<p>@big dreamer: Not at all. I’m just fascinated with Greek mythology in general, the language (they use pi as a letter on roadsigns, how amazing is that? When I visited Greece I swooned over every street sign and metro map) and of course there’s the famously lost recipe for Byzantine Greek fire. That’s probably the most important bit that inspired my username.</p>
<p>Thanks. Are you a writer too, perchance?</p>
<p>Haha, I’m full-blooded Greek so I was curious :D</p>
<p>I am more interested in sciences, some engineering, designing things (inventing). I am a solid writer though, well according to my English and History teachers lol (went to Yale and Amherst, respectively). The creative writing I do is more humor-laced, but I love getting into minute details, really setting the scence. I am not into writing thrillers usually or anything like that. I am a writer/editor for a science publication though. Just for kicks, I have written some comedy raps when people dared me to (and lol wow…good times 
), and did run the newspaper at my old school (did contribute sometimes).</p>
<p>What kind of writing do you do?</p>
<p>Look into Cave Writing at Brown. Just in case you want something to mesh CS and Writing. It sometimes seems as though every department has its hands in every other department here (Cave Writing, Bio and CS, Econ and Engineering, Engineering with Sociology, our CogSci department in general (look at Thomas Serre in particular), etc.) And our undergrad CS offers research opportunities to pretty much anyone who seeks them out, including freshman (especially if, as it sounds you might, you take CS19). And if you work things right early enough, meshing two departments together (as I plan on doing for my Artificial Intelligence concentration) can be done.</p>
<p>You sure are getting a lot of information about 2 certain schools, so I have to put my 2 cents in since my daughter has been at both. Later I will try to add info about other schools to look at.</p>
<p>Also, please say in what way you are sort of a minority in that dept. Are you female?</p>
<p>Ivy League schools do not give any merit or athletic aid. They do give major need based aid. Never assume that you don’t qualify without looking up the info on the school website and using an EFC calculator. At Brown, in general, if you make less that $60k you don’t pay, less than $100,000k and you won’t get loans. This is something to be checked individually for each school.
<a href=“https://financialaid.brown.edu/Cmx_Content.aspx?contentId=70&mode=0&cpid=70#fain[/url]”>https://financialaid.brown.edu/Cmx_Content.aspx?contentId=70&mode=0&cpid=70#fain</a></p>
<p>Open ciriculum means you don’t have distribution requirements - you pick them You do have major requirements, and in CS they can be demanding.</p>
<p>My daughter loved in at Brown. She is from CA. Loved the ‘away’ experience. Loved the open cirric and other things that Brown does to make it easy for you to try new things without always worrying about gpa. The culture and atmosphere is liberal, can be arty, brainy. Small City, she went occasionally to Boston and NYC. She didn’t take too much outside math/science, but Sr year she took a fiction writing workshop that she liked. Brown has very strong creative writing dept, and so will most every LAC.</p>
<p>She did research every year from freshman year. It was usually just a matter of going to talk to a prof, or seeing a job posting. She received 2 grants to support herself for summer research from the University. Had paid position working on NSF funded project for last year of school. Did study abroad program in math in Budapest one semester.</p>
<p>Now she is in grad school at UW-Madison. Top 10 CS school. Was accepted to an intermediate fiction writing workshop this semester. Loves the city, says it is a vibrant college town with lots to do, lots of music and the state capitol is there too. Cheap to live for the most part.</p>
<p>Brown is extremely hard to get into. Madison less so, but I don’t know about OOS. But there are other schools with open ciric, or close) This just may give more to think about. Before writing the schools to ask for info, check the websites to see what they say about research and aid.</p>
<p>Oh and you won’t believe how many grads were going off to either microsoft or grad school (announced at graduation.)</p>
<p>You can reply here or PM me to get more info.</p>
<p>Brown would be a good choice–if you can get in and afford it. This combo is in their wheelhouse.</p>
<p>
Brown’s CW is indeed very strong, but NOT every LAC is strong–or even more than mediocre–in creative writing. That generalization is more easily made for English, but though creative writing is often housed in or affiliated with the English department, the course offerings and optimal expertise are very different. If you wouldn’t major in biology with mainly chemistry professors teaching your courses, you shouldn’t major in English automatically expecting an education in creative writing.</p>
<p>@big dreamer: I do super-lighthearted pieces. I used to do mainly fantasy, and now I’m moving on to everyday-life type things and some sci-fi, because I love imagining how far technology will go in a hundred years. I do quite a bit of screenplay writing as well, especially as I find it easier to think visually and imagine a scene laid out in front of me. This has the added advantage of making me work to show and not tell, as clich</p>
<p>Greekfire, if you are serious about pursuing “genre” creative writing in college–i.e. you want to be able to write fantasy or SF in workshops–PM me. A surprising number of “strong” creative writing programs only cater to “literary” writing. OTOH, if you’re OK with only writing “everyday-life type things” in college (at least for formal class assignments), don’t worry about it.</p>
