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Comment by ldjb | Hacker News Reader

Note that the linked paper is a mathematics exam that applies to the entire faculty (not just CS). In addition to that exam, one must also take a CS-specific exam. It seems that the Summer and Winter exams are rather different:

August 2015: http://www.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp/edu/course/cs/pdf/2016computer-s....

February 2016: http://www.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp/edu/course/cs/pdf/2016computer-w....

Edit: Looking at the exam guide [0], it seems that it's only if you want to sit the exam in the Summer that you must also take the separate maths exam; the Winter CS paper already includes maths questions so there is no separate maths exam.

[0] http://www.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp/edu/course/cs/pdf/H29csguide_e.pd...

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I just looked at a few of the problems and these are really well designed. From what I've seen, there's always a clear progression and a way to get partial credit. Plus the problems themselves are interesting and non-obvious.

So honestly I think that this is a great exam. The only problem I see is that 5 hours of exam work in a single day is a bit much, even with a one hour break in the middle. It's probably a logistical problem though, with many prospective students being in town just to take this exam...

This makes me glad I'm not in college anymore.

I have an M.S. in Computer Science but even then those questions look very hard and only really relevant to PhDs/Researchers.

Maybe I'm just spoiled because software development in real life is so much easier than anything you study in college.

Whoops, I didn't do too much research. I actually thought I linked to that CS-specific exam. I think these look rather hard! (I'm even a last year Bachelor student in Math/CS.)

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this looks difficult. As someone who studied pure undergraduate CS (the course only included a couple of relatively basic maths units) in the UK, I feel I'd have to do a fair amount of self-study before attempting this exam (even the CS-specific exams are quite tough!).

I would have a lot of trouble with these CS exams because I can't read Japanese

You don't need to know Japanese. Each question is available in English on the page following the Japanese version.

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