What to look for in a Computer Science course?

Well, I am not really sure on how to begin this thread but I will do my best. Here we go:

I am a greek high school graduate and I am currently doing a foundation course in UK. I was planning to stay on the university I am right now and follow their Computer Science course but, after around 2 weeks here, I am having some doubts about my final decision. Good thing is that I can transfer to some other Universities. Bad thing is that my high school marks aren't that good for the so called "good" universities and they are most probably not accepting me after a foundation year neither.

You may wonder why I didn't stay in Greece: The fact is that 90% of the greek universities are really bad and it's difficult to get into the reamining 10% (mainly because it reduces to around 2 or 3 choices if ie you only want to study Computing/IT).

You may also wonder why I am dissapointed about the university I am currently in: Well, it's only a foundation year but my idea of a good university consists of teaching staff that are really interested in you and are always there to hear you and generally consider you as someone with ambitions. Things weren't like that and today it got worse: We had our first Programming Lab and to my great disappointment we were "thrown" in a big class with PCs, were given a bunch of papers with C++ examples (but no explanation, just the code) and were told to write what we read. So, I spent two hours of my life copying C++ code without understanding 99% of it. I understood 1% of it, but that's because of my knowledge and if it is about to go on like this I can return to Greece and spend my family's money in another way...

So, here I am, alone in UK with no idea on what to do. I am really disappointed that I sometimes think it was a big mistake coming here. It's not just a money matter, it's that I am probably wasting a year of my life.

I am really lost as you can probably understand. Any piece of advice?

P.S 1: I don't want to write the university's name, just in case I am really wrong about it.

P.S 2: Only encouraging thing is that Steve Jobs had eduaction "issues" too so I can hope...

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I'd suggest even if you think you are wasting a year of your life, you should still complete the foundation year. It's important to do it, otherwise you'll end up in a limbo until you get another chance and well it will be a foundation year somewhere else. It's best to get it over and done with so you don't end up years behind in the future.

As for how Universities are, well It's not so much about the individual after all you have to work for your qualification and the tutors and lecturers are only their to teach those that listen. If you have any problems you should probably look into information about Mentor's or raise a query with the Student Union.

As for 'Being told to write what you read' about C++, it might not of meant literally. It might of meant 'Write how you interpret the code would run', so you might want to take another look at what you did today in case you interpreted what was asked of you wrongly (It's an easy mistake)

 

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That's what I am most probably doing but what about the next year? That's what I am asking, are there any general requirements for a CompSci course to be a good one?

 

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That they teach the theory, and not just the implementation or a particular language.

If you learn C++, then you'll know C++. But if you learn algorithms and logic (and OOP, and threading, and security, and the basic functions of modern OS's), you can quickly pick up C++, Java, Ruby, PHP, C#, Obj-C, or whatever else you run into.


Copying C++ code may not sound like a good start to a successful CS program, but I began learning to program by copying BASIC out of a book, and seeing how it ran. Changing a For loop counter or a display message here and there, and seeing how things changed. Play with the code, and see what happens!