I have a son who is a junior who is interested in computing, possibly leaning toward scientific applications. He’s really enjoying both AP Computer Science and AP Chemistry, but for employability reasons is leaning more toward CS as a major in college. He’s interested in learning more about what one might do with a major in CS and a minor in chemistry or similar (I know much more about computational biology than computational chemistry) and what schools might be good choices for something like this. (For now, ignore cost, though I’d be happy to learn which might provide the best bang for the buck.) He’s a top student, so it wouldn’t be out of the question that he could get into a MIT/CMU/Stanford level school, though of course those are always a long shot. All other things being equal he’d prefer to stay in the Northeast, but for the moment we’re looking at everything. Thanks!
If your son regards his academic interests as largely technical in nature, then MIT or RPI would be natural fits.
If he’d like to study CS and chemistry (however intensely) along with a sampling in fields such as classics, philosophy, religious studies, government, literature and history, then Brown, Amherst and Hamilton, with their flexible curricula, might be appealing to him.
For merit scholarship recognition, URochester, as well as other UAA schools, should be researched.
There is a common misconception that MIT students take only technical courses. The reality is that MIT requires about a quarter of the bachelor’s degree course work to be in humanities, arts, and social studies, with both breadth across the areas and depth (i.e. more advanced level courses) in at least one. See http://web.mit.edu/hassreq/ .
RPI requires about a fifth of the bachelor’s degree course with to be in humanities, arts, and social studies. See http://registrar.rpi.edu/update.do?catcenterkey=45 .
@ucbalumnus : My post was not intended to be interpreted precisely literally (especially since I’ve read Chomsky). Some schools, by their nature, feel more technically oriented. The above, then, reflected my opinion to that effect.
Btw, I’m probably mistaken, but it seemed this thread was in Search and Selection when it initially appeared?
Schools suitable for a student who wants to major in CS but take additional course work in chemistry would have the following characteristics:
A. A CS department with reasonably complete undergraduate course offerings.
B. A chemistry department with reasonably complete undergraduate course offerings.
C. Enough free electives left over after the CS major and general education requirements that additional chemistry courses of interest can be taken.
A and (especially) B are not difficult to find, although there are some well regarded schools whose CS departments have fairly limited offerings.
C should not be that difficult to find, but schools where the CS major is engineering-based may have more voluminous requirements in math and non-CS science (though frosh-level general chemistry may overlap here), reducing free elective space. Schools with voluminous general education requirements may also have restricted free elective space (though a science general education requirement that can be fulfilled by chemistry can overlap). For each school, you may have to look up the overall degree requirements and the CS major requirements and count courses or credits to see how much is left over for free electives that can be used on additional chemistry courses.
However, a student who wants to go all technical would be more able to do so at a school like Brown or Amherst than at MIT or RPI.
Let me put in a plug for Yale as an underappreciated CS school. They have a strong scientific/math approach to their department, and since it is smaller than some others, there are tremendous opportunities for research and close working relationships with the professors.
Yale has a strong presence in fMRI. DESRES (D. E. Shaw Research) draws on many Yale students for internships/jobs in computational chemistry and biology.
DS is a top CS student, and Yale has done well by him. And, it’s in the Northeast 
Carnegie Mellon requires CS students to have a minor - the theory being that CS should be applied to something. My son minored in physics, because he liked physics. There’s no question CS can be useful for scientist, my son helped a chemist (at a med school) write a program to analyze proteins because no one in his lab knew how to write what was actually a fairly simple program. I also know my husband used my son’s skills from time to time, and has also learned various programming languages for projects he was working on.
I don’t any specific programs that encourage cross-pollination especially at the PhD level assuming he was interested in going on in that direction, but I think there are lots of schools that can provide good CS and science.
This is what I keep telling D18. I don’t want her to major in CS but I do want her to learn how to write code because it’s extremely useful in your future job. One thing I like about USC is that they have minors in both “Computer Science” and “Computer Programming”, with the CP minor more focused on applications rather than theory. Perfect for her!
Thanks for all the great replies so far.
@merc81 what are “UAA schools”? And yes, I posted in “search and selection” – does being a parent preclude posting in that forum these days?
His interests are almost entirely STEM (though he enjoys theater and chorus for fun). Things like classics, literature and history hold little interest. (Maybe some philosophy,)
@IxnayBob Thanks for the heads up on Yale. As you say, it doesn’t come immediately to mind when thinking of top CS schools.
