mean share your code, and you shouldn’t. Last thing you wanna do is get reported along with the others for plagiarism.

Don’t understand some coding concept? Practice coding and experimenting with it until you do. This is a major where you need to grind things out. Practice helps a ton.

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When it comes to Hunter, there’s gonna be some things you should know. When you say

I’m skeptical of boot camps/how far they take you/ don’t want to put myself under those fast paced conditions

hopefully it doesn’t translate to “I want to be spoonfed and my hand to be held in a fun, learning environment” This is the last thing many CS professors believe in, especially here. They don’t want you to feel like their classes are easy either. So there’s always a feeling of treading water if you’re the type to be unprepared all the time. You may hear some people say that professors expect you to already know things going in. The truth is that professors expect you to study and do your own legwork outside of class. There’s just a lot of people who feel like they shouldn’t have to study or put in work outside of class. Hunter CS has an astronomical weedout rate and those are the ones who usually end up adding to that statistic. Going to class on a blank slate is gonna be a huge disservice to yourself.

Professors here (probably like anywhere) are usually split into a few types:

One tends to introduce concepts to you, brush upon the nuances, and have you figure out the nitty gritty. If you’re taught to make an array of ints, you’re expected to figure out how to work with an array of class objects. That’s most likely gonna be on an exam. Another loves to go into the nitty gritty, and tends to lose anyone who either hasn’t been exposed to this previously or hasn’t read ahead on the topic, which is gonna be most people. Basically everything is fair game because “they went over it in class.” The best you can hope for is a professor who gives quizzes (not surprise ones). It sounds like a bad thing, but it’s actually good when you think about it like this: it sets expectations for the big exams. Too often, professors who just give a midterm and a final have people thinking “did we actually learn this shit??” You don’t know what’s gonna be on it, and you don’t really know much of what to expect. So you’re going in completely blind. With quizzes, at least you get an idea of what types of problems to expect and some practice material for them big ones.

But one thing to count on: a lot of the harder professors curve grades. It’s the “easier” and “fair” ones who don’t. Everything here can be a double-edged sword that swings both ways. Once again, it’s best to be as ready for any occasion as you can. Best depend only on yourself. CS is only as difficult as you make it.

Language-wise, they do mainly focus on python (for one class) and C++ for 3. There are some electives here and there for things like Android & iOS development, OCaml, web dev, and SQL. But by the time you reach your capstone course, you’re expected to pickup some other language(s) and framework that you can make something real out of with other people. You’re gonna suffer if you’re not also learning outside of your required coursework. There have been many independent workshops on topics like that over the years, idk if they’re still going on.

What will matter in your job opportunities post-grad is your work experience. Meaning you should be doing internships. You wanna end up in cyber security or PM role after graduating, you better have places on your resume that says “cyber security/PM intern” by then. If you look at some IT subs, cyber security is not entry level. But internship experience basically fast tracks you into it. Internships only accept students, so once you graduate, you won’t qualify for a majority of them. As a CS student, you’re either gonna be the average candidate or the golden child for certain roles.

Hunter doesn’t exactly have a great career center either. The job fairs don’t really have tech companies attending. But there are CUNY 2X & CUNY Tech prep advisors here who plan events, meetups, talks, interview prep, and pairing students with some of the smaller local companies should you get into their programs. But with the growing size of the CS program, there simply isn’t enough for everyone. But that’s not to say you can’t apply for jobs on your own, because that’s still a thing regardless of school.

With all that said, there are still IMO a lot of driven CS students at Hunter. And quite a number of our alums are working for Google, IBM, Bloomberg, Twitter, Apple, etc. But they all tend to be self-driven individuals who relied on themselves to get things done. As long as you surround yourself with people who get shit done, it’ll (hopefully) rub off on you and you’ll have a more fruitful journey. You’re an MBA student, so I don’t think I need to tell you about the finer points of networking (in the non-computing sense) with the right people.

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