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CMPT 300,307, 354 workload.

bitsbytes
edited April 2013 in General
Hi,

I will come for one year as an internation student and I will take some upper division courses in CS.

I am thinking to take these 3 for the summer Semester.. Any comments??

CMPT 300 Operating Systems I Steve Pearce 
CMPT 307 Data Structures Petra Berenbrink 
CMPT 354 Database Systems Wo-Shun Luk 

I have heard that taking both 300 & 307 is not a good thought as they are considered extremely difficult.. Is that true? Any suggestions?

Comments

  • hehehe
    I've heard 307 is very difficult.

  • ryan
    That course load is manageable. 354 is not a terribly difficult course. 307 is hard, but doesn't really take up all that much time. Lastly 300 varies. Pearce used to teach it in such a way that it was mostly written assignments. Now I think there are more programming assignments. So it will be some work, but again nothing crazy.
  • bitsbytes
    thanks for the information. So you think taking these 3 courses is ok for the summer term?  I just new at cs SFU and I am a little bit afraid ... I do not care if the assignments are difficult, I am most worried about the exams and the professors.. 

    I am looking for a high grade not just to pass the courses..
  • bitsbytes
    Also the professor for 307 (Petra Berenbrink) is described as a nightmare... Is that true??
  • bitsbytes
    anything more?
  • Tofu
    I had Pearce for CMPT 300. Very few programming and I found his course easy. Here's the secret to doing well. Study his sample exams that he gives out to you. I guarantee that 50% of the questions from the samples are exactly the same and the other half is similar but not hard.

    Haven't taken CMPT 307 so i can't give you any input.

    CMPT 354 I had Oliver Schulte which was stupid because he can't teach. The course wasn't hard, the concepts were fairly straightforward but I think it really depends on the prof.
  • bitsbytes
    thanks so much Tofu..

    Any comments about  Petra Berenbrink and  Wo-Shun Luk ??
  • Tofu
    Sorry I never had them lol
    I looked them up on rate my profs and they seem to be getting lots of bad reviews
    If I was you I would take another course for now and come back to 307 another time with a diff prof.
    But if you have no other options then I guess you could suck it up. 
    Or you know, just have 2 courses in the summer :) 
  • bitsbytes
    I am not sure if rate my profs is a good source. That's why I am asking here.. My other choices are 414 Model-Based Computer Vision (Ze-Nian Li ) and 466 Animation (Richard Zhang) . But I am a little be confused as I am an international student and this is my first semester... 
  • bitsbytes
    Anyone about CMPT 307, 354 and 414 ???
  • dwill
    I'm taking 354 this summer and never had Luk so I can't help you there. I've had Steven Pearce and personally I don't like his teaching style, he's really funny but sometimes he's not serious enough. Also, he talks fast so if English is your second language you might not be able to keep up. 

    I've also taken 307 but not with Petra so I don't know if I can help you there either. However, I had 4 quizzes/1 final exam and it was pretty straight forward. Just read the text and you should be good. Good luck.
  • Annie
    I wish all profs got training in teaching.  It's not compulsory, which is a complete mystery. 
  • bitsbytes
    Thanks for the information..

    Generally I am more interested in the hardness of the exams and easiness to take high grades..  

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