bodyText="Almost 70% of the students that participated had minimal to no coding experience (0 - 2 years), prior to coming into UW. It goes to show that years of programm:ing knowledge is not required to be admitted into CS / CFM / CS/BBA at UW."
bodyText="Most people stayed on track with their original plans, but it’s not unheard of for students to delay their graduation date due to retaking failed classes, gap terms, completing minors, etc. Students are also able to shorten their undergraduate career through various ways such as removing co-op from their degree. It's normal to diverge from the planned route for your degree!"
bodyText="The class favours VS Code, a versatile and customizable code editor. This is no surprise as VS Code is known to be a sweet spot between Vim and more complex IDEs like IntelliJ. It's fast, lightweight, easy to use, powerful with its extensions, and offers a plethora of themes. Shout out to the one Microsoft Word user out there!"
bodyText="The favourite programming language award for the class of 2022 goes to… PYTHON! No surprise here - it reads the most like English. C++ is a very notable language as a part of the CS program; thus, it’s no surprise it comes in second. It looks like we’ve come a long way from the days of Racket in first year!"
bodyText="85%+ of individuals that participated in the survey know 4 or more languages. It's evident that, as students take more internships and classes, they learn more programming languages, especially in a field that is continuously evolving!"
bodyText="MacOS and Windows are the predominant operating systems used by our respondents. Each OS provides its own benefits, capabilities, and downsides. As such, choosing the right operating system largely boils down to personal preference and comfort for daily use or programming. We can establish that UNIX based OS (MacOS and Linux) are favoured by our respondents, due to the various tools and features that cater to programmers."
bodyText="It seems like the class really enjoyed their humanities courses! Perhaps this is due to the stark contrast between the content of courses that belong in this category compared to their mandatory math and computer science courses. The refreshing subject matter, combined with the overall ease of the courses, makes for some of students' favourite electives. For context, these electives are a part of the computer science degrees at UW due to breadth and depth requirements for graduation."
heading="If you took any advanced or enriched courses, how much did you enjoy each course?"
bodyText="Advanced/enriched CS courses are rated pretty high overall, and it looks like most respondents decide to take them in earlier terms. Trying out advanced courses early and seeing if they’re right for you can be a good strategy to figure out what you’re comfortable with before the workload starts ramping up."
heading="Who is your favourite professor in all of UW?"
bodyText="The class of 2022 would like to give a shout out to Alice Gao, Carmen Bruni, Lesley Istead, and Brad Lushman as some of the best professors at UW! Go read their ratings on UWFlow! We would also like to give an honourable mention to every professor who has poured their passion into teaching. This has helped the CS Class of 2022 grow and succeed! You guys are all amazing! ❤️"
bodyText="Second year seems to be the hardest year for most respondents with a whooping 52% of respondents agreeing on this. 2B has the second highest vote which comparatively makes the later terms look almost relaxing…🤔"
heading="What were your termly and cumulative averages?"
bodyText="The majority of people did their best in 1A and their worst in 1B, 2A, or 2B, likely because of the mandatory challenging computer science and math courses that lie around that period of time. Students started getting better grades in 3A, correlating with the term difficulty question. As a clarification, CAV stands for Cumulative Average."
bodyText="50% of the students have completed some form of option, specialization, or minor during their undergrad. These are ways you can add qualifications to your degree using the electives that you have. That's what they mean when they say you can customize your CS degree!"
bodyText="UW academic terms can already be challenging; however, over 45% of participants were able to overload at least 1 term. 20% of students overloaded 3 or more terms. 🤯"
bodyText="23% of respondents transferred into their current program, which is a surprisingly high number. We can assume that the majority, if not all, of the people that transferred programs transferred into CS as getting into CS/BBA and CFM after initial applications can be exceedingly difficult."
bodyText="Most transfers came from Math and CFM. Math and CS share a lot of courses through the first year of the degree, which might have resulted in many of those students pursuing their passion for CS directly by transferring. CFM transfers may be due to students disliking the financial aspect of their origin."
bodyText="Most of the transfers occurred during 2A and 2B terms, which makes sense since students have time to re-evaluate their academic/career path after spending a year in their original program."
bodyText="Students can apply to the exchange program starting in their second year to experience studying abroad for a term! Note that exchange does not necessarily imply switching schools with another student. It seems that not many students took exchange terms from this sample."
bodyText="Only 7% of students decided to take an exchange term during their undergrad with most students going during their 3A and 4B terms. Unfortunately, 21% of students were interested in going on an exchange term but were interrupted and unable to go due to the COVID-19 pandemic."
heading="Were you unable to complete an exchange term due to the COVID-19 pandemic?"
bodyText="With the severity of the pandemic restrictions in Canada extending from the beginning of 2020 until 2022, it is understandable that most 2022 graduates’ exchange terms were interrupted. Unfortunately, our results show that a lot more people would have gone on exchange if it wasn’t for the pandemic."