Undergraduate Academic Program
You can find complete instructions in this guide.
See “Degree Certification” in the Undergraduate Advising Manual.
Other departments will ask to put their courses in the computer science semester listings to attract students, but this does not necessarily mean they can be used for computer science credit. For details, see the Computer Science “Other” Courses page.
A faculty sponsor affiliated with the department must agree to supervise your work (ie, someone who has a section number for the relevant course). They will determine how many credits will be given for the proposed work will be worth ( 1- 3) and will grade your work at the end. For more information, please see our Research Opportunities page.
AP Statistics credits are equivalent to 550.111 Statistical Analysis I. As such, they may be used towards the BA math credit requirements, but not the BS math credits. (The BS math credits must be 200 level or above, beyond the required core courses.) However, AP Statistics may partially fulfill the probability and statistics requirement for the BS. A probability course will still be necessary.
The BS requirement for both probability and statistics can be satisfied a number of ways. For students planning to do machine learning or other reasoning courses, it is strongly recommended that you take 553.420 Intro Probability and 553.430 Intro Statistics (or the honors versions).
Otherwise, any combined prob/stat course may be used, but we strongly recommend 553.310 Prob/Stat for Physical Sciences & Engineering or 553.311 Prob/Stat for Biological Sciences & Engineering.
Lastly, we would count 553.211 Prob/Stat for Life Sciences towards the requirement, but it is not necessarily included in the pre-req lists of all our courses.
Students are expected to take an introductory programming course (currently 500.112 Gateway Computing: Java or CS Exam “A” AP credit), followed by 601.220 Intermediate Programming, and then 601.226 Data Structures. Intermediate and Data Structures are not strictly sequenced, which means you can take them in the opposite order; however you should avoid taking them simultaneously as they are both very programming intensive.
If you do not have formal credit for the required introductory programming course, and instead went straight into intermediate programming, you have two options:
- Take a Bootcamp course (EN.500.132, EN.500.133, EN.500.134) to meet the proficiency requirement. This will require explicit approval to enroll without AP credit and will only earn you 1 S/U credit towards your CS requirements. You will still need to make up the other 2 credits to meet the 40/33 (BS/BA) CS credits total.
- Document that the course requirement was waived for you. You will still need to take other CS course(s) for a total of 3 credits to meet the 40/33 (BS/BA) CS credits total. You must document the requirement waiver using this pre-filled formal exception form as follows:
- download the form, add your personal information and sign where it says “Student Signature”,
- send the form to your CS major adviser for their signature,
- then send the form to advising@cs.jhu.edu for final departmental approval. We will keep the form for our records.
See the Office of the Registrar’s website for this and related information.
They do count towards your basic science required credits.
Yes. Each physics AP exam includes only that associated lab. For Physics and Biology, using AP credits will give you fewer total credits than if you take separate lecture and lab courses at JHU, so make sure you are still meeting the total science credit requirement.
If there is sufficient evidence of your proficiency, you do not. This may include completing an intermediate or higher level foreign language course, at least six AP language credits, or a letter of proficiency from a JHU language department.