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What is the difference between BCA and BSc computer science?

After completing their 10+2, a lot of students opt to choose the field of information technology as their career path. However, candidates generally get confused about which course to select as there are many options available. Some prefer to go for Computer Engineering, while some choose to graduate in Computer Science and some candidates select BCA (Bachelor of Computer Applications). Notwithstanding the fact that all these courses have a few things in common, there lies a lot of variation between them. So, before choosing a course by the random selection, students should be well aware to distinguish between all these courses and understand which one suits them best. Let us consider the main difference between BCA and BSc computer science:

What is BCA (Bachelor of Computer Applications)?

Basically a 3-year undergraduate course, the main course curriculum of BCA or Bachelor of Computer Applications revolves around the application aspects of computer science. Thus, understanding of the hardware functioning and technical side is not very important here. However, multimedia technologies, web-developing and mobile application development are an essential part of its core curriculum. Here, the student also gets to learn about the basics of computer programming.

What is BSc Computer Science?

Compared to BCA, BSc Computer Science is a more concept-oriented course. Thus, it teaches students the core concepts of computer science and gives them a strong academic foundation in computer science. It does not lay stress on the currently used technologies that may quickly become outdated. This strong understanding of the core concepts helps students learn new things easily where a BCA graduate may find it difficult to understand. As far as subject matter is concerned, a fair understanding of mathematics at intermediate level is required here. Some topics studied here include programming concepts, disk operations, and control structures.

Differences between BSc Computer Science & BCA

If we seek to underline the difference between BCA and BSc computer science, it can be said that while BSc Computer Science is broadly more concept-oriented, BCA is essentially application-oriented. So it is that, in a BCA course a student will learn all about the present-day technologies and applications apart from getting a basic idea of currently used programming languages. BCA course, however, will not provide them an in-depth conceptual understanding.

On the other hand, BSc Computer Science is a more concept-oriented programme. This course does not give much importance to current technologies and applications. Another difference is that, candidates who have studied Arts, Commerce or Science at their Plus 2 level can very well join for BCA since it is application-oriented, but in order to study BSc Computer Science, an intermediate certificate with mathematics is mandatory.