Hello,
I’m currently a freshman high school student and am planning for college. I’m planning on trying to do a double major in economics and cs, but was wondering if
a) this is a good idea
b) what experience I would need to have in these areas to do this
Any help would greatly be appreciated.
a) It’s a good idea if you are interested in both of those majors and are fine with having slightly less flexibility to explore other areas in college.
b) Theoretically speaking, you don’t need to have experience in either of those areas to study it on the college level. However, you should have a solid background in math (it’s good if you can get up through calculus in high school), as both fields rely on math. It’d also be good to do well in physics.
In practice, at schools where you have to apply to the computer science major, many competitive applicants have some exposure to computer science in high school. That can take many forms: classes, after school programs, summer camps, special online programs, or even some self-teaching and tinkering. So if you think you might be interested, I’d encourage you to seek out some resources to explore the field and learn some programming.
In economics, it’s less necessary to be exposed to the field itself ahead of time, but make sure you do well in math!