Seneca CTY and CNS – My thoughts after 3 years.

I recently graduated from CNS at Seneca (after finishing 5 semesters of CTY) and I thought I would do a write up on my thoughts on it for people who are interested in applying for it or are currently enrolled in it. This is going to be a pretty long post with a lot of personal opinions. I decided to write this because I often get asked about my opinion on the program via the Students thread at “Seneca College thread- Red Flag Deals which is a great placeto go if you are interested in starting at Seneca.

I started CTY a few years ago after transferring from another Seneca program that was not for me. When I started the program I had the following skills:

• Was above average in computer use
• Knew nothing about Linux
• Had no idea how IP’s and networking worked

Pretty normal for someone who spends a lot of time playing video games and surfing sites like Digg and Reddit. I would say that I was very component a IT but had no where near the skills you would need to do a professional job in IT. Starting the program 3 years ago I had no idea what to expect but I had a few friend in it so I enrolled.

Starting in first semester you will take intro classes in hardware, windows OS and Linux. For most people the hardware and windows classes are basic stuff that anyone who has used a computer in the last few years would be able to do without any problems. The linux class (ULI101) is one of the more difficult classes for new people. In this class you will learn the very basic’s of how to use linux through an SSH client – all in command line. An intimidating thing but something that you need to pickup quickly.

After First Semester the program opens up into classes covering 4 major subject areas.

Linux Administration
• OPS235->OPS335->OPS435->OPS535

Windows Administration

• WIN210->WIN310->WIN700

Networking

• DCN286->DCN386->NDD430->CIS701

Web Server/Scripting

• INT213->DAT701->INT420

The linux admin classes will teach you bash scripting, sysadmin stuff like NIS and IPtables and more advanced stuff like LDAP later. The networking classes which in my opinion are some of the best will take you through several key networking concepts leading up to CCNA level material. Server scripting classes are bit oudated, ASP, MYSQL/asp and Perl are not the easiest languages to learn but are ok. The windows admin classes are among the worst because of the tedium that is Microsoft documentation but even they are alright.

I’ve talked enough about how what the classes teach so now I will go onto more of my own personal views on the program. Overall I think the program is a good one as it teaches you a lot of hands on skills that you really will need to do sysadmin work out there in the real world. You never really get down to the nitty gritty about how things work but at this level it is already, for a diploma program I think that the level of the content is OK.

The teachers who teach the class are a bit hit and miss, there are some amazing professes out there such as Murray Sual, Scott Apted ,Brian Gray and last but not least the legendary Ian Allison. There are other profs who will probably annoy you a lot more, but at the end of the day for a college the skill of instructors is fairly good.

The facilities and the labs are top notch, I spent most of my time in the Open Lab using the computers there was a much much better experience than using the ones in the Library. In most cases you are given the tools that you need to do the labs.

To touch on co-op it is a great experience if you can get a job. One of the problems is due to the number of people applying to internships the chances of getting a interview are much lower, this is a personal responsibility that you should address on your own (build up your own resume). The job’s offered are pretty good and encompass a large sector of the IT community from sysadmin to techsupport at very small and very large companies.

Finally I want to touch on the difference between CTY and CNS, the main thing is the co-op however I decided to stay on in CTY and finsh the extra classes in hopes of learning more this. This was a mistake. The last two semesters of CTY are really poorly done and most (not all CIS701,OPS535 🙂 ) of the classes are horrible. Just a fair warning. If you are not sure which one you want to take it doesn’t matter until 3rd semester so you can join and make up your mind within that time.

It felt good to get some of that stuff of my chest, I’m going to be editing this post to add much more detail later on.

Thanks for reading!