<p>Is anyone part of the CS major? If so would you mind shedding light on it such as the difficulty level? Some of my friends have said it is easy and some have it is hard. How would I fair I have no programming experience? I am willing to put in the effort to get a BS in CS and then minor in English, so I have Law school and buisness school as my options.</p>
<p>I know a couple CS majors, though not well. I get the impression it’s a fairly challenging major that you can make a lot more challenging if you so choose. If you have no experience…you will obviously be at a disadvantage compared to some of the other students, but that’s why we have multiple levels of intro programming here.</p>
<p>You seem to change your mind often. Are you actually interested in any of these majors, or just looking around for the one that will give you some sort of advantage? (Don’t do this.)</p>
<p>Hey, I’m a first year who’s thinking of majoring in Computer Science. I’m currently finishing up the two-quarter Honors Introduction to Computer Science sequence, so I might be able to shed a little light from my limited experiences.</p>
<p>The Computer Science department is small, but very intense. Imagine Illinois or Carnegie Mellon’s CS students, divide the number by five, and then cut out the bottom half, and you’ll get a picture of what people are here. A lot of very brilliant people; neither the midterm nor the final last quarter were curved because there were perfect scores.</p>
<p>That being said, it’s also very receptive and welcoming. I came in with about a year of experience in AP Computer Science (which if you’ve taken the course means very little) and I’ve been having a great time. Yes, it can get frustrating when it takes you several hours to do a homework or a lab that someone else churns out in a few minutes, but (like in the rest of Uchicago) you learn to swallow your ego. </p>
<p>My fellow students have all been very supportive and helpful; I definitely feel a sense of collaboration over competition here. Honestly, I would not have done well on my final if one of the smartest guys in the class (wrote a Perl compiler, worked with Summer of Code) had not explained monads to me the night before. My friends in CS and I regularly get together to hack on the assignments, or whatever we feel like. And it’s always nice being able to talk to upperclassmen about their experiences, explaining how to approach finding a job in tech, what it’s like working at Facebook, etc.</p>
<p>It’s definitely possible to do well in Computer Science; I, as one of the less experienced members of the class, came out of Honors with a solid grade. I can’t speak as to the difficulty of the regular intro sequence for majors, but if you have any kind of CS/Math background, I would definitely recommend taking Honors.</p>
<p>However, if I were you I’d be thinking more about why you’re interested in the Computer Science major. If you’re aiming for law school, unless you want to do patent/intellectual property law, a computer science major isn’t going to do you much, and other factors (work experience, etc.) will be more important than your undergraduate major. Very few people go into b-school directly out of undergrad anyway. Unless you’re seriously interested in doing something like tech consulting or very technical trading, please consider more deeply why you want to study Computer Science.</p>
<p>Haavin I am just looking I want options I don’t want to be binded to one thing for example I do want to go to law school and lets hypothetically say my LSAT scores are not high enough for top schools, I am kinda screwed becuase so many lawyers currently are unemployed due to our depleted economy, I dont want to end up in that situation.</p>
<p>You aren’t even in college yet. It’s really premature to start worrying about your hypothetical LSAT scores.</p>
<p>PS: People will be hiring you. Grad schools will be admitting you. Not the University of Chicago. You. You have the power to make yourself worthy of notice.</p>
<p>Haavin, I know I am not but I can’t help but wonder what is at the end of the tunnel it is always racing through my mind. I don’t want to graduate and go on to Law School and then end up jobless and in tremendous amount of student debt.</p>
<p>No combination of major and school will bring you certain success. None will prevent you from achieving success. You rise and fall primarily on your own terms. Maybe I’m not expressing this well, but I don’t know how else to tell you that you’re barking up the wrong tree. Stop plotting the path of least risk. Go outside and play. Take a walk. Enjoy your last year and a half of high school. Apply to colleges you think you will be happy at, not ones you think will give you the golden ticket. And don’t think in terms of how your school can give you advantages–think in terms of how you can make advantages for yourself at your school.</p>
<p>I understand what your saying, I guess I gave you the impression of being a slacker and trying to find a easy way out which is not at all what I am trying to portray. I was just wondering the course difficulty at such a academically rigorous school.</p>
<p>Major in Engineering :P.</p>
<p>In all seriousness, don’t major in something just to make yourself more marketable. The most successful people are not the ones that picked the most successful fields, but the ones that love what they do and do it well.</p>
<p>What’s important in life for you?</p>
<p>Whats important to me in life… Being successful in life and not waking up and dreading going to work. I dont want to pick a job or carreer path becuase it pays ALOT I want a career path that I enjoy doing, also I want to make my parents proud, be a great husband and father… AND HAVE FUN!!! I get one chance at life better make it worthwhile.</p>
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<p>Really? Where did you hear that? </p>
<p>I was told that one must treat everyday like a present and open it with great expectation.</p>
<p>On the contrary, I don’t think you sound like someone who wants to take the easy way out–you sound like someone who wants a promise of safety, which is different. I can understand that. But you have to let go of that, because there are no guarantees in life. No one can say, “Go to this school, you will be set” or “Take this major, you will be set”–you have to have the confidence in yourself, to believe that you will be able to create your own success. That’s the only remedy for the fear you are describing.</p>