<p>According to this computer scientists make more money than most engineering majors.</p>
<p>Highest-Paid</a> Bachelor’s Degrees: 2010</p>
<p>Is this accurate?</p>
<p>That’s about the same as an engineering starting salary. Even if that weren’t the case, starting salary is only one variable to consider in cross-comparing the two, so it would be quite hard to say which is “better” than the other, even in terms of money.</p>
<p>Remember that CS and each engineering major employment prospects are affected by industry cycles. Right now, CS is doing well, but that was not the case a decade ago. Civil engineering was doing a lot better in 2005 than now. What things will be like four years from now may be different from what they are like now.</p>
<p>You may want to look at the <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys.html</a> , including past ones.</p>
<p>I hired a guy about 8 years ago who studied EE because he was afraid of outsourcing, and went as far as getting his MS part time. However, he’d been programming since he was 12 and really wished he did CS, which was his hobby. He was able to make the switch and is now a respected software engineer, but I think he really regrets not actually studying what he loved.</p>
<p>IMHO, I can only speak for the tri-state area, based on career surveys of various universities that UCBALUMNUS has posted, CS seems to be owning every single Engineering major. If better implies better pay, more opportunities, several offers upon graduation, then CS as of now, is ‘better’. Just take a look at those surveys, and I don’t see CS slowing down anytime soon, so I would have to respectfully disagree with UCBALUMNUS. Almost every grad in our department is starting his own company, and some have been very successful. Besides, CS vis-a-vis EE, or CivE is such a younger field with so much more potential in the years ahead.</p>
<p>It depends on whether you actually like it and whether you are willing to keep up with current technology in the field.</p>
<p>
It’s quite dangerous to extrapolate the entire country from a single overpopulated region if the US, no?
There are very few places in the country that are quite like the tri-state area. CS is indeed pretty good for employment elsewhere, but that kind of thing cycles through every few years. I guarantee that the glamor of CS that you so admire will disappear faster than you think.</p>
<p>Not to mention the fact that the “tri-state area” is notoriously light on engineering careers to begin with (per capita), if I’m not mistaken.</p>
<p>@NeoDymium, computers rule the world and they will continue to do so for quite some time. CS will always be a good degree. The reason I posted this is because a lot of engineers think they are better than CS majors. Engineers just have more prestige but that’s about it. CS does not have the prestige that it should have…</p>
<p>NeoDymium,
As an ex-EE major, there is a reason why I specifically said the tri-state area. The reason for the aforementioned is because it’s a region that I am familiar with. Most EE’s, CivE, MechE’s end up as either a)Software Engineers, b)Investment banking, C)unemployed because of oldies filling up the relatively little positions that open up.</p>
<p>Rather than I making a generalized statement, I’ve appealed to a source, which are career surveys. Aside from your ‘guaranty’ assertion being impossible, since your not a variable nor do you possess knowledge of the future, I would like to repeat what I said: While CS might slow down, given the untapped nature of it(vis-a-vis other Engineering fields), new investments(think Cornell Tech down here in NYC), along with our mayor opening up nearly 200 high schools strictly devoted to CS, innovation and growth is yet to come champ!</p>
<p>CS is an exciting field to enter, and like I said, given my description of ‘best’, it is ‘better’, in all honesty. However, one should always choose a major based upon their needs and wants, one should not enter a field because it is the ‘best’. One will get their behind owned if they enter a field for the wrong reasons.</p>
<p>
On the contrary, if you look through these threads, you will see more than a fair share of people interested in CS who hold it in high regard. You will find plenty of CS elitists and plenty of non-CS engineering elitists. That’s just the nature of most people who decide to pursue either major. So what?</p>
<p>
I hope you realize most of the country is not very much like New York and Washington DC. That’s a horribly biased sample of the population, and I hope you realize that pretending every other place in the country is like that is reckless extrapolation. </p>
<p>
You can no more say “I don’t see CS slowing down anytime soon” than I can say “the glamor of CS will disappear faster than you think.” No matter what “data” you have, unless you have some serious insider information (Congress’s legal agenda, the internal state of major market powers, etc), you won’t be very good at predicting the future. I don’t think you’re right, but neither of us really knows.
