I heard that the College of Arts and Sciences lets students design their own majors–would I be able to put together a major in computational biology there? Or am I on the wrong track and that’s not the kind of major that people come up with?
Biology majors at Cornell must choose a concentration, and one of the concentration options is Computational Biology. Also, the Biological Statistics and Computational Biology Department is one of several departments that participate in the biology major, so I would imagine that you could bulk up on stat, comp, genetics, etc., courses if the minimum for the concentration is not enough to satisfy you. Perhaps you already knew this and more, since these points are easily found with a little bit of Googling. Nearly every sub-discipline in biology these days requires sophisticated computation; it seems to me to be a timely and exciting major. Go for it!
I was a bio major at Cornell a LONG time ago and I took quite a few quantitative and computing courses. Computational biology was not really even a twinkle in anyone’s eye back then; I would love to have the opportunity to do it again now. I recently visited the campus with DD, who just tonight made her decision to enroll at Cornell for Fall 16, though probably won’t be a computational biology major. Best of luck to you.
Thanks! I actually did search the Cornell website for things like Computational Bio and Biochemistry but I didn’t to see if any of the majors had concentrations. Does the concentration title go on our diploma and is it normal to list it on resumes, etc. or do the particular concentrations become less important to prospective employers and grad programs? Also can we choose more than one concentration?
A phone call or e-mail to the Office of Undergraduate Biology would likely get answers to your questions about the diploma and multiple concentrations. Yes, I think it would be common for a graduate to list the concentration on a resume (I certainly did).
Double major in CS and Bio, with a minor in stats. Or do some combination of CS/Bio/Math.