ETHZ

Which courses I attend as a computer science student at ETH Zurich

This semester I am enrolled in five courses worth a total of 28 credits (ECTS). In addition, I have been working part-time for the first half of the semester and a few weeks ago I started building this website.

First, I wanted to describe each course here in one post, but I realized that would make it way too long, hence I’ll explain what a course can consist of here and reference to each course description.

What does a course at ETH consist of?

Just a quick remark, I haven’t had every possible form for a course so far, there may be more things a course can consist of, but most computer scientist courses (bachelor and master) are very similar in terms of the components of which it is composed.

Lectures

A course can have a real lecture where the professor actually gives a lecture and explains new material until now each course I attended had a lecture.

Tutorials

Then most courses also have a so-called tutorial, which is usually held by a doctoral student. There he/she recapitulates important concepts, gives tips and tricks e.g. on exercises or how to implement an algorithm.

Exercises

In addition, almost every course includes some form of exercise or multiple forms.

There are often theory exercises, which are an important part regarding exam preparation, besides past papers.

Then there might be programming assignments, which may include some sections where you have to explain something like a concept or you might have to write a report. These tasks can also extend over several weeks.

Both types of exercises can contribute to the final grade, but in most courses of the master’s programme the theory exercises are not graded and are not corrected, but serve as preparation for the exam. However the assignments often contribute to the final grade as a bonus, i.e. if you got a better grade in the exercises than in the exam, they’ll count for example for 30 %. Each type of exercise can be group work, but most are designed to be solved by yourself.

Projects

In addition, some courses contain smaller or even entire semester projects. I think smaller projects and assignments are very similar, but they are called projects when it comes to group work and otherwise, they are called assignments.

Below you find a reference to the description of each course. (Work in progress)

Master Courses

Bachelor Courses

  • Linear Algebra (german)
  • Discrete Mathematics (german)
  • Formal Methods and Functional Programming
  • Theoretical Computer Science (german)
  • Algorithms and Datastructures (german)
  • Algorithms and Probability (german)
  • Probability and Statistics (german)
  • Introduction to Machine Learning
  • Entrepreneurial Risk