2011 HMC CS Department Placement Survey

HMC CS site    HMC main site

Welcome!    Please take a moment to tell us a bit about your background with computer science and/or computer programming. We will use this to help us place you into an appropriate CS course in the upcoming fall term of 2011.
Thank you!

HMC CS placement options

One (or more) of these sections are most often appropriate:
  • The CS 5 "gold" section is designed for students without CS or programming experience. It introduces the broad field of computer science using the Python programming language. Topics include functional programming, computer organization, procedural programming, and uncomputable problems. After CS 5 "gold" you will be prepared to continue in CS 60, HMC's second course, if you wish.

  • The CS 5 "black" section is designed for students with some high-school CS or programming experience (in any language). This section covers the same material as "gold," but spends less time on topics that will be familiar to students with some programming experience. "Black" uses this extra time to explore applications of CS such as cryptography and data compression, among other topics. Both "black" and "gold" prepare students equally well for CS 60.

  • Green!   The CS 5 "green" section is a third-time offering shared by CS and Biology that introduces biological ideas using computation to motivate and illuminate key concepts. At the same time, it develops computational thinking and skills via biological applications. No prior CS or programming experience is required. Like CS 5, the primary programming language used is Python. After CS 5 "green," students are ready for CS 60. This course is appropriate for students regardless of their future major - it simply provides an opportunity to integrate the required CS core course with several key biological ideas in one interesting package. Doing well in CS 5 green satisfies only the CS core requirement (just like the other sections of CS 5). Participants should plan to take Bio 52 in the spring to satisfy their core Biology requirement.   See below for more details on Green. Go green!  

  • The CS 42 course is appropriate for students who did well on the AP CS exam or have some college CS experience. Topics include functions as first-class objects, parsing, logic programming, models of computation, and uncomputability, among others. Students in CS 42 write programs in Scheme, Java, Prolog, Python, and special-purpose languages. After CS 42 you will be ready to take CS 70, HMC's third CS course. (CS42 used to be named CS65.)
Your name  
Your email  
Background with computer science
Do you have any background with computer science and/or computer programming? We're interested in everything: courses taken, self-taught activities, job-related experiences, etc.
Placement preference? Other comments?
If you have a placement preference - or any other comments or concerns - please let us know here:

Feel free to contact Zach Dodds (dodds@cs.hmc.edu) or any other member of the CS department, for that matter!
Thank you! We look forward to seeing you in September (or before)!

            —    the HMC CS department.




Here is some more information on CS 5 "Green" and the differences between "Green," "Gold," and "Black."
If you're considering CS 5 "Green," please do read on!

CS 5 "Gold" and "Black" examine many different application areas (e.g. math, physics, biology, engineering, the social sciences, etc.). CS 5 "Green," on the other hand, focuses its applications exclusively in biology. In fact, the course weights biology and computer science equally: it is co-taught by a biology professor and a computer science professor.

CS 5 "Green" assumes no prior background in CS and will cover all of the foundations of CS 5. A student completing CS 5 "Green" will be fully prepared to take our next CS course (CS 60).

Similarly, CS 5 "Green" assumes no prior knowledge of biology. If you've had a high school biology course, you might find that CS 5 "Green" teaches topics that you might not have seen before.

The HMC core requires one semester of CS and one semester of Biology. Students who complete CS 5 "Green" still need to take the core Biology course, Bio 52, in the spring of their first year. It is possible for particularly well-prepared students to pass out of Bio 52 and take an upper-level biology course, but this is independent of CS 5 green -- or any CS 5 section, for that matter. Contact the biology department if you'd like to pursue this.

Here are answers to some frequently-asked questions regarding CS 5 "Green":

Q: Is CS 5 "Green" more work than CS 5 "Gold" or "Black"?
A: No. The workload is calibrated carefully to be consistent with the other sections of CS 5.

Q: What's the relationship between biology and computer science?
A: It's huge! Many of the most challenging problems in biology require computational tools. For example, determining the level of similarity between genes in different species, understanding how genes regulate one another, and modeling how bacteria "swim" around in search of food are all computational problems. These are some of the topics and applications that CS 5 "Green" explores.

Q: Is CS 5 "Green" intended primarily for CS and Biology majors?
A: No. It's intended for everyone.