<p>Could someone explain the difference between applied computer science and just computer science. Which one would be better to go on to graduate school? or which would be better for work purposes. or is there really no difference at all just the name.</p>
<p>I’ve never heard of a school making a distinction between “computer science” and “applied computer science” program. That’s really unusual – or perhaps the school is just ahead of its time.</p>
<p>I would imagine that an applied computer science program would focus more on the practical aspects of computer science and less on some of the more theoretical aspects like complexity/computability theory, but to be honest, I think most of the stuff covered in a standard computer science curriculum has practical application. I can’t recall too many things I learned that seemed utterly useless… although I did have one database professor who forbid us from using join operations in our relational calculus (because he said joins were not primitive operations, but rather a convenient form of a nested query) so as a result, we always ended up with hideous triply and quadruply nested queries that were impossible to read. I guess I still feel like that was sort of a waste of time.</p>
<p>I would just go with a standard computer science degree. Some grad schools require or strongly recommend that applicants take the GRE computer science subject test, so you want to make sure you don’t miss anything crucial by choosing the “applied computer science” route. If you plan on going to work in the industry instead, most interviewers, when they read your profile, will ask “what’s applied computer science?”</p>