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I definitely had this experience myself. By the way Harvey Mudd seems to have solved the issue. "With leadership from the college president and college-wide s

I definitely had this experience myself. By the way Harvey Mudd seems to have solved the issue. "With leadership from the college president and college-wide support, Harvey Mudd increased the percentage of women graduating from its computing program from 12 percent to approximately 40 percent in five years. This dramatic increase was accomplished through three major changes: revising the introductory computing course and splitting it into two levels divided by experience, providing research opportunities for undergraduates after their first year in college, and taking female students to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference." https://www.hmc.edu/about-hmc/2015/03/26/new-report-on-women-in-stem-features-harvey-mudds-cs-program/ https://www.hmc.edu/about-hmc/2015/03/26/new-report-on-women...

0xCMP 11y ago
Yea I have recommended these kinds of changes to my university professors a couple times. I haven't cared enough to make noise about it, but it literally has everything to do with the intro course. You need your best professors and resources on the first 2-3 courses and everyone who comes out of those courses needs to "get it." Otherwise, everything afterward suffers and waters down. And without that stuff after (algorithms, operating systems, OOP, etc.) most students leave completely unprepared and barely understanding the stuff from those first few classes. And whoops, it's 4 years later.
- grayclhn 11y ago
  If you care about this, talk to the department chair and administrators (deans). Also talk to your student government and try to get other students on board. Individual faculty members don't tend to have a lot of influence on the design of the undergraduate program.
peteretep 11y ago
It's a shame you can't get credit for your previous experience, and join in Year 2. That would allow the real beginners to get confident in the first year, too. I have an incredibly smart friend who went to Oxford to do maths. His "competition" at Eton had sat the maths A-Level a year before normal, and had spent the last year studying university-level texts, and he was playing catch-up. Not sure who that benefits.
- greggman 11y ago
  I'm old but at my uni I went to the head of the computer dept and said "I know this stuff can I skip these classes?". He said "Yes, no problem. If you want credit for them you're free to take the tests". I guess I assumed that was the norm.
- joncrocks 11y ago
  I think this depends on whether the course is 'Computer Science' or 'Software Engineering'. While I agree that people might have a good amount of experience of writing software before university/school, I'd be surprised if they were well versed in Computer Science (which I think is more focused on the mathematical/algorithmic side at first). (I studied CompSci at Cambridge)
  - naasking 11y ago
    I doubt they have experience in software engineering either, which takes a principle approach to structuring software to reduce bugs and improve maintainability.
  - lmm 11y ago
    I did the first year of CompSci at Cambridge. The algorithms and data structures course covered nothing I hadn't covered in the discrete mathematics modules of Further Mathematics A-level (they can't assume Further Mathematics because not every school offers it and even those that do often do different modules). The ML and Java courses were just basic programming (which isn't taught in schools at all). The operating systems course was interesting but much of it was general-interest stuff I'd read on the internet.
    - joncrocks 11y ago
      Good point, I think I was thinking that my second year lectures were actually first year. Been a while since I was there! :-s
BookmarkSaver 11y ago
I went to Harvey Mudd. However, I have a bit of a problem with Mudd being held up as an example or model for this sort of thing. Don't get me wrong, I think that what Mudd is doing is great for the school, it makes it a better environment, I just do not think that it is exportable elsewhere. Harvey Mudd is tiny. People always cite the percentages it has regarding gender balance, but the fact of the matter is that Mudd's incoming classes are smaller than 200 people and every single person applying has self-selected to go to an exclusively STEM college. This makes it very, very easy (relative to other colleges) for Mudd to basically pull a disproportionate number of already CS-inclined women from the pool of applicants with a bit of heavy marketing and effort. Mudd spends a large amount of resources trying to convince girls to attend, especially ones interested in CS, a personal interest of the president. Additionally, about 6 years ago they did something to revamp the admissions process which took the incoming classes from about a 2:1 male:female ratio to an even ratio (literally the incoming class for 2013 and every previous year was >60% male, and 2014 was magically ~50/50). This is remarkable for a school catering only to high-performing STEM students. But it doesn't apply in a general sense. This model works for a tiny niche school in a big, big market. It will not work for every (or even many) schools in the market. And when you are pulling in classes where there are nearly as many CS-inclined women as men, it makes it a lot easier to have an environment that doesn't drive them away. But not every school can do this, it is literally impossible.

