   Whats the salary like for jobs coming out of CS degree?
  Hi guys, so I am about to make a huge life decision and I am just wanting to do a bit more research. I would like to know what kind of salaries I am to expect if I complete a 4 year Computer Science degree in the UK? I mean if I do well and get high marks, what sort of jobs will I be able to apply for and what sort of salaries. Thanks a lot for any advice!   
  It's going to depend on several things. Your grades, surprisingly, aren't as important as you'd think. You'd ideally like to get a 2.1 which is not that hard. Don't be a jerk, don't skive off too much, presto a freshly minted 2.1 honours. It can't be THAT hard -- I managed it.2.2s and 3rds do happen to people. It's not hard to avoid them if you try but some people get distracted. Having said that, some of the people I know with 3rds pull down 2x what I do, and I'm not poorly paid.Firsts are near mythical beasties. Unis don't hand out many of them in a year. You probably won't even know the people who get them -- in my year almost all the firsts went to pretty anonymous overseas students. They're *ferociously* hard working, bonkersly competitive and don't get much of a social life.Social life is quite important. Why? Well... you will keep running into your graduation class. My other half and I met at uni and knew each other but nothing else. Years later, he arrived at the company I worked at and I interviewed him. Over the next couple of years we were friends and then a couple. Since then he's worked for me, I've worked for him, we both worked for the same start-up... the same people keep showing up.The project I'm on has just hired a new developer -- he was in the same class as a guy already on the project and the recommendation got his CV bumped to the top of the list. The new engineering manager is known to people on the project; the role was never advertised, it was friends-of-friends stuff.The IT world is small enough that the friends you make at university will be a big source of jobs (and co-workers) in the future. More job opportunities, more chance of making good money.Academically, it's important to pick the right uni. That's not at easy as you'd think. Oh yeah: Oxbridge obviously. Well. Except that the people who rate Oxbridge for compsci are people who went there and it's not necessarily a view shared by a lot of the rest of the IT world. Ah, but then on the other hand, Oxbridge people spend a lot of time meeting a lot of smart and well-connected people..I've seen job adverts which actually specify a "2.1 honours or better from a red-brick". They generally tend to really mean the "red-brick" and "plate glass" universities {and definitely DON'T include oxbridge/ICL}. Having a 2.1 from a Russell group opens doors.There are a lot of universities which were once polytechnics. Now, they turned into universities in the early 90s. When you were probably about ten. To you they've always been unis. However, the managers in hiring firms still remember them being polys. They remember (like me) getting UCAS offers of 'AAB including maths and one other science' from plate glass unis and 'any two A-levels' from the polys. So they still associate ex-polys with bad things. Bear that in mind.So.. what will you be able to apply for? Well -- if you can get it, a graduate entry role is pretty good. There'll be a ton of training attached to it which will be useful later on.If you go into banking, the money is anything between brilliant and *crazy* good, the hours are crap and you will spend ages on trains going to and from London.Games is hard to get into, the money is lousy, the hours are even worse and you'll get made redundant every two years.Consulting has decent money, the hours are usually OK (and if they're not you get to charge overtime!) but the work is usually soul-destroying. If you're working for a large consultancy you could spend a lot of time moving around -- that may be a good thing or a bad thing.Academia can be tense; unis are having budget cuts. The hours can end up being fantastic (academics seem to have time to run companies as well as being academics..). The money isn't good to start with though. Competition for promotion can be fierce.Salaries for entry level roles vary a lot across the country. Mid-30s+bonus for the city.. 20k would be doing well in the north.Working for a software house pays ok, the hours are ok and you can pick up skills.Is that any use?;  You could clarify what the decision is about?For example salaries would be the last aspect I would take into account.For the OP, my English is not so good: salaries in the UK, or degree in the UK?   ;  Thats brilliant thanks! I really appreciate the time and effort you have put into your advice! I think my first choice Uni has to be Glasgow, which is supposed to be up there with the best in the UK for comp sci, although this year sadly I applied far too late and will have to wait until after my 6th year in High school before I can go to Uni.I am thinking about doing game programming for a couple of years and then moving into financial programming, because to be honest, I think that game programming will be great fun and I will love it, but then as I get older I don't think the desire to create games will last and I am planning on going into financial programming to get this *crazy* money you talked about :)I know I shouldn't be concerned about the wages, but I do want to be able to branch out and afford to do other things. I would rather like to go into property development and things like that, so I will need to financial backing :)I hope I can pull of a mythical first :) although I will have to work incredibly hard. But maybe I can get a jump start on most people during the year between High School and Uni :);Quote:Original post by emforceI think my first choice Uni has to be Glasgow, which is supposed to be up there with the best in the UK for comp sci,I applied there in 2005 (got an unconditional but didn't end up going there).Yes, the course is good, but it's fairly hardcore and the comp sci facilities weren't that great when I last visited.  They didn't even offer 24 hour lab access which is a de-facto standard these days, and all the equipment looked pretty antiquated.Fair play to them if their facilities have changed, and don't let my one visit five years ago put you off :)Quote:although this year sadly I applied far too late and will have to wait until after my 6th year in High school before I can go to Uni.Everybody I have ever known has completed sixth year before going to University.  Don't be at all worried about staying on, in fact it's probably better to because the sixth year curriculum broadens your mind a good bit more and that's never a bad thing.Quote:I am thinking about doing game programming for a couple of years and then moving into financial programming, because to be honest, I think that game programming will be great fun and I will love it, but then as I get older I don't think the desire to create games will last and I am planning on going into financial programming to get this *crazy* money you talked about :)The leap could be quite considerable and, at the end of the day, they're both still programming jobs.Also, financial programming sucks your soul to negative levels of dry (I know, I've done it) and the *crazy money* will be going to the pension fiddling pinstriped twats in the boardroom and not you.  A "good" salary for a senior development manager is something around £50-60k (unless you're working for some too-big-to-fail financial juggernaut in which case you'll get a good bit more, but those jobs are hard to find and hard to get into), which is pocket change for people in other professions.Quote:I would rather like to go into property development and things like that, so I will need to financial backing :)Seriously, don't even go there.  The economy is wrecked and I personally know a property developer who went from being worth £9m to fighting bankruptcy in the courts.  My parents are solicitors and always have tales of woe about how bad the property market is, and how it will likely take years to pick up if ever.Sorry if that disappoints you, but there are better and safer areas you can branch out into.  That ship has sailed and hit a massive iceberg - it is no longer possible to build a couple of houses, rent out a few flats and stop in at the Bentley garage on the way home.Good luck, young padawan.  The undergraduate years are rough (seriously, the postgraduate years are greatly preferable despite the myths you hear about the workload) but you'll get through it.;  Right now the salaries and job opportunities are horrendously awful. Hopefully by the time you graduate things will be better, however for someone just graduating like things are in dire straights.   ;  I was a 2009 graduate and I entered my first job in March 2010, this was partly due to taking a break and not really applying for jobs.I studied a BSc Computer Games Development degree and got a 2.2 (yes.... i had a GOOD social life). My current job is a Build and Release Engineer for a large organisation, not building games but high profile software none the less. To be honest, I was suprised I got the job but after the interview I was told it was the complexity of the software I had developed and my problem solving skills that got me the job. In hindsight I wish I done CS as I would have had a better understanding of databases, but fotunately my company have paid for training. My starting salary is £25k which I think is excellent for a outside London graduate job.;Quote:I am thinking about doing game programming for a couple of years and then moving into financial programming, because to be honest, I think that game programming will be great fun and I will love it, but then as I get older I don't think the desire to create games will last and I am planning on going into financial programming to get this *crazy* money you talked about :)Forget it. You work for money, not for fun. Get a job that makes money so you can have fun when get home from working. If you go chasing a fun job out of the gate, you'll probably end up wasting time. There's no reason why you cant have a regular "programming job" and then do your gamedev at home. Then you won't get burned out developing a game you don't like for 12 hours a day and getting paid peanuts.Also, macroeconomic factors may have more to do with your getting a job, any job, than whatever degree you have. I only mention this because you said:Quote:I would like to know what kind of salaries I am to expect if I complete a 4 year Computer Science degree