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Study abroad

Studying abroad can be a great way to broaden your horizons and get exposed to other ideas, people, and cultures. There are many strong programs around the world that offer term-long study-abroad programs. Depending on their content, study-abroad computer science courses can count for CS concentration credit, and satisfy requirements such as elective, breadth, theory or basic software.

If you are considering studying abroad, you should talk to the Office of International Education. The DUS make the determination on a case-by-case basis of whether a particular course would count for a concentration requirement (and if so which particular requirement). The information we’ll need from you includes the syllabus and the structure of the course, including the total number of contact hours. You should not assume that a course will count without checking it with us in advance.

In our experience, students studying abroad often end up taking somewhat different courses than initially planned. Enrollment might be capped, a new course might be offered, or you might simply change your mind. If your plans change, feel free to email us at any point. The final approval only comes after you have completed the term and we receive the transcripts from the institution you studied in.

Programs

The following are some examples of programs where Harvard students have studied in recent years and successfully received computer science credit. Note that this does not mean that every course offered under “Computer Science” in those programs will count. You can and should always ask us about specific courses, but the general rule of thumb is that if a course is similar in both level and scientific content to Harvard CS courses, then it is likely to count.

  • AIT Budapest

  • Chinese University of Hong Kong

  • CIEE Madrid: Engineering & Society

  • Consortium for Advanced Studies Abroad (CASA) in Barcelona

  • Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, France

  • Oxford University

  • King’s College, University of London

  • University College London

  • University of Edinburgh, Scotland

This list keeps growing every year: the fact that a program you are interested is not here should not prevent you from pursuing it!

Course Examples

Please note that we review courses each semester as courses change over time. These are examples of some of the courses where Computer Science concentrators have received concentration credit while abroad.

Term Year Program City Country Course for CC
Fall 2019 National Taiwan University Taipei Taiwan Computer Networks
Fall 2019 Ecole Polytechnique Paris France Compilers
Fall 2020 Oxford University, St. Catherine’s College Oxford England Functional Programming
Fall 2020 Oxford University, St. Catherine’s College Oxford England Linear Algebra
Spring 2014 AIT Budapest Budapest Hungary Algorithms and Data Structures
Spring 2015 University College London London England Compilers (COMP207P)
Spring 2015 University College London London England Interaction Design (COMP3012)
Spring 2015 University College London London England Artificial Intelligence and Neural Computing
Spring 2015 AIT Budapest Budapest Hungary Computer Vision Applications for Digital Cinema
Spring 2015 AIT Budapest Budapest Hungary Structure and Dynamics of Complex Networks
Spring 2016 AIT Budapest Budapest Hungary Theory of Computing
Spring 2017 King’s College, University of London London England Programming Language Design Paradigms
Spring 2017 King’s College, University of London London England Database Systems
Spring 2017 AIT Budapest Budapest Hungary Data Mining
Spring 2018 Oxford University, St. Catherine’s College Oxford England Ethics of Technology
Spring 2018 AIT Budapest Budapest Hungary Data Mining 1: Models and Algorithms
Spring 2018 AIT Budapest Budapest Hungary Data Mining 2: Applications
Spring 2019 Center for University Programs Abroad (CUPA) Paris France Artificial intelligence and games
Spring 2019 AIT Budapest Budapest Hungary Computer Graphics
Spring 2019 AIT Budapest Budapest Hungary Applied Cryptography
Spring 2019 AIT Budapest Budapest Hungary Semantic and Declarative Technologies
Spring 2019 Pembroke College, University of Cambridge Cambridge England Quantum Information and Computation
Spring 2019 AIT Budapest Budapest Hungary Scalable Systems and Development Processes
Spring 2019 AIT Budapest Budapest Hungary User Experience Design

For summer study abroad funding, please check out this resource from the Office of International Education. You can also check in with your financial aid officer, who is visible to you in my.harvard.