<p>I just transfered into a ChE program and after planning my curriculum, I thought it might be a good idea to add a mathematics or computer science minor to my degree. I don't have any partiality towards either of the two, but was thinking that the skills learned in either program could be useful in my future career. However, I'm not sure what skills I should be expecting from either, instead of learning to program or being good at math. The math minors I'm looking at are Applied Math, Applied Stats, and Computational Math. Maybe you guys could tell me what skills would be useful in a ChE career and I can see which minor would be the most beneficial.</p>
<p>Do you intend to go to PhD or after BS/MS go to industry and work? </p>
<p>If you plan to work in the industry after BS/MS, as a technical problem solver in a chemical, bio-medical or a semiconductor industry, you could expect to do a lot of data hacking, data mining and data analysis. In this respect, a computer science minor with applied statistics, statistical process control, and design of experiments classes will be of great use. </p>
<p>If you are going to do a PhD and looking for faculty job for example, a minor in mathematics will do wonders.</p>
<p>If you plan to just work in industry don’t even bother with a minor, they are not worth the extra work and money for credits. The math minor may help you out some if you do plan to go to graduate school but is not necessary and I wouldn’t bother with computer science. If your program does not require it , just take a programming class as an elective and you can probably overlap computer math (numerical analysis/computations) courses for the math minor.</p>