Bachelor of Advanced Computing (Honours)

ATAR	85
Convener	Peter Hoefner
Links	P&C

The Bachelor of Advanced Computing (often shortened to BAC) is a 4 year undergraduate computer science degree with a compulsory, integrated honours year.

It has a very prescribed, inflexible list of courses. It's great if you're just starting out with computing and want to take a guided tour of the field. If you want to take lots of other courses in addition to CS courses, a Bachelor of Science may be a better fit. If you get very high grades and think you'd enjoy more research, then you might prefer the Bachelor of Philosophy (extremely flexible) or a Bachelor of Advanced Computing (Research & Development) (even more prescriptive than BAC, but fancier degree name). If you just want to get a degree and get out of here, the 3 year Bachelor of IT is more open ended, has less of a theory/academic focus and has no honours requirement.

For students starting in 2022, most of the compulsory courses are listed below. You don't have to do them in the order listed as long as you meet any prerequisites. In addition, you have 8 elective courses (which can be any course at ANU!), and must complete a 4-course specialisation (AI, ML, systems or theoretical CS) plus a few other COMP courses (mostly 3rd and 4th year ones). Please see Programs & Courses for an up-to-date list of requirements!

For your honours year, you have a choice of either a 24-unit research project (COMP4550), or a 12-unit project (COMP4560) plus 12 additional units of 3rd/4th year courses. In both cases, you are usually required to complete these courses over two semesters. The 24-unit option is more research heavy and is marked solely on the basis of your thesis and presentation, and hence it has an average grade requirement of 70%. The 12-unit option offsets the weighting of your report by also assessing your project artifact (the work you produce), and therefore may be a better option for more practically motivated students.

Note that because the honours is considered 'integrated' for this degree, your final honours grade will be a cumulative weighted mark of (most) COMP courses that you take at university. Don't worry though - it's heavily weighted towards latter year courses, so take the chance to have fun and experiment early in your degree before settling into your favourite field.

Year	Semester 1	Semester 2
1st year	COMP1100/COMP1130, MATH1005/MATH2222	COMP1110/COMP1140, COMP1600
2nd year	COMP2100, COMP2300, COMP2420	COMP2120, COMP2310
3rd year	COMP4450	COMP3600
4th year	COMP4550/COMP4560	COMP4550/COMP4560

Note: COMP1100 and COMP1110 do each run in the other semester, but their "advanced" versions (COMP1130 and COMP1140) do not - something to keep in mind if commencing mid-year.