CS2013-final-report

Stanford University
Computer Science Department
http://cs.stanford.edu
Contact: Mehran Sahami (sahami@cs.stanford.edu)
Curricular Overview
Stanford University is a research university with approximately 18,000 students, of which 7,000
are undergraduates. The university uses the quarter system, with three terms during the regular
academic year. Undergraduates are not admitted directly to departments, but to the university as
a whole, and are free to choose any major, which must be declared by the start of their junior
year.
The Computer Science undergraduate program at Stanford is housed within the School of
Engineering and, as a result, requires a year of calculus and a year of science (generally, physics)
courses in addition to CS coursework. As a research university, there is large a large faculty in
the department and the full set of course offerings is quite large (over 50 distinct courses are
offered per year, with many undergraduate courses offered in multiple terms of the year).
Computer Science Major
Stanford has a track-based CS curriculum that requires all students to complete all of:
(i) six CS "core" classes,
(ii) four to five classes in one of nine depth areas (tracks) of a student's choosing,
(iii) two to three additional CS elective courses.
There must be a total of at least seven courses between areas (ii) and (iii).
The six required CS “core” classes are:
• CS103 – Mathematical Foundations of Computing
• CS106B – Programming Abstractions
• CS107 – Computer Organization and Systems
• CS109 – Introduction to Probability for Computer Scientists
• CS110 – Principles of Computer Systems
• CS161 – Design and Analysis of Algorithms
Note that CS “core” does not include our CS1 course (numbered CS106A), so most students with
no prior computing background will take this course prior to starting the actual “core” classes.
The nine tracks that students may choose from are:
• Artificial Intelligence
• Theory
• Systems
• Computer Engineering
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Graphics
• Information
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