My journey through UCL Computer Science — One of the toughest CS Degrees
By: Mostafa Ibrahim
Tags: Technology, Graduation, Computer Science, Computers, University

My journey through UCL Computer Science — One of the toughest CS Degrees

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

If you are not familiar with University College London, it is the 10th best university in the world (according to QS rankings). My 3-year journey there has been quite rough and full of bumps, but I am quite happy to have graduated last summer with First Class Honours.

In this story, I am going to give comprehensive tips and details for university students on how to avoid making the same mistakes that I did. This is going to save you a lot of time, and I think those tips can even be utilized outside of the university.

Maybe not everyone will agree, but I am sure if you ask people about their time during Computer Science BSc at UCL, they would agree that it’s a bit difficult, especially if they were trying to get First Class Honours.

I am going to be talking about each of the 3 years not because I want to present a boring timeline, but I think that every year had some different challenges that I want to address separately.

The freshman year

Although the university started from scratch, the pace at which the material was being covered was quite quick. I remember being asked to write python code for solving graph problems using Dijkstra’s algorithm, Prim’s, Dynamic programming, and others during my first few weeks. Don’t get me wrong I know those are standards in a Computer Science curriculum, but usually after a few months when you start getting to grips with Computer Science.

So my first tip for people going into a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science is:

Try to be prepared as much as possible before starting university

This involves learning the basics of programming languages (like Python, HTML, and others), learning the fundamentals of Computer Science, and brushing up on your Mathematics. This will go a long way in helping you with your first year. Also, try looking up the content from your first year online before starting.

My second tip is:

Read up on effective time management strategies

I am not going to talk about this in detail since there are tons of resources online for this. From my experience, the reason that most university students suffer in their first year is that their time management simply sucks. For instance, although my 3rd-year curriculum was much more difficult than the first year, I was able to handle it in a much better way simply because I was managing my time much better.

Final tip:

Always research your assignments and construct a plan to finish them once you receive them

Life sometimes gets in the way, it’s okay to sometimes delay doing your assignments. However, you have to have a plan for finishing them. I have delayed several assignments before that I thought are going to take a few hours to finish and they ended up taking days simply because I wasn’t aware of their complexity. You can avoid this by spending about 30 mins researching the assignment once you receive it.

The penultimate year

Photo by Damian Zaleski on Unsplash

I always thought the second year would be a bit easier since I would have learned a lot from my first year. It was a bit easier in terms of university modules, however, because you almost have to get an internship before you graduate, the second year was quite difficult.

Of course, I expected the second year to be more difficult than the first year, I just wasn’t expecting how difficult it is to get an internship.

My number 1 advice for this is:

Start preparing from your 1st year, go to career fairs (this is really important), start working on your resume, and talk to seniors at your university.

If you are interested in my internship hunting experience, I am going to be releasing a comprehensive guide soon.

The final year

It’s expected that this will be your hardest year. Covid definitely made this year a bit more difficult than it was supposed to be. But anyway, one of the main challenges to successfully graduate is acing your dissertation.

I started researching various dissertation topics during my summer before the third year. And I think this was one of the best moves that I did. Not only did I pick a unique dissertation topic, but also I learned a lot about machine learning (since it was part of that topic) which helped me pass several final year modules.

Your dissertation can either be very tedious or it can be very enjoyable. I have seen both ends of the spectrum with my friends. For me, it was quite enjoyable and I suggest that you check it out here:

Also, one of the main challenges of your final year is securing a graduate job. If you had a summer internship after your penultimate year, this probably wouldn’t be an issue for you. However, if you didn’t, I strongly urge you to start applying to graduate jobs as early as September.

Final thoughts

I think my final tip and probably the most important one is to CHILL OUT! I honestly used to heavily stress over losing a few marks here and there, and it just wasn’t worth it. I ended up getting First Class Honours and I could have enjoyed the journey a lot more. Your university years are probably going to be one of the best years of your life, I am sure a lot of the readers would agree with this.