<p>Any thoughts on which is a more desirable degree? The student plans on going to graduate school.</p>
<p>I would think the CS degree would be a broader foundation for grad school.</p>
<p>From a discussion board: </p>
<p>"Both will give you a good education in programming. The primary difference is that Comp Sci will enable you to solve problems that no one else can, whereas Soft Eng is geared more towards delivering products to customers.</p>
<p>Both are necessary for good development, and will round out a good dev team. It depends on whether you are more science minded (answer questions) or engineering minded (design solutions)."</p>
<p>It’s only recently here on CC that I’ve even heard of a software engineering degree, and I work in the field. Seems to me that CS would make a lot more sense for graduate school, since it would contain a lot more theory-based classes that would be the foundation for graduate work. Software engineering seems to be much more practical and aimed at those planning to immediately start work as a software engineer.</p>
<p>Agreed, CS.</p>
<p>Computer Science is the more technical and flexible degree but it could depend on the particular college. ‘Software Engineering’ sometimes gets more into project management and process flow (again - depending on the college). It depends on what one wants to end up doing but a person with a CS degree can do whatever a person with the other degree can do from an opportunity perspective. Look at the particular college’s outline of the degrees and what they cover.</p>
<p>Have a look at the descriptions of computer science and software engineering in chapter 2 of this document:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.acm.org/education/curric_vols/CC2005-March06Final.pdf[/url]”>http://www.acm.org/education/curric_vols/CC2005-March06Final.pdf</a></p>
<p>Thanks for that link motherbear! 2005 may be a little dated but it looks like it still has some very good information.</p>
<p>Cal Poly SLO and San Jose State are among the few schools that have both CS and SE majors. You can compare the courses and curricula for the majors at each school to see how similar they are and what the differences are.</p>
<p>For preparation for graduate school in CS, the CS major is preferable, although someone majoring in SE should be able to take sufficient CS courses to be well prepared for graduate school in CS. But the CS major will have more slots open for additional CS courses, instead of having several occupied by several SE methods type of courses that an SE major would have.</p>
<p>Definitely CS.</p>