Computer science vs software engineering at Iowa state university

College Majors Math/Computer Science Majors
1

<p>Given the fact that the computer science curriculum and software engineering curriculum has the exact same computer science core and theory classes, but the software engineering major allows me to take 3 extra cs/se electives and a senior design while the cs major requires more foreign language and humanities requirements due to being in the liberal arts and science department. I prefer taking more cs/se classes than the latter, but am worried about how large companies, microsoft, google, amazon, etc and startups will view a software engineering major when hiring? Would computer science be the preferred to these employers?</p>

2

<p>Requires advanced level courses are not the same; the SE major requires a number of software engineering methods courses that are probably not as much added value (beyond an overview course which appears to be COMS 309) compared to additional CS topics courses.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.cs.iastate.edu/undergraduate/ISU%20Computer%20Science%20Flowchart%202012-2013-2014.pdf”>http://www.cs.iastate.edu/undergraduate/ISU%20Computer%20Science%20Flowchart%202012-2013-2014.pdf&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://www.se.iastate.edu/academics/curriculum/”>http://www.se.iastate.edu/academics/curriculum/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>The CS major does have 3-4 free electives in which you can take additional CS courses if you choose (or you can take other courses). There appear to be no free electives in the SE major.</p>

<p>I would recommend the CS major based on the content.</p>

3

<p>But I would have to use a few of those electives to meet my foreign language requirement that SE doesn’t need and a lot of the electives in the SE program such as the tech, SE, and supplementary electives can be used to take the same advance topic CS courses</p>

4

<p>The electives that I referred to are free electives that are separate from the foreign language requirement. Take a careful look at the CS flowchart linked above.</p>

5

<p>But even after that software engineering has 2 SE electives, 1 tech elective, and 3 supp elective that can all be used to take computer science courses</p>