2nd bachelor's degree in CS?

College Majors Engineering Majors
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<p>Right now I'm majoring in Microbiology and Immunology, I'm in my 2nd out of 3 years of this major. I'm also going to do a minor in Computer Science in my last year of this major. So far I've taken 1 class in CS, it's intro to programming for people who don't know any programming yet.</p>

<p>I went in Microbio without knowing how the life science field is pretty saturated, and that having just Bsc is useless/low-pay in biology-related fields.. Also I've heard discouraging things about research in biology, so I don't want to pursue that path. I can't picture myself there. Honestly I find some microbio courses interesting (like virology) but taking courses is not the same as researching.</p>

<p>I was always computer inclined so I was thinking of going into Computer Science. I want to pursue something that is related to design/graphics/modeling.. (sketching/drawing is my hobby) so should I go for a 2nd bachelors in CS with the computer games option or jump straight to a masters program with a thesis on either computer graphics/modeling /animation*? I heard mechanical engineering is highly involved in designing and modeling as well.. so what do you guys think is the best choice for my case? And what kind of jobs can I get out of those fields? Is it hard to get into the video game industry? Is it competitive in general in this kind of field? </p>

<p>(*I emailed my uni asking if I am able to do a masters in CS with just a minor (24 credits). They said that the CS committee would evaluate my grades and might suggest that I take some more CS courses before being admitted.)</p>

<p>PS: I'm in Canada and planning to stay here</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

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<p>Probably the best thing to do would be the Master’s in CS.</p>

<p>Some schools have Master’s Qualifying Year programs or graduate programs aimed specifically at people with non-CS undergraduate degrees.</p>

<p>Video game industry can be quite competitive, long hours, and low(er) pay. (This is not a rule, but it happens - EA was notorious for overworking people not long ago.) Good jobs in video gaming industry are obtained by having a (great) passion for games and a good portfolio of previous game-related work. There are also a lot of crummy game jobs, imagine porting solitaire to a dozen different low-end cellphones.</p>

<p>In my opinion Computer Science / Software Engineering is an easier track for you to get into than Mechanical Engineering and may have better prospects. Especially since software does not typically need professional association membership.</p>

<p>In order to break through into the job market you will want to do co-op / paid internships, especially if you decide to do the second bachelor’s.</p>

<p>Which university are you at? You mentioned your Immunology program is 3 years which indicates you’re studying in Quebec, so I’m hazarding a guess you’re at McGill?</p>

<p>If you are indeed in Montreal, note that there is a B.Sc. Computational Arts (CompSci + Art) program at Concordia.</p>

<p>Edit: </p>

<p>Some questions:</p>

<p>1) What is your math background?
2) What is your computer programming background?</p>

<p>Edit #2: I see you already answered #2, sorry I fail at reading comprehension. Question #1 still stands.</p>

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<p>I have a CS degree in addition to an EE degree (did both of them simultaneously, but <em>not</em> from a school that has a combined EECS program – so basically I doubled up my course load).</p>

<p>Big problem you’ll face out in the job market is that recruiters/employers, unless they understand your particular niche very well, won’t really know what to do with you. Worse, they might just throw your resume in the garbage under the theory that you’re ‘overqualified’ if you apply for a job that is more purely the domain of your first degree, or a job that is purely the domain of your second degree. I’ve personally seen a lot of this. With the CS/IT job market so depressed, especially in Canada – employers simply want to hire the least expensive resources possible. </p>

<p>In other words, tacking on a degree that has very little demand (CS/IT), to another degree that doesn’t have a lot of demand (ie: Biology), isn’t going to create a combo that saves you from unemployment. Why don’t you look at the medical sciences instead?</p>

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<p>Mark77,</p>

<p>I completely disagree with your assessment that there is “very little demand” for CS graduates in Canada. It is one of the better fields to major in for immediate employment <em>as long as</em> you have work experience and decent grades.</p>

