Planning to transfer from Hunter to City College of New York because of B.A

State Forums
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I’m a computer science major and recently got accepted to Hunter College. While my opinion may change this upcoming spring semester on perusing my major, as of now I have a lot of doubts of what I’m going to do soon after. Right now, Hunter in itself is a good and reputable college that I can ride around its coattails if I plan on graduating from this institute. But the thing that bothers me is if I were to graduate from this college, I would get a B.A in computer science. I’ve searched far and wide online to get a good amount of people’s advice and perspective on a B.A in CS - a good chunk say that a B.A or B.S in CS doesn’t really matter and companies would hire you anyways if you have a sufficient amount of skills in programming. To me, that argument made the most sense but there does exist employers that take B.S as the better degree over B.A in its definition in CS. As well as, having a B.S as a base for your resume instead of B.A is well recommended,demanded, and some only interview B.S holders. I may be taking college courses aiming for a B.A this semester but I don’t plan on taking any humanities courses as electives because math/science & programming are the only subjects I think is worth taking as of now. Is it a good idea to transfer to City College for the sake of getting a B.S but is lesser known of the two but does offer a good engineering program? If so, how likely am I going to get hired for a CS related job compared to Hunter’s B.A in CS?
Please save me from this madness.

-P.S I wanted to go to Stony Brook, but location wise its impossible for me other than housing which my parents won’t even support.

Your’s Truly, A Struggling Transfer Student

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Don’t worry about the BA versus BS distinction.

Transfer if CCNY offers more/better CS courses that you will take than Hunter, or if the ABET accreditation at CCNY is useful because you want to go into a niche area like patents.

If you want to compare CS course offerings, see these listings:
http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/csci/curriculum/hunter-college-computer-science-courses-and
https://www.ccny.cuny.edu/compsci/dso-cs

3

Look at the coursework you will be taking for each program, not the name of the degree.

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The madness here is self-inflicted. Nobody will care if you have a BS or a BA in CS. It doesn’t matter.

What exactly makes you think otherwise? OK, maybe there are job postings or grad schools out there that say “BS in Computer Science required”. But in this case they are just using BS as a convenient abbreviation for “a bachelor’s degree”. The BA will work too.

5

^^^^ Exactly. The letters that your college/university decides to used to name the degree are not what matters.