University Computer Courses

I'm 17 and need to pick which university course i will do. I'm looking to do a computer course, but its a very wide area. Can anyone suggest a course which would include the following (a UK university course):

Networking (the hardware side)
Networking (the more-software side)
Webmastering (particualry server side languages)
Software Development
Hardware Maintaince

I'm the only person out of our post16 yeargroup whos particuarly interested in this, so no one else can really help, and the staff are not what you'd call techincally savvy, so i've had to fall back to the internet.

So any suggestions that cover the above and are useful when it comes to getting a job? (Bear in mind it has to be a UK course.)

look for one that handles official IT certifications.
Not sure about what is availiable in the UK, but if you can get your Cisco/Microsoft certifications through school, you get 2 bees with one hit.

Another thing to look for is to go "job-hunting"
look on job sites such as Monster.com for jobs that you like, and then look at the requirements listed for it.

Sounds more vocational than academic, of the institutions I'm familiar with (which are a splattering in the south east), I can't think of anything that is that hands on. The three big things are theoretical, hard programming or databases.

Have a look at Westminster, they do games design, which is hands on + hard core, may be they have something.

I have a young friend, Lauragh, she is in exactly the same position as you, loving the networking, but loathing just about everything else to do with computer science. She's at the stage in her life where she is looking at Uni's too, and she's just be put right off of it because there is nothing she can undertake at Uni which focuses on her passion. So she's doing something completely different to escape from it.

I'm certainly no authority on education in the UK, however, I'll tell you the same thing I tell the kids in my classes. If you are seriously into computers, and am considering a career in that direction, then take every class they offer starting with the simplest. If you just enjoy them as a hobby, then take a class that you'll enjoy and that will serve as a tranferable elective at the same time, such as Visual Basic Programming, or a general application class, such as a class on Microsoft Office, that could be used in other majors...

Rich

Well, I'm in College myself right now and am majoring in Computer Science. Obviously this is probably a biased answer but, I think that programming is really fun. Especially with the likes of .Net and things nowadays, things are generally easier to do. Creating applications that work the way you want and everything give you that warm fuzzy feeling inside . Plus, with some of the .Net stuff, you can actually pretty easily create web applications and things like that too, it might depend on what they teach you in the programming courses wherever you go though. But all of my vb/vb.net knowledge I've always tought myself (I do that for a lot of things, but especially since my CS major does not include any VB classes, mostly C++ and the occasional class on another language like Java or something.

Anyway, whether it be programming locally or for the web, it's really fun once you get into all the neat things you can do and create


Edit: Just wanted to mention that the internet has some very valuable sources for learning languages and things like that, if you choose to want to pick a different major but are interested in doing programming. One of the key sites that I use quite often, especially for referencing purposes is www.w3schools.com. Very knowledgable place to start out at for learning

Edited by mscdex 2006-05-31 1:24 AM

Now i'm even more confused. I'll talk to my IT teacher and see what she thinks. Even picking the course is difficult, not a good sign

I was thinking that after university i'd like to work either as a programmer or as a network manager, and do webmastering as a sort of side job (i already know HTML, Javascript and i'm rapidly picking up PHP now that im using it more often).

I looked at the Microsoft certifications, but the problem is just that. Microsoft Certifications are not likely to cover Linux are they, and a lot of UK companys are using Linux for servers now.


I think thats more US specific. Afaik we take all courses as equal (you can do more than one). I'm going to have to do only one course to start with because of them stopping grants and not being able to qualify for the student loan.

That's not true. You can Major and Minor under a combinational degree or a CATS credit based degree.

Hertfordshire is more or less the benchmark of combinational / CATS programmes.