<p>I've recently been admitted into Stanford REA, greatly to my surprise.</p>
<p>While it's hardly a sure thing I'll go there, I'm starting to think about what I would major in there, and two of my top choices are the Computer Science major and the Mathematical and Computational Science major. </p>
<p>Specifically, I was wondering how the job opportunities compared for a Mathematical and Computational Science Major versus just a straight CS degree. I am in AP Computer Science right now but haven't done a ton of programming prior to that, but I really enjoy math, making MCS more tempting. But, I don't want to get a degree with diminished job opportunities, which I fear MCS might. </p>
<p>What advice would y'all have in this situation?</p>
<p>If you go to Stanford you’ll be able to find at the very least a career in academia in the majority of subjects. If you go to grad school you can definitely use a math degree to go into econ, stats, physcis etc… If you’re not going to grad school it’s a little riskier but you should still be fine. Do what you love you’re going there to develop intellectually not professionally. If you could post stats I’d really appreciate it, I was rejected REA and am just interested to see what some of the admits did.</p>
<p>If I had it to do over again, I’d have majored in Computational Math rather than CS, just because it seems more interesting. You won’t be at any kind of a disadvantage with a Math and Computational Science degree vs. a CS degree. Lots of big data companies are looking for people with the former. </p>
<p>@simba9 Thanks for the advice. I definitely like data analytics and some of the quantitative aspects of economics, which would be part of the MCS program at Stanford. It’s nice to hear that such is a feasible option.</p>
If you enroll you will have services at the college that will help you. The departments and career services will have info on what grads do. There are jobs you could do with either. CS can get very mathy depending on your electives. My dd is now a data scientist–she was a math-cs undergrad and did a lot of theory, and was a CS-machine learning in grad school. But she has done software engineering too. I would be surprised if you had to make a decision the first year and it is likely better to make it once you are in college.
It depends on the types of jobs you are looking for. If you want to go into a more mathematical field, MCS is the way to go. But there are so many job opportunities available as long as you have strong programming skills. Software engineers still use plenty of math in their work.