<p>Hello all, I'm about to enter my fall semester as a Mathematics and Computer Science major.
I will most likely be going to Santa Clara University. However, I would really like to make things challenging for myself, so I am thinking about either adding on either a electrical engineering or a computer engineering major to my mathematics and computer science major. This isn't something that I want to do just because it will lead to greater job prospects or something like that, rather I have a great interest in all of these fields I've mentioned and I want to take advantage of the next 4 years in uni to grow as a person not only socially but I also want to really push myself academically. So this is my reason for wanting to do this double major.
I have contacted the chair of the mathematics and computer science department at santa clara and he brought up 2 points for me to consider:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>the scheduling might be hard to do because of overlap between CE and CS for example, and courses taken can not count for both majors.</p></li>
<li><p>when applying for a job/internship/etc, you will have to explain your academic background. Thus I'd have to give a legitimate reason for doing such a double major. I was thinking I could give reasons along the lines of:</p></li>
</ol>
<p>a. I wanted to push myself beyond the norm and since I have a great interest in said 2nd major, I decided to do this double major.</p>
<p>b. I wanted to have a very complete understanding of computers from the very lowest levels of the circuit to the highest level software engineering perspective and be able to have a job that involved any particular portion of this spectrum.</p>
<p>c. I have a very great interest in both of these subjects and thus double majored in them.</p>
<p>I am not so much concerned about the 1st point (scheduling issues and the like) because I just emailed an adviser at santa clara to see if this would present a major issue or not and I'm sure she could elaborate more on how much of a problem this would be.</p>
<p>However the 2nd point about explaining my academic background is something I've been thinking about. For example, my mother brought up the point that if I simply said I wanted to push myself beyond the norm then they might ask a question like: Well didn't you go to a good school? Didn't they push you already without a double major in these subjects?
So I was wondering what others might have to say about this. I am mainly looking for commentary about how this would look on a resume or a graduate school application.</p>
<p>Thank you very much,
mikfig</p>