Can you please help me understand CS as a major and career? My D in HS is taking CS for the first time, adores it, and her CS teacher says she’s a natural. My concern is that math is her worst subject - ACT math is 31, everything else on ACT is 36. Isn’t CS heavy in math? She loves languages, so I think she could be a programmer. But without math skills, would she be stuck in something rote? She’s very analytical, and I think she’d get bored if she doesn’t get a chance to problem-solve. And how is the long-term career prospects and pay if she doesn’t have the math skills? TIA for your help - I know nothing.
Since when is scoring in the 96th percentile a bad score? How does she do in math in school? Not all math is the same. I loved Geometry and was okay with Algebra. (I became an architect guess which math I use more.) CS does use math, but it’s more about logic.
Here’s a link to Carnegie Mellon’s Comp Sci requirements. You can see there are five courses they call math, and a bunch of others that sound like math to me: https://www.csd.cs.cmu.edu/academics/undergraduate/requirements
My CS kid was also very good at Latin, and got 800s on the SAT in Critical Reading twice, but never managed to do that in Math. He’s working at Google now. Scores aren’t everything. He would have been a terrible English major.
I suspect your daughter’s math skills and ability are fine for CS if she takes that route.
Act math 31 is plenty for CS. It doesn’t use too much math after all.
Since when did an ACT of 31 mean that someone is “bad at math”?
I wasn’t in CS in college (was in EE) but have been writing software for my entire career. There’s very little advanced math required in the job. Almost all the work is taking big problems and breaking them down into smaller problems. If your D’s teacher thinks she’s a “natural” at it then I’d tell her to go for it. At a minimum, she should minor in CS so that she has the advantage of being able to write programs to help her in her major field.
Thanks for your replies. My takeaway from your comments is that you don’t have to be a genius at math to do well in CS, just be decent. BTW, I said “bad” at math because her high school has some kids who really are geniuses at math. She’s not one of them, her gift is in languages. She’s on the normal math track (AB calc senior year) and does well. For the ACT she had to study for the math section so she could pull her score up from the 87th percentile, but she didn’t study for any of the other sections. My concern was if she goes into a field that is very math heavy, and if she wants to compete at the highest levels, I don’t think that would be a good fit; she does not have the natural talent that some of her classmates have. I also think she’d be happiest if she chooses a path that fits with her natural talents, and wasn’t sure that CS does once you get into the upper levels.
Thanks again, I think you have alleviated my concerns.
Thanks droppedit, that’s tremendously helpful!
She is one year advanced in math compared to the normal high school sequence (which leads to precalculus in 12th grade), although AB will only lead to being one semester advanced in college. There may be math superstars in her high school, but try not to think of them as typical students who go into computer science or other majors that use math.
Computer science mostly depends on the ability to think logically, which is similar to how one thinks in math, even though it may not use the usual types of math directly as much.
If she’s good at languages she may be interested in some of the ways language learning and CS intersect. Natural Language processing ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_language_processing ) and the whole field of artificial intelligence.
I have the same concerns with my DS. He has a 660 on the math section of the old SAT which I believes translates to 88th percentile. I don’t mean to hijack this thread,but DS is interested in the UCSD ICAM program which combines computing and the arts (music). Hubby thinks it would be better if he majored in CS with a minor in Music. DS is adamant he includes music as part of his studies. In terms of job opportunities, would it be more advantageous for him to major in CS?
We need more girls who code…She sounds brilliant and if she is an engineering or CS major she will get many offers as I believe many companies see the need for women in this area. You can do a search and see that the starting salary for CS majors is higher than most and that the growth in this industry is predicted to continue. My son is CS/Pre-med/bioinformatics and seems to love it. Good luck.
http://visarts.ucsd.edu/icam-interdisciplinary-computing-and-arts-major indicates that the ICAM major is not that heavy in CS courses, though he could try to take additional CS courses as out-of-major electives. However, getting into CS courses as a non-major is likely to be difficult at UCSD, due to the extreme impaction of the CS major (in recent quarters, changing into CS required 4.0 or 3.9 GPA).
@ucbalumnus - That’s what we were afraid of. Unfortunately, as an applicant you must declare a major when applying, and DS is not really sure what he wants to major in. He would like music to be part of it.
He may want to consider schools where CS is not so heavily impacted, so that he can enter the CS major relatively easily, or take CS courses as a non-major.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19854939/#Comment_19854939 can show how impacted the CS major is at various schools.
This has been a tremendously helpful thread. I never knew anything about restrictions on taking CS courses as a non-major; I’ve a lot to learn. Thank you all for educating me! And thank you about the kind words for my D.
When CS is a restricted major, it is that way to keep the number of students in CS courses within the the limit of the CS department’s instructional capacity, while allowing all CS majors to get into the CS courses that they need to graduate on time. Obviously, CS majors get first priority for space in CS courses, so non-CS majors may have difficulty getting into CS courses.
@ucbalumnus - Thank you for the link. He will be applying to all the UCs, USC as well as Cal Poly.
@Melvin - Good luck to you as well!
Ditto on the poster comments about that math score actually being very good or excellent. Don’t worry about the very top math scorers- unless she wanted to be a math major then grad student.
My gifted son was a math major then added computer science and works as a software developer/engineer (title depends on the company) instead of going to grad school. So far he is being intellectually stimulated in his job- thank goodness. There is so much more than just programming with a CS career. My son teaches himself the languages he needs as he works- there is no need to learn everything in college. If your D is interested in CS she should go for it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if most successful math majors scored lower than 31 on the ACT (or the equivalent on the SAT). Your daughter’s scores indicate that she could succeed in any major, as long as she was interested enough in the material to study and do the work. I’m a math major and some of the hardest classes I’ve taken were in computer science. This isn’t because computer science is innately harder than math, but because I practice math a lot more than I practice programming.