<p>Greekfire, I am beginning to suspect you are more of a writer than a cs type. I’m not a computer scientist, but my son is a cs major with a particular interest in AI. His course load is very time-consuming, and I’m afraid he is finding it difficult to spread himself as thin as he had hoped to. </p>
<p>I can tell you are an exceptional student, and perhaps you can swing a real dual major of the type you are contemplating, but I think it may prove to be quite a challenge.</p>
<p>At some schools, there are cs majors in Arts and Science rather than in engineering. The course load may be less time-consuming, perhaps (just a guess).</p>
<p>Being a female in cs will put you in the minority. There is some debate about whether or not it gives you a boost in admissions. It won’t hurt, for sure.</p>
<p>If you’re interested in AI, look at cognitive science programs (for which Brown is also very good). Stanford Symys (Symbolic Systems) also gives you a solid grounding in CS with much more interdisciplinary flexibility. Since cogsci is so new and interdisciplinary, different schools often have vastly different curricular structures.</p>
<p>@Keilexandra: I don’t know if I’m necessarily a genre writer these days. Certainly I enjoy it, but over the past three years I’ve come to realise that I use genre writing as a crutch, focusing on the fantastical more than the relatable. I suppose…unless my professors explicitly forbade me from setting a scene in 2080, I’d be all right.</p>
<p>@midmo: Yes, I do sound like that, don’t I? It is true I consider myself a writer first, and although I do have an affinity for math and the normal sciences, I certainly don’t love it the way I love writing. (If you’ve heard of NaNoWriMo…I’ve been doing that for three years now.)</p>
<p>The reason I want to study CS is because I truly, truly enjoy dabbling around with computers and code and building things out of binary, and imagining what the future of the internet might be. I taught myself a lot of web design & development skills (this is actually what got me into CS in the first place; I just wanted to build cool websites) and I’m working my way through some of the MIT CS-related lectures available on iTunes. I kind of like the idea of having enough programming knowledge to be able to build cool stuff, because I drive myself crazy every month coming up with a great idea for some application or website or online tool that is always out of my scope, although I seem to be getting closer these days.</p>
<p>In any case, I am definitely a novelist type. This is not something I can make a career out of, but it is something I am pursuing in any case. I need a day job that I love, which will incidentally allow me the financial freedom to pursue less reliable interests.</p>
<p>If a dual major is going to be that tough (and I expect a CS curriculum will be quite challenging on its own), how about a minor? I don’t need the degree so much as the opportunity to explore.</p>
<p>Oh, and another question, just out of curiosity: midmo, what’s the male/female distribution like in your son’s courses? At my high school right now it’s rather dismal.</p>
<p>Oh, also: I don’t know what areas of CS exactly I’d like to explore further, but I am quite interested in graphics, HCI, and computational linguistics (which seems to be similar to AI?).</p>
<p>Definitely look at Stanford symsys. It should offer more flexibility by virtue of not being housed with engineering like computer science is at Stanford.</p>
<p>I will.
But Stanford/Brown/JHU? There are far too many big names with tiny admissions rates being mentioned! This thread is beginning to worry me.</p>
<p>Greekfire, the overall m/f ratio in the School of Engineering is 3:1, but it is even more lopsided than that in computer science. There are a few female profs in cs, though. It seems robotics is attracting some females, but that is a mixed field, not just cs.</p>
<p>
[quote=Greekfire]
@big dreamer: I do super-lighthearted pieces. I used to do mainly fantasy, and now I’m moving on to everyday-life type things and some sci-fi, because I love imagining how far technology will go in a hundred years. I do quite a bit of screenplay writing as well, especially as I find it easier to think visually and imagine a scene laid out in front of me. This has the added advantage of making me work to show and not tell, as clich</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>On the contrary, all CS majors at CMU are actually required to ** minor ** in some other field. CS-unrelated minors such as music or modern languages are not uncommon. You can also double major, as long as you can cope with the course load.</p>
<p>^^^That is not inconsistent with what I said. A minor is not a major.</p>
<p>
It is reasonable for the OP to seek a college where the bolded disclaimer is unnecessary.</p>
<p>@big dreamer: are you considering industrial design of the Apple consumer product’s variety? I think if anything can inspire people to illustrious careers in industrial design, it must be Apple. You should see this, if so: [Photo</a> of every Apple product ever released|Edible Apple](<a href=“http://www.edibleapple.com/photo-of-every-apple-product-ever-released/]Photo”>http://www.edibleapple.com/photo-of-every-apple-product-ever-released/)</p>
<p>3:1 is not a surprising ratio for me. I think I’ve read that, among all AP tests, only the AP CS A/AB tests have decreased in registration among females, which I find surprising, because you’d think in these times people would be interested in pursuing as many APs as possible.</p>
<p>Also: I had a very productive talk with my mum yesterday re: colleges, CS & CW, tuition costs, and How Precisely To Pay For My Ridiculously Expensive Education (still unresolved, but as I’m a junior we have a bit of time to work this out). I really have to thank you all again for the help. I’m going to be meeting with my counselor soon, so I’ll have a chance to ask her more specific, targeted questions about colleges and what I should be working towards for the rest of this year.</p>