<p>I'm currently a sophomore majoring in Political Science, and I had been planning on graduating in three years. I'm really interested in programming and was considering getting a Computer Science minor, but a friend told me minors are essentially useless, and recommended I get a CS major instead. Problem is, getting a Computer Science major at my school requires that you take Calc 1 and 2 (my last math classes were trig in high school and applied college algebra my freshman year), and would end up taking me 4 years instead of 3.</p>
<p>I like Computer Science, but my main motivation for getting involved in it was to make myself more "marketable"; as in, I could get a tech job if my Political Science career doesn't work out. Would I have a chance of getting a CS major (ie could I pass Calc), and would getting a Computer Science major be worth the extra work/year in school? Would a CS minor be useful?</p>
<p>Any help would be GREATLY appreciated, thanks!</p>
<p>If you are looking to tech, you would be lucky to get away with two semesters of calculus.</p>
<p>If you really hate calculus, and don’t need it for a CS minor, take the minor.</p>
<p>Most people have minors in something, it’s not that unusual. </p>
<p>If you are a sophomore, you should be looking for a career-related summer internship ASAP (this week). Applications for summer positions are usually due in January or February.</p>
<p>For industry software jobs, you want to take the introductory sequence of CS courses at least. For upper division courses, those more likely to be useful in industry would be operating systems, databases, networks, and algorithms/complexity. Security/cryptography and software engineering or course with a large project would also be desirable. Whether that corresponds to a major or minor depends on your school.</p>
<p>The ability to think logically is important in CS. While calculus specifically may not be used much in CS, logical thinking tends to correlate with being good at math.</p>