@mathmom I was looking at CMU and it looks like they have several scientific computing specializations available. I don’t want to assume at this point that he wants to go in a PhD direction. I think he’d like to plan on being done after his bachelor’s degree – if he falls in love with something and wants to go further, great, but I don’t see him planning on that in advance.
I will add Cornell to the mix. The CS degree is a BS from the Engineering College or a BA from the College of Arts & Sciences. Common CS courses, but different distribution/graduation requirements. (More science in Engineering, but foreign language in Arts & Science.)
They have changed the website since I last looked at it, and I am finding the new format a bit confusing.
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/undergrad/csmajor
Cornell allows students to take courses in any of the seven undergraduate colleges, and also a small number of courses in the graduate programs.
University Athletic Association. These schools share various academic and scholarship attributes and, depending on individual circumstances, can sometimes logically be considered together.
I’d meant that the other way around. I typically don’t post in Parents Forum, so I was surprised when my reply landed here.
Seems like a good fit for Harvey Mudd. They are really flexible for students with research interests that cross areas.
Beyond schools that have the flexibility to focus on two areas (which, don’t get me wrong, is important to think about), I’m more wondering if there are schools that have a particular synergy here – schools that offer more than the “standard” basic offerings in “scientific computing” or top CS schools that are also particularly known for chemistry, or schools that tend to have students recruited from CS for work in the sciences (chemistry in particular) or have internships in chemistry-related fields, due to some nearby industry, and so on. Thanks!
@CT1417 my oldest graduated from Cornell CS in 2015 so I’m definitely aware of Cornell as a possibility. (He chose to go through Engineering rather than Arts and Science – as you say, the difference was basically Physics and Chemistry versus foreign language. And he already had AP credit for half the required physics and chemistry classes.) He’s now working in Silicon Valley with a great number of his classmates.
I know a recent college grad (two years out) who majored in Chemistry at Haverford and is now working at a research institute, where he works on software to read satellite images and identify characteristics important to environmental studies.
If he has the love of science and the stats for MIT and Stanford, then add Caltech [ the MIT of the west ] to his list. A VERY large % of CT graduates go on to earn PHD’s
.
http://www.caltech.edu/content/apply
http://www.admissions.caltech.edu/content/options-majors
Thanks @menloparkmom – Caltech is certainly on our radar. But I’m not sure he wants to go on to earn a PhD. I don’t think any of my kids are really academics at heart.
MOST graduates of Caltech dont go on to earn PhD’s.
but that statistic DOES illustrate the rigor of an UG science education there.
DS might perhaps be considered an academic at heart, but even then, the realities of the academic career prospects were sufficiently daunting that I’m glad that he opted out of it.
I’m not sure what the future holds for PhD programs, but I see a shocking number of highly qualified candidates opting out.
This is an assembly of miscellaneous comments:
Chemical Engineering or Materials Science might end up being fields that interest your son. Both are lucrative as far as salaries.
I searched for computational chemistry, and much of the research seems to be related to simulation of bond angles and protein folding.
I searched for chemistry courses that involve computers at my son’s college (Caltech), and got matches on “Nature of the Chemical Bond” and “Atomic-Level Simulations of Materials and Molecules.” These both appear to use existing software as part of the class.
Plenty of Caltech students, particularly CS majors, head straight to industry. I’m not finding data right now, but the figure I recall is ~70% don’t head to grad school from CS. There are a lot of CS jobs out there now! Also, lots of science PhDs go to industry or non-academic research labs. The only stats I’ve looked at for this are physics instead of chemistry, though.
Note that the borderline between physics and chemistry is blurry, so a lot of what some might view as computational chemistry might be called computational physics. Physics departments appear to have more computational courses than chemistry departments. My son’s physics degree plan requires at least one programming course and suggests others.
Programming skills are important in physics research. My son did research at a UC physics lab while in high school. Most of his work was programming and getting unrelated instruments to talk to each other. One of the tasks his professor gave him was to communicate with and give tours to undergrads who were looking for undergrad research. He was told to ask if they had taken any CS courses. If the answer was no, he was supposed to tell them to take the intro CS course and then check back for research opportunities.
You might want to ask about computational chemistry in the Science Majors forum (http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/science-majors/). There are some professors who seem to reply only there.