Your assertion that CS is an “untapped well of potential” while the other engineering fields are “stagnant and crumbling” is also quite a leap of faith. Honestly, I’m not sure why you think this is true.</p>
<p>Yes Cs is better than EE. It is routine at my school to see BS in CS majors get starting offers in 6 figs. No way even MS in EE getting that (and a lot of EE jobs require a MS).
There are so many CS jobs open. I get way more responses when applying to CS jobs vs EE jobs (No responses!). I know I made a mistake majoring in EE and for anyone going to college in the next few years (short term) i recommend not to major in EE (maybe this will change some years down the road dunno). </p>
<p>Every CS major I know has a job even if their gpa is .5+ lower than mine and might be worse coders than me. EE is not faring quite as nicely.
I know I am targeting CS sort of jobs nowadays but its tough because I have to learn some stuff. After all I studied circuit design and solid state physics. CS majors obv have an advantage because thats what they did in college.</p>
<p>ah what a useless degree lol. I guess the only advtange is that a CS guy honestly probably can’t self teach himself circuit design but you can self learn some cs stuff.</p>
<p>Neo:
I don’t understand why you are assuming that I think The tri-state area is a good sample size. While it’s a decent chunk, I totally understand it’s not the entire country, although New York and Boston are decent sample sizes. The reason I mentioned that is because I know a thing or two about our region, and would need to research the west coast, and other areas before I make a post. Me using career surveys as my basis of an argument holds more weight, as opposed to your fairy tale opinions, since at least I have some data to work with it. Let’s agree to disagree, and let others figure out what’s best for them.</p>
<p>hylyfe,
Don’t waste your energy. It will unfortunately not to take you long to realize that we have some delusional members here. Wait till they graduate. I can at least speak for myself, being overwhelmed with so many interviews, that I have to cancel some to make room for others. I’m sure just about any CS senior is on the same boat as me, I’d like to see an EE, or MechE say the same, in all honesty. Like I said, I do like EE, but given the job market, it didn’t take me long to swap my majors to another more enjoyable field, CS. When you see just about every EE in the tri-state area graduating and complaining that he can’t find a job, it makes sense.</p>
<p>Again, before you quote my post, I challenge you to open Monster.com, or any job searching job, or create a resume as a fresh ‘EE’ and start applying to jobs to see if you get calls or not. The majority of the jobs requires experience, good luck justifying those search results to a new EE. There are no where near as many jobs, if any quality at all. Most of my peers at Columbia, City College, Poly Tech, and Stony Brook, are in fields that have nothing to do with EE, like working for banks, and they feel frustrated I might confess. Thank God to my professor in EE, who was dead honest when he said you might havet to move to the middle of no where to find a quality EE job, the same can’t be said about CS, at least as of now, 2013.</p>
<p>
Self-contradiction.</p>
<p>
Sure - do that before you make blanket statements about CS vs engineering. Also do some research before you try to predict the future.</p>
<p>
Wrong. The basis of my argument is not, as you call it, “fairy tale opinions” but rather statistics and how yours are an extremely biased representation of the country as a whole. Your sample is about as useful as a survey of the top 1% of all graduating classes. It’s a similarly large yet unrepresentative sample of employment.