<p>Let’s have a look at some numbers:</p>

<p>[Wage</a> Report (NOC 2174-A) - Working in Canada](<a href=“http://www.workingincanada.gc.ca/LMI_report_bynoc.do?&noc=2174&reportOption=wage]Wage”>http://www.workingincanada.gc.ca/LMI_report_bynoc.do?&noc=2174&reportOption=wage)</p>

<p>Average Salary for “Software Developer” based on 2080 (52 weeks * 40 hrs/ week) hours per year at the <em>average</em> hourly rate rate reported by the Canadian Government:</p>

<p>Toronto: C$ 65,166
Vancouver: C$ 62,691
Montreal C$ 71,760</p>

<p>Not bad? How about the job outlook:</p>

<p>[Outlook</a> Report (NOC 2174-A) - Working in Canada](<a href=“http://www.workingincanada.gc.ca/LMI_report_bynoc.do?titleKeyword=&NOC=2174&reportOption=outlook&refresh=Refresh]Outlook”>http://www.workingincanada.gc.ca/LMI_report_bynoc.do?titleKeyword=&NOC=2174&reportOption=outlook&refresh=Refresh)</p>

<p>Vancouver: N/A
Toronto: Fair
Montreal: Good</p>

<p>Now the problem is that this category includes all the rent-a-coder jobs that are being outsourced or eliminated, so let’s look at outlook for “software engineer” instead:</p>

<p>[Outlook</a> Report (NOC 2173-A) - Working in Canada](<a href=“http://www.workingincanada.gc.ca/LMI_report_bynoc.do?titleKeyword=&NOC=2173&reportOption=outlook&refresh=Refresh]Outlook”>http://www.workingincanada.gc.ca/LMI_report_bynoc.do?titleKeyword=&NOC=2173&reportOption=outlook&refresh=Refresh)</p>

<p>Vancouver: N/A
Toronto: Average (as with Ontario)
Montreal: Good</p>

<p>Okay, not a big change - however no calamities in the forecasts.</p>

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<p>You might consider going for a masters in bioinformatics (might be a variant in a CS program) to use your bio skills along with your interest in CS. There’s quite a bit of demand for this major in the Boston area - no idea if there’s demand in Canada.</p>

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<p>Agreed with BCEagle, Bioinformatics is a really good field right now. I’m considering it for a minor. Some schools also offer degrees in Computational Biology which i would also recommend, like Rutgers. If you do get a second bachelors, one of these would work very well with your micro degree.</p>

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<p>Thanks for your inputs guys, I really appreciate it!</p>

<p>@PerpetualStudent, yup I’m at McGill, good guess! Yeah I’ve been thinking about going into the co-op CS program in Concordia to make sure that I’ll end up having experience by the end of the degree. McGill doesn’t have co-op… but in either universities that I’ll go to, I could try for internships in the summer. Both universities have a computer games CS option with courses in animation, graphics, vision, etc. I think that’s pretty neat.</p>

<p>Yeah I’ve looked into qualifying graduate programs. An advisor told me that there’s one in Concordia that is supposedly a condensed version of a bachelor in CS for students who want to do a Masters in CS but come from a different background. I’m not sure if it’s better to do a CS bach to have a broad knowledge or to go directly into a Masters to get specialized in certain topics. I know in life science, higher degree makes you more qualified but I’m not sure about CS. People have said that in CS field, it’s more about experience than your degree that’s written on paper. What do you guys think? If I do a Masters, I suppose there are no opportunities for internships especially coming from a different background without industry experience. But is specialization > experience?</p>

<p>Yup I have looked at the Computational Arts program, but I’m afraid about the job prospects. It seems to have more of a fine arts/graphic designer tune to it. I think I want to get a degree that is more solid, science wise (if that makes sense). Relating to graphic designing, I self-taught myself html, css and photoshop in high school and made webdesigns for fun. I think it won’t be hard to get into this field if I will be from CS but it might be more difficult to go the other way around (arts to CS).</p>

