CS50 Orientation

• Expectations
• Assessment
• Course Structure
• Strategies for Success
• Academic Honesty
• Support

Read the syllabus at cs50.harvard.edu/college/2023/fall/syllabus

Read the FAQs at

cs50.harvard.edu/college/2023/fall/faqs

Expectations

• Attend all lectures
• Attend ten sections
• Solve ten problem sets
• Submit ten checks for understanding
• Design and implement a final project

Assessment

what ultimately matters in this course is not so much where you end up relative to your classmates but where

you end up relative to yourself when you began

• SAT/UNSAT (Default)
• Letter Grade

• CS concentrators may take CS50 SAT/UNSAT
• See FAQs for a list of concentrations that require a letter grade

• Correctness
• Design
• Style

Structure

Weekly Schedule

Lectures

• In Sanders Theatre, Mondays 1:30pm – 4:15pm
• Introduce new concepts for the week
• If simultaneously enrolled, watch a recording afterwards on the course website

Sections

• Review lecture and prepare you for the problem set
• Led by the course's teaching fellows
• 2 hours, held Tuesdays and Wednesdays
• Submit cs50.ly/section to be assigned to a section

Office Hours

• Small office hours throughout the week, by appointment
• Sign up at harvard.cs50.me/hours

• All-staff office hours in Widener Library, Sundays 3pm–5pm
• No need to sign up!

Checks for Understanding

• Due Sundays, 11:59 PM
• Short assignments to practice applying concepts from lecture.
• You may only use cs50.harvard.edu/college. Not, for example, cs50.ai.
• The only humans to whom you may turn for help are the course's heads.

Problem Sets

• Due Sundays, 11:59 PM
• Programming assignments that allow you to implement each week’s concepts in code.

Lateness

• You have a semester-long allowance of 72 hours to turn in problem sets late.
• Once the 72-hour allowance has been exhausted, the course will begin to impose a 0.1% deduction to your grade for all problems in a problem set for each minute it is turned in late.

• Late work will not be accepted for checks for understanding.
• Exceptions only considered if requested of the course by your Resident Dean, or if you enroll late.

Strategies and Resources

Time

Problem Sets

Content

Staff

• Section
• Office Hours
• Ed

Artificial Intelligence

Not Reasonable

Using AI-based software other than CS50's own…

Reasonable

Using CS50's own AI-based software…

Academic Honesty

• "Be reasonable"
• The essence of all work you submit must be your own.

Reasonable

Communicating with classmates about problem sets’ problems in English (or some other spoken language), and properly citing those discussions.

Reasonable

Not Reasonable

Communicating with classmates about problem sets’ problems in English (or some other spoken language), and properly citing those discussions.

Asking a classmate to see their solution to a problem set’s problem before its deadline.

Reasonable

Incorporating a few lines of code that you find online or elsewhere into your own code, provided that those lines are not themselves solutions to assigned problems and that you cite the lines’ origins.

Not Reasonable

Reasonable

Searching for or soliciting outright solutions to problem sets online or elsewhere.

Incorporating a few lines of code that you find online or elsewhere into your own code, provided that those lines are not themselves solutions to assigned problems and that you cite the lines’ origins.

Regret Clause

If you commit some act that is not reasonable but bring it to the attention of the course’s heads within 72 hours, the course may impose local sanctions that may include an unsatisfactory or failing grade for work submitted, but the course will not refer the matter for further disciplinary action except in cases of repeated acts.

Support

• 33 Teaching Fellows
• 14 Course Assistants

heads@cs50.harvard.edu