I have been studying Computer Engineering at Umass Lowell so far, and this whole time I was wondering where all the coding was and finally looking at my degree pathway extensively I am realizing that this major is a lot more of an electrical engineering degree with a few comp sci course thrown in there.
I am about to turn 20 and I am worried it might be too late to switch to comp sci. It will take me 3 years to graduate if I switch. I am getting a really good deal for school so money isn’t really an issue.
Any opinions? Should I ride out CpE or make the switch?
Depends on how you feel about the classes. If you hated the EE classes you’ve taken so far, switch. It only gets harder from here. One extra year is not the end of the world and 23 is not an unusual age to be graduating with your bachelor’s degree.
That being said, even if you graduate with a computer engineering degree, you’ll still be qualified for a lot of the same roles as someone with a computer science degree. You might have to read up a little more before coding interviews but they generally won’t hold it against you that you have a computer engineering degree rather than straight up computer science. I’d actually even argue that computer engineering opens doors than just CS since you end up with enough of an EE background to do firmware and low-level programming that CS majors typically don’t have exposure to.
I’d suggest weighing 1 year’s worth of salary and experience working post-graduation from not switching vs. 1 year’s worth of tuition but taking classes you’re interested in if you were to switch if you haven’t considered that aspect already.
I think think it’s funny that it took you a year to realize that. Did you not bother to do research on your major? You do realize that CE is for hardware, and CS is for software/programming, right?