Biology and Computer Science

My son is a high school senior and is interested in biology, technology/computer science, and possibly pre-med. He loves the smaller liberal arts colleges he’s visited, and loves the idea of a relatively open curriculum (ie. no long list of distribution requirements or core curriculum).

What schools offer interesting ways to combine these interests? Are there trade-offs, for example, between a school that has a very open curriculum, making it easy to, say, double major in neuroscience and computer science, while picking up pre-med required classes and still having flexibility to take wide range of other courses in random subjects he’s interested in… and, say, a school that has a strong program in computational biology as a specialization within biology? Would these two options yield different career/grad school options as next steps, or are they for all practical purposes the same? In the event med school is not the next step for any reason, is there a benefit to having a “major” in computer science, vs computational biology?

Second question: given this set of interests, what schools come to mind as especially worthy of consideration?

He is a very strong student looking at the most selective liberal arts colleges.

Thanks for any thoughts you might have on these questions!

Note that premed does not require majoring in biology.

Biology majors face heavy competition in the job market at the bachelor’s level.

Thanks, ucbalumnus. Can you expound on your second sentence? What accounts for the heavy competition? Is it lessening with the expanding opportunities in biotech? Is the competitive picture any different for MS/PhD graduates in biology?