You conclude far too much from far too little. A biased interpretation of an inkling of “real data” doesn’t change that whatsoever.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Self-contradition? How so? Elaborate. Using terms, without an elaboration is a logical fallacy at best.</p>
<p>
Says the man who said the “glamor of CS that you so admire will disappear” , and you can somehow magically ‘guaranty’ it. That produced a ‘lol’ I shall confess. I should’ve ignored the entire post once I saw such a kiddish assumption, but I am a tad-bit astonished as to how one can make such a statement about any field, that too with fairy-tales, as opposed to concrete evidence.</p>
<p>
How can your argument be based upon statistics, when you haven’t provided any? Do you expect us to somehow believe you? Where are your statistics? It’s a fallacy on your part to assume that it’s 1 percent of the graduating class, especially considering the fact that most of those surveys havea 70% response rate, that’s a just a misinformed statement to make. I urge you to take a look at the surveys, before you decide to make baseless assumptions. No data has been altered, I don’t know where you are getting all this nonsense from. I am telling you that based upon career surveys, CS as of now, has a it ‘better’ based upon my definition. No need to misconstrue the points I am trying to make here. You ignored the larger point of my post, which an EE, hylyfe, himself confesses to. You can run, but you can’t hide from facts – remember that young grasshopper.</p>
<p>Again, for the the 3rd time, UCBALMNUS has a sweet little thread, that has about 20(or more?) career surveys, from schools all across the US, analyze the data, the response rates are pretty darn high, go to Monster.com and other job searching sites, and then offer an informed rebuttal.</p>
<p>Just pick the discipline that interests and excites you the most. When I started in engineering school, ChemE majors had the highest salaries. By the time I graduated, they were the lowest. (And no, it only took me 4+ years. 
) The poster who said that the industries are cyclical was correct.</p>
<p>The important thing is that ANY engineering discipline has good career prospects and good salaries. Don’t make the mistake of comparing one with the other based on a few $K a year.</p>
<p>
“I never said it was a representative sample, but I just did.”</p>
<p>
Since you happen to like pointing out logical fallacies, I shall label this one “ad hominem.”
Not to mention you misread my post. I said “the glamor of CS will soon fade.” Not sure how you get “CS will die, I guarantee it” out of that. </p>
<p>
Take a moment to reread each of my past few posts. This single paragraph mischaracterizes just about every aspect of my argument. If you can’t see how your argument does so, I suppose we’ll simply end it at that, because there is no point of continuing.</p>
<p>But as an aside, I’m curious: how familiar are you with the conceptual aspects of statistics? To me, your understanding of it seems to be rather lacking.</p>
<p>QCstudent, I don’t think you understand the concept of sampling. It isn’t just about sample size, but also about representative sampling. Basing a conjecture on a sample the size of the tri-state area as actually a reasonably large sample to draw from. In fact, it is a larger sample size than most scientific polls and studies. The problem is that it is not a representative sample. You are restricting your view to a region where engineering industries are not as common as the rest of the country, so your sample is not representative of the job markets nationwide and can’t be used to draw general conclusions about the strengths of CS versus engineering. That is where your mistake is. New York is especially biased because of the prevalence of extremely high-paying jobs that CS grads would be more qualified for than engineers in industries like finance and investment banking.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that neither career is inherently better than another. Each has different geographic regions where they are dominant and each has well above average salaries when compared to other careers in the markets. Furthermore, both of them will continue to be an integral part of modern society, so while recessions and market cycles may temporarily stunt growth in a given field (both are vulnerable to this), the long-term prospects are and will continue to be very strong for both types of career.</p>
<p>People need to stop asking these questions about “Is career X better than career Y?” The bottom line is that the best career for you is the one that gives you the best combination of overall happiness and a high enough salary to take care of yourself and your family. In general, both CS and the engineering fields tend to excel at both of these things provided you went into the field because you were interested and not because you liked the money.</p>
<p>@hylyfe, I thought that electrical engineering had a lot of jobs and opportunities. I’m shocked with your post I hope I make 6 figures after I graduate doing what I love the most, programming lol. Wish you luck getting a good job.</p>
<p>@seattle_mom, chemical engineering still has the highest salary on average according to the source i posted which is for 2010. I do not think it went down just in 3 years</p>
<p>@neo, relax this is just a thread… :/</p>