Information for Incoming Undergraduate Students

Welcome to the School of Computer Science!

As you plan to begin your studies at McGill, you might have many questions. We hope to answer some of them below.

COMP 202/204/208

For students who have little or no programming experience, we offer three introductory courses:

  • COMP 202 Foundations of Programming
  • COMP 204 Computer Programming for Life Science
  • COMP 208 Computer Programming for Physical Science and Engineering

Starting Fall 2019, all three of these courses use the Python language and cover roughly the same core content. The main differences between the courses are as follows. COMP 202 can be taken by any student at McGill and only requires that the student have a CEGEP level (or grade 12 level) math background. In particular, students doing a B.Sc. can take it as a Complementary course in the Freshman Science Program. COMP 204 can be taken by students who have a background in life sciences, and it specifically has BIOL 112 (or CEGEP equivalent) as a prerequisite to ensure students are comfortable with the basics of cell biology and genetics. COMP 208 is part of several B.Eng. programs as well as some B.Sc. programs in the physical sciences. It can be taken by students who have a CEGEP level background in math. It specifically has Calculus 2 (MATH 141) as a prerequisite and it has Linear Algebra and Geometry (MATH 133) as a co-requisite.

NOTE: For any Computer Science program that lists COMP 202 as a prerequisite, students may substitute COMP 204 or COMP 208. All three courses cover the same core topics, and they are equivalent prerequisites for subsequent COMP courses such as COMP 250 and COMP 206.

Videos for Incoming Students

Here are some videos to learn more about the first courses of the Computer Science Curriculum