University of the People offers a unique opportunity for higher education in computer science at an extremely low cost for a wide range of populations, which traditional institutions have been failing to cover, by providing the entire program fully online. To the extent that its acceptance rate amounts to 100%^[1], it acquired 56,292 new students in 2023^[2]. However, it is contrarily difficult to get through the academic journey there; reportedly, 39% of freshmen did not pass even the foundation courses^[3], which effectively serve as the admission exam.

Rigorous academic requirements serve as one of the factors that contribute to the 'great purge' process, though it is not the only force at work. As a new student enrolled in the program, you will face many challenges, such as a peer assessment process which sometimes feels unfair, some instructors being incompetent, and an unreliable program advisor who responds to your time-sensitive inquiries in a half a month (!). It’s a shame that these hardly essential issues often hinder many potentially excellent students from earning higher grades.

The UoPeople A+ Survival Guide provides comprehensive guidebooks to understand what happens at each stage of the academic journey and how to respond to the many obstacles you will face, along with plenty of helpful tools so that you can reliably earn an A+ in every course you tackle.

The authors are a pair of full-stack software engineers with more than 10 years of professional experience. We both studied at one of the top-tier universities in Japan in the field of computer science. One of us graduated straight away, and the other quit to pursue an industrial career first, then later obtained a CS degree at the University of the People. We believe UoPeople adopts top-notch textbooks and provides well-designed assignments for students to gain skills and knowledge useful for demonstrating their experience in future work. Having said that, it is difficult to say that the experience in the courses is smooth and streamlined. There will be tons of unexpected obstacles you might trip up on. We hope our guidebooks and tools help more students overcome these troubles, and ideally, UoPeople will accommodate students from more diverse backgrounds.