<p>About my math background, I have done calculus 1 and 2 in cegep. Ironically my grades were better in math than biology and I enjoyed math better (probably because my grades were better haha. But also I never really liked full-force memorizing so I struggled in my first year in microbio). I also did linear algebra in cegep but I didn’t like it that much (the professor wasn’t that great). I have to take cal3 this summer (condensed into 1 month) so that I can finish my bac and minor on time.</p>

<p>@Mark, I’ve heard mixed comments about CS job markets… about how engineering and CS will be outsourced but in general a lot of things are. I’m certain that the market for CS is better than life science (when comparing both with just a bachelor’s) since computers are used in every field. While in uni I’ve learnt that a bachelor degree in life science is just a stepping stone for medical professions or for an academic career. I went into it thinking I could easily get some cool lab job after my bac, but in reality entry jobs and even higher ones are pretty saturated. Students around me are all crazy about going into dentistry, medicine, pharmacy etc and I feel out of place. I’m not interested in the medical profession (nor have the drive or grades for it… 3.6/4.0 GPA). I also don’t want to go into research living on grants. I heard discouraging stuff about researching; long hours, little results and low pay. I don’t plan on mixing my degree after, I just want to finish this current one up because I struggled and worked hard for it and I only have 3 classes left to finish this major for next year(+ 1 complementary course). My thought is to just finish this up and start a new one. Now my main problem is which path is best.</p>

<p>@BC Eagle and Nanotech, yes I’ve considered bioinformatics since it’s a mix of both bio and CS. I thought that was perfect but lately I feel that I don’t want to stay in the academia. I don’t know how the industry is for this field. Also I have a gut feeling that I won’t enjoy computational biology as much as doing something related to graphics and modeling computer science since I was always interested in visual graphics. Then again, 2 years ago my gut feelings told me to go into microbiology which turned out moldy.</p>

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<p>Jumping from biology straight into an MS in CS with a graphics focus seems like a real challenge. It may be doable, but you would need to <em>really</em> focus on a specific topic in graphics that you find interesting. That in itself is one of the hardest things to do, especially when you don’t know what is possible to focus on before you learn it! If you go for it, here are some foundational knowledge you will want to pick up along the way:</p>

<p>From Mathematics:

  • Trigonometry and basic geometry is used constantly (should be obvious).
  • Calculus (the concepts, you don’t need to memorize the mechanics) is important for the theoretical foundations.
  • Linear algebra is the most important branch of math for CG; you need to master the concepts and mechanics.
  • Probability and statistics don’t show up as often in CG, but there are scattered applications. This will probably be a prerequisite to enrollment anyway.</p>

<p>From Engineering:

  • Digital signal processing is often used for things like filtering and convolution; lots of modern effects in real-time games (and sometimes movies) are 2D post-processing algorithms. Also important to understand for anti-aliasing and image compression.</p>

<p>From Computer Science (beyond the core bachelor’s curriculum):

  • Computational geometry (often taught as a senior-level or early grad-level course in CS) is invaluable for object intersection, space partitioning, and a whole slew of other algorithms. Really important.
  • Parallel processing and computer graphics are the perfect match. You will need an intimate understanding of the programmable GPU’s architecture and how to write efficient code for hundreds of weak processors instead of 1, 2, or 4 general purpose processors.</p>

<p>It also doesn’t hurt to study some of the basics of the human visual system if you’re curious about how colors are represented, the visual spectrum, depth perception, stereopsis, color contrast, and so forth.</p>

<p>Also, since you mentioned computer vision, you should know it is a very different field from computer graphics. To put it as simply as possible, CV is about <em>extracting</em> information, like human faces, from images (using probability, statistics, AI, machine learning, and so forth); CG is about <em>synthesizing</em> images from information, like a mathematical model for lighting and geometric description of a scene. There is some overlap in what you might study, but I view them as opposites.</p>