How to submit a valid study plan

Study plans committee

Designing a good study plan in a discipline like computer science, which comprises interrelated and inter-dependent topics, is not an easy job.

Your goal is to choose activities (in the form of teachings and other tasks) for overall 120 credits (actually, we accept study plans with up to 123 credits), subject to various constraints defined by the course programme council aimed at guaranteeing the scientific validity of your plan.

To ease your job, this page provides you with precise guidelines to follow. These guidelines are meant to offer you the greatest flexibility, whilst ensuring that your study plan will be scientifically valid. 

Warning

Please refrain from submitting study plans violating the guidelines below. Experience shows that these are at a very high risk of being rejected. As a result, you will waste time with resubmissions and, given the precise time-points in which study plan proposals will be evaluated, you might even waste the opportunity to take exams in the January session.

Hence, in your own interest, please strictly follow the instructions below.

Computer science comprises several main areas. The course programme council believes that each of our students should become expert in at least two main areas.

Choose two of the followng areas on which to focus your efforts:

The master programme offers a set of teachings in each of the above areas which the council deems as characterising that area.  Such sets of teachings are termed Recommended Completion Pathways (RCPs).

Please, include in your study plan all the teachings of two RCPs. The list of teachings within each RCP is available here.

In case your selected RPCs amount to more than 78 credits overall, freely remove teachings to end up with 78 credits.

At the end of step 1 you will have made choices for 48–78 credits.

Guideline

The course programme council regards all teachings in an RCP as necessary for a student to become expert in the associated area of computer science. Since we want to enforce that all students become expert in at least two areas, failing to include any characterising teachings from at least two RCPs will make your study plan very likely to be rejected. Exceptions to this are: 

2. Does your plan still comprise less than 54 credits?
Then, add teachings from other RCPs to achieve 54 credits.

Since different RCPs might define different numbers of teachings, and since two RCPs may have overlapping teachings, with the previous step you might have ended up having chosen less than 54 credits overall.

In this case, choose other teachings from other RCPs so that your plan ends up comprising 54 credits.

Otherwise, skip this step.

At the end of step 2, if you had to perform it, you will have made choices for 54–78 credits.

3. Does your plan still comprise less than 66 credits?
Then, add "related teachings" to achieve 66 credits.

Since different RCPs might define different numbers of teachings, and since two RCPs may have overlapping teachings, with the previous step you might have ended up having chosen less than 66 credits overall.

In this case, choose other teachings from the list named "related teachings" (which comprise all courses offered within the master programme), so that your plan ends up comprising 66 credits.

Otherwise, skip this step.

Guideline

As for steps 2 and 3, do your best to widen your horizons by selecting teachings from diverse areas, so to get fundamental notions in a wider spectrum of disciplines in computer science.

At the end of step 3, if you had to perform it, you will have made choices for 66–78 credits.

4. Does your plan still comprise less than 78 credits?
Then, add "elective teachings" to achieve 78–81 credits

In case the already selected teachings amount to less than 78 credits, you need to choose additional teachings (called "elective teachings") to allocate 78 credits overall. Actually, to grant you more flexibility when making your choices, with the step you might end up with teachings for up to 81 overall credits. 

If your partial plan already comprises 78 credits, please skip this step.

With elective teachings you have quite high freedom. Namely, beyond teachings offered within our master programme, you can in principle browse the entire Sapienza catalogue in order to widen your horizons also outside computer science. 

Any choice of elective teachings not within those offered by our master programme needs to be carefully evaluated by the committee for appropriateness, considering both your submitted study plan and your previous studies.

For your study plan to be considered valid, please follow the guidelines below, depending on your aims.

4.1. Aiming at computer science–related elective teachings?

Then, make sure to focus on advanced topics, because it is expected that you already master computer science at a laurea (3-year B.Sc.) level.

Thus, refrain from choosing basic teachings like, e.g., "Introduction to computer programming", "Digital content management", "Introduction to algorithms", "Operating systems", "Databases", etc. which are deemed either a necessary knowledge for any computer scientist or something you could easily learn by yourself given your background. 

