An Autodidact’s Degree in Computer Science

Synthesizing a full major out of MIT’s OpenCourseWare

2 min readJan 19, 2019

MIT’s OpenCourseWare is an amazing resource—I often can’t believe that it exists at all. For the unfamiliar: OpenCourseWare is a collection of some of MIT’s classes, often complete with lecture videos, problems sets, quizzes, and answers. Oh, it’s also completely free.

There’s a significant drawback though (well, two drawbacks considering you can do all of these classes and never get a degree): You’re left to your own devices to choose what classes to take and in what order. Considering that many classes have a prerequisite or two, you could spend a while trying to piece together a sequence of classes to take.

Let me be your advisor! I’ve talked with some Computer Science majors and autodidacts alike to craft the major requirements for a Bachelor’s of Science in Computer Science in a five semester sequence. If you take the classes in order, you’ll be sure to meet all the prerequisites.