I graduated from Penn and got a dual degree for materials science and computer science. It was a great experience, and I really appreciate to have that kind of exprerience, but there was one problem.

It was so difficult, especially to me, who had no prior coding experience before. I was confused with even the easiest concepts, and had difficulty with problems my classmates could solve easily. It was the first time ever in my life that I felt that I am so stupid.

But to think about it, Penn MCIT originally is a very selective program, and accepts students that already have a lot of coding experience, which makes the average go way high.

Of course, there are exceptions like me that took one or two classes from Penn about computer science and then the school accepts me out of pity.

I think (not sure) that there might be students not be able to code even as much as me, but I was definetly at the bottom 50% of the class.

But on the other side, they just don’t provide enough.

They just assume that you will know everything.

And this is sometimes good, because it makes you to teach yourself the neede knowledge, but sometimes, it’s just frustrating because it’s too much.

Even after I graduated, I’m taking this course named Programming for the web, and it teaches javascript widely.

And the 4th and 5th homework was about React, and they don’t provide enough information for React components and stuff! It was so hard to do the homework.. and 5th homework was almost impossible to do with only the course provided information.

Anyway, that was my though about Penn CS.

Surely if I had gone to an easier school, I would’ve had easier classes and higher GPAs, but this was what I’ve got and I think it would help in the long run.