Preparing to study undergraduate computer science
Everything you want to know to prepare for undergraduate study in the Department of Computer Science
To help you make the transition to university, we've put together some resources which we hope you will find useful, including links to free courses, tips on brushing up your skills and some recommended reading.
Free online courses
Get a taste of studying computer science at university level and discover the fundamental theory and techniques of machine learning.
Explore what higher education is all about and learn tips for making the most of your university life and study in our next steps to university course.
Talks and presentations
Watch these videos for an introduction to some fundamental concepts and issues facing computer scientists today.
When you arrive, you'll receive recommended reading for each module that you'll be studying. You should be able to borrow these books from the University Library.
- Nick Bostrom - Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford University Press, 2014, 2016 (reprint).
- J. Glenn Brookshear - Computer Science: An Overview. Pearson, Thirteenth edition, 2019.
- Brian Christian - Algorithms to live by: The Computer Science of Human Decisions. William Collins, Twelfth edition, 2017.
- Alan Clements - Principles of Computer Hardware. Oxford University Press, Fourth edition, 2006.
- Stella Cottrell - The Study Skills Handbook. Bloomsbury Academic, Fifth edition, 2019.
- Allen B. Downey - Think Python: How to think like a Computer Scientist. O'Reilly Media, Second edition, 2015.
- Hannah Fry - Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine. Black Swan, 2019.
- David Harel & Yishai Feldman - Algorithmics: The Spirit of Computing. Springer, Third edition, 1987, 2014 (reprint).
- Steve Krug - Don’t make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. New Riders, Third edition, 2014.
- Stuart Russell - Human Compatible: AI and the Problem of Control. Penguin, 2020.
If you're looking to brush up on your maths and programming skills over the summer, these handy links are a great place to start. The suggested reading is there to give you a taste of what you will be learning; it's not a requirement, just a way for you to get a head start and explore your interests in computer science.
Mathematics
- A Level Maths Revision - a great resource with tutorial videos and past A level papers for both mathematics and further mathematics.
- Project Euler - free to use, Project Euler offers a range of mathematical and computer programming problems.
- MIT Mathematics open courses - a fantastic range of courses at undergraduate and graduate levels.
Programming
- Codecademy - if you're not sure where to begin, Codecademy takes you through the fundamentals of computer science, with opportunities to put your learning into practice.
- LearnPython.org and learn-c.org - free, interactive tutorials which guide you through programming, from learning the fundamentals through to more advanced concepts.
- Codewars - combines programming and competition in order to hone your programming skills.
The Department has three dedicated software labs which are available to our students 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Our lab PCs are set up with all the software needed for teaching and assessments, and we upgrade them regularly.
Many students have their own PCs or laptops and we know students may prefer to use their own machines. Some find laptops more practical; others prefer to have a desktop PC – the choice is yours.
To support your studies in the Department of Computer Science, a laptop or PC with at least 500GB hard disk is ideal, as it enables you to dual boot Windows and Linux if you wish. 8GB RAM is a minimum and i3 is the minimum processor to go for. We recommend an SSD as the performance will be much better.
While we don’t teach anything that has Mac-specific software, you can buy a Mac laptop if you prefer. All our teaching is in Linux and Windows, so most applications will either have a Mac version or will compile in macOS. You can dual boot Windows and macOS using Boot Camp and we can provide some software in Windows if you need it.