Focus instead on:


Warning

If, in step 4.1, you chose a Laurea-level teaching, additional checks will be performed by the committee to ensure that you weren't exposed to those topics during your previous studies. If you studied in a different institution, be ready to expose proofs of that, if asked by the committee.

4.2. Aiming at other STEM elective teachings?

Then, choose technically solid teachings in engineering, mathematics, physics, and other science course programmes.

4.3. Aiming at elective teachings in other disciplines?

Then, choose advanced teachings in related disciplines like economics or management. At most one such teaching (of at most 9 credits) will be allowed.

Please, be very careful with elective teachings in other disciplines, in order to lower the risk of your plan being rejected. In particular, avoid teachings regarding the study of foreign languages, or those from the humanities.

Guideline

If you are truly interested in teachings in disciplines very far from computer science, we recommend to take them on top of your study plan. Indeed, Sapienza offers you the possibility to attend and take exams of additional teachings ("insegnamenti extra-curriculari"), beyond those needed to complete your course programme. 

You can find details in the main Sapienza website.

At the end of step 4, if you had to perform it, you will have made choices for 78–81 credits.

5. Complete your study plan to achieve 120–123 overall credits

At this point you have made choices for 78– 81 credits. However, your target number of credits is 120–123.

Completing your study plan is very simple, since all the remaining credits regard mandatory activities, which are:

You are not asked for details on these activities now, hence just make sure that your study plan includes them all. Indeed, you will freely choose your AFC and your master thesis work during your second year, following the instructions in the institutional course programme website.

With the above mandatory selections, the overall number of credits in your study plan now amounts to 120–123, which is your target.

Warning

Always make sure that your study plan does not contain teachings having non-marginal overlaps in their programmes.

Although there is no such risk for teachings within RPCs, you might run into troubles with "related" or "elective" teachings.


6. Plan when you will attend the lectures of each teaching

For each teaching in your study plan, you now have to decide whether you want to attend its lectures during your first or second year.

Do your best to end-up with a balanced load along your two years, keeping in mind that your AFC and your Master thesis work and defence must mandatorily be placed during your second year. 

The exam booking system will forbid you to book and take exams of your second-year teachings during your first year, but it allows the opposite, that is you will be able to postpone the exam of a first-year teaching to your second year, if needed.

To decide when to attend the lectures of each teaching, we recommend you to take into consideration two issues:

To deal with point 1, read carefully (in the institutional course programme website) the info on the programme and prerequisites of each teaching in your study plan.

As for point 2, please read the lecture scheduling constraints that will always be honoured when the governance designs the lecture schedule for each semester.

Guideline

A good practice is to slightly over-load your first year. In this way, you will have a lighter load during your second year and can work in a more relaxed way on your master thesis. However, selecting too many teachings during your first year may result in rejection, since your overall effort profile would not be credible. A good practice is to place 7–10 teachings in your first year to avoid problems.

7. Submit your study plan for evaluation

Now you are ready to submit your study plan for evaluation by the committee. You need to do so by the deadlines published in the regulation. 

The online system will ask you you fill-in four main groups with teachings and your other envisioned activities.

Below we provide the names of each group and what types of teachings (as defined above) they can accommodate.

As for Groups E and F, you don't need to give any details on the envisioned activities therein, so just make sure such groups mention them.

You'll see the group name associated to each teaching or activity under column "Attività".

If you followed the guidelines above, you will have no issues in filling-in your study plan within the online submission system.

8. Wait for the evaluation of your plan

Evaluation of submitted study plans will take place at precise deadlines as described in the regulation.

You will receive the result of the evaluation of your submitted study plan as a message addressed to your institutional email address. 

In case your plan is approved, it will enter into force as explained here.

In case you plan is rejected, you can access an explanation on why the committee believes it is not valid as well as some recommendations to fix it, by exporting your plan as a PDF. Your previously approved study plan (if any) remains in force. You can submit a revision of your new plan according to the same deadlines.