0xCMP 11y ago

Yea I have recommended these kinds of changes to my university professors a couple times. I haven't cared enough to make noise about it, but it literally has everything to do with the intro course. You need your best professors and resources on the first 2-3 courses and everyone who comes out of those courses needs to "get it." Otherwise, everything afterward suffers and waters down. And without that stuff after (algorithms, operating systems, OOP, etc.) most students leave completely unprepared and barely understanding the stuff from those first few classes. And whoops, it's 4 years later.

grayclhn 11y ago
If you care about this, talk to the department chair and administrators (deans). Also talk to your student government and try to get other students on board. Individual faculty members don't tend to have a lot of influence on the design of the undergraduate program.

peteretep 11y ago

It's a shame you can't get credit for your previous experience, and join in Year 2. That would allow the real beginners to get confident in the first year, too. I have an incredibly smart friend who went to Oxford to do maths. His "competition" at Eton had sat the maths A-Level a year before normal, and had spent the last year studying university-level texts, and he was playing catch-up. Not sure who that benefits.

greggman 11y ago
I'm old but at my uni I went to the head of the computer dept and said "I know this stuff can I skip these classes?". He said "Yes, no problem. If you want credit for them you're free to take the tests". I guess I assumed that was the norm.
joncrocks 11y ago
I think this depends on whether the course is 'Computer Science' or 'Software Engineering'. While I agree that people might have a good amount of experience of writing software before university/school, I'd be surprised if they were well versed in Computer Science (which I think is more focused on the mathematical/algorithmic side at first). (I studied CompSci at Cambridge)
- naasking 11y ago
  I doubt they have experience in software engineering either, which takes a principle approach to structuring software to reduce bugs and improve maintainability.
- lmm 11y ago
  I did the first year of CompSci at Cambridge. The algorithms and data structures course covered nothing I hadn't covered in the discrete mathematics modules of Further Mathematics A-level (they can't assume Further Mathematics because not every school offers it and even those that do often do different modules). The ML and Java courses were just basic programming (which isn't taught in schools at all). The operating systems course was interesting but much of it was general-interest stuff I'd read on the internet.
  - joncrocks 11y ago
    Good point, I think I was thinking that my second year lectures were actually first year. Been a while since I was there! :-s

BookmarkSaver 11y ago

I went to Harvey Mudd. However, I have a bit of a problem with Mudd being held up as an example or model for this sort of thing. Don't get me wrong, I think that what Mudd is doing is great for the school, it makes it a better environment, I just do not think that it is exportable elsewhere. Harvey Mudd is tiny. People always cite the percentages it has regarding gender balance, but the fact of the matter is that Mudd's incoming classes are smaller than 200 people and every single person applying has self-selected to go to an exclusively STEM college. This makes it very, very easy (relative to other colleges) for Mudd to basically pull a disproportionate number of already CS-inclined women from the pool of applicants with a bit of heavy marketing and effort. Mudd spends a large amount of resources trying to convince girls to attend, especially ones interested in CS, a personal interest of the president. Additionally, about 6 years ago they did something to revamp the admissions process which took the incoming classes from about a 2:1 male:female ratio to an even ratio (literally the incoming class for 2013 and every previous year was >60% male, and 2014 was magically ~50/50). This is remarkable for a school catering only to high-performing STEM students. But it doesn't apply in a general sense. This model works for a tiny niche school in a big, big market. It will not work for every (or even many) schools in the market. And when you are pulling in classes where there are nearly as many CS-inclined women as men, it makes it a lot easier to have an environment that doesn't drive them away. But not every school can do this, it is literally impossible.