   UK Universities
  I'm currently doing my first year of 6th form and need to start thinking about which university/course to choose. Currently I'm looking at 3 year Bsc of Computer Science couresrs, is it worth looking at 4year courses with industry placements?Apparently there are tons of CS courses around the country and I'm not sure which ones to choose (I need to apply for 5 universties). Does anyone know of any good ones that I have a reasomable chance of getting a place at with the following subjects/grades?-Business Studies, hopeing to get a C mayby, considering the posibility of dropping this next year for Further Maths AS, is it worth it for a carrer hopefully in the games industry, or would business skills be more useful?-Physics, hopeing to get a C, although a B is certainly possible here-Maths, should get A here.-Computting, Should get an A for this.So obv the AAA requirement universities are a bit out of my reach, but certainly any looking for an AAB or ABB Id be intrested in looking at.Also I already know several programming languages, C++ probs being my strongest, followed by Python (which i'm using in my computting course). Would decent existing programming skills increase my chance at getting a place, or are the universities more intrested in subject grades?   
  Nottinghamshire trent university is supposed to be pretty good   ;Quote:Original post by Crystal_DragoonNottinghamshire trent university is supposed to be pretty goodI went to Trent. It's not too bad. My mates enjoyed the Comp Sci course and Notts is a good place to go to uni in.   ;  What is it you want to do?  As usual, I'll pimp my alma mater Abertay University Computer Games Technology.It's a games-orientated course, but there's enough maths, physics, and general computer science-ey stuff in there for you to be able to get a job outwidth the games industry (however, most the graduates who go on to get jobs tend to get work in games).  I ended up working for an embedded systems/microprocessor IP company, albeit on graphics stuff.   ;  K, I'll check those two out :)If posible id like to get a job in the game industry, but I want to take a course such that I still have what I need to get other programming jobs if I cant find one in the games industry. If I got a choice I suppose id go for one of the smaller games compainies, since I heared then you get to work on a larger range of stuff, rather than just the same small field all the time.One of my mates suggested I might look at Bristol and Birmingham CS courses. Has anyone heared anything good/bad about them?;Quote:Original post by Fire LancerI'm currently doing my first year of 6th form and need to start thinking about which university/course to choose. Currently I'm looking at 3 year Bsc of Computer Science couresrs, is it worth looking at 4year courses with industry placements?If your main goal is employment and practical knowledge, then the 4 year courses are far superior.Incidentally, you say 'computer science' but there are many 'computing' and 'software engineering' courses which are probably better than computer science for both games and 'normal' development.Quote:Apparently there are tons of CS courses around the country and I'm not sure which ones to choose (I need to apply for 5 universties). Does anyone know of any good ones that I have a reasomable chance of getting a place at with the following subjects/grades?Your careers/higher education adviser at 6th form should have a list of establishments and their entry requirements, which will be far more comprehensive than what people can post here. (Note that the UCAS codes are often misleading - check the course content in each case.)Quote:-Business Studies, hopeing to get a C mayby, considering the posibility of dropping this next year for Further Maths AS, is it worth it for a carrer hopefully in the games industry, or would business skills be more useful?For programming, further maths is helpful but not mandatory. I don't think business skills are especially applicable early in your career, but later on, who knows.Quote:Also I already know several programming languages, C++ probs being my strongest, followed by Python (which i'm using in my computting course). Would decent existing programming skills increase my chance at getting a place, or are the universities more intrested in subject grades?They are unlikely to care at all about your previous programming experience. However, when you look for courses, you should check the classes to ensure that they cover things relevant to games. Most universities these days use Java as the main language, so you'll probably be looking for somewhere that has additional C++ courses, and hopefully some with graphics programming courses.   ;Quote:Original post by evolutionalQuote:Original post by Crystal_DragoonNottinghamshire trent university is supposed to be pretty goodI went to Trent. It's not too bad. My mates enjoyed the Comp Sci course and Notts is a good place to go to uni in.Another Trenter, hmm? Nottingham is a good place to live and NTU is a decent place to study, plus some of the lecturers are very good. However the quality of courses is quite variable, since there are certain subjects that have been taught by non-experts in those particular fields. (But I expect that is the case at most universities outside the top 20.)   ;  University of Warwick! When I went 5 years ago they required AAA though I think. I found their Computer Science course excellent for AI, maths and lots of clever theory stuff, less so for programming (all in Java).Lots of the guys at work here went to Abertay, so I'd definitely check that out.It's definitely worth doing a 4 year course - I did a MEng rather than a BSc and employers were fighting over me because of it (little did they know my course was completely unsuited to game development and overly theoretical and mathematical, hahahaaa!).I'd suggest doing Computer Science over other degrees like Computer Engineering or just Computing - employers love that, and it makes many more jobs available (best not to pigeon-hole yourself into game development).Lastly I'd recommend taking the further maths course (and paying attention). It'll make your life at university easier and you'll find it surprisingly useful when you get a job. I didn't take it and I've struggled with my puny 'ordinary maths' skills since then. Colleagues and friends that took it waltz through the lands of mathematics singing as they partially differentiate their eigenvectors over complex fields, when I'm sat drawing triangles reciting SOHCAHTOA trying to figure out which way I'm meant to be facing.NOTE: technical terms are nonsensical, for illustrative purposes only.   ;  If you are looking at Games related courses then also consider the BSc's at Derby and Hull. Derby's is particularly interesting as they only have very limited number of spaces and is quite an intensive course (from talking to the students).Both have good ties to the industry.   ;  Ok, so between the suggestions here, ones I found myself and ones suggested from school I have these universities to consider.Abertay, Bath, Birmingham, Bristol, Derby, Loughborough, Surrey, Warwick.Does which language the course use really matter for me given that I already know c++ and python well, so whatever they use I should be able to pick up pretty easily, and I am likly to continue using c++ for my personal games stuff anyways? I'll have a look at the Software Engineering and computting courses. However looking around at other topics on this board it seems that employers are more intrested in CS type degrees?   