<p>I’m truly surprised by Cornell’s high rank. What a gem! It’s excellent across the board: pre-law, pre-med, pre-business, excellent liberal arts, unique programs. If computer science doesn’t work out for you, you can always change your major.</p>
<p>Hey help me with North carolina university</p>
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I can’t really say much about schools, but you may be looking at the wrong majors. Computer Science is often more theoretical and mathier; you may want to look at Web Design, Information Technology, Information Science, or Software Engineering. Computer Science will provide an education that can provide the ability to do all these things and more, but the others provide a more targeted education that many employers may prefer in a new graduate. I’d choose CS, but since you’re new to this I wanted to make you aware of the options.</p>
<p>My experience: I majored in CS at Big State U when all the other choices didn’t exist. I got into applications development, and have had a satisfying and moderately lucrative career (never had six figures but was close during the bubble) and am currently doing web applications development. But (like everyone) I wish I had done cooler stuff. My son will be majoring in CS at Elite College, and is hoping to do cooler stuff, but knows he can have a job like mine if the cooler stuff doesn’t pan out.</p>
<p>@GeekMom63: Can you elaborate on the “cooler stuff” you’re referring to? I agree with you, but think this would be helpful for prospective comp sci majors.</p>
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I don’t know, I’m only an applications developer! Ba DUMP bump!</p>
<p>My son is interested in research into computer algorithms themselves, and how to make them faster. He’s also interested in natural language processing (IBM’s Watson). He’s also interested in being either a teaching professor or a research professor (or both). All those things will most likely require a PhD. </p>
<p>A relative of mine had a career as an application developer, but for the DOT. He used calculus and higher math in his job. A CS degree, which these days practically includes a math minor, would serve very well for that job.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I’m writing yet another business system to allow people to more easily do the work of my company. I have a MS, but it’s a career-based MS, not an academic MS. Most of the research I do is how to make javascript or C# or the database do the thing I want it to do. So my “research” is actually OJT, not contributing new knowledge. In my career, I have written small systems all by myself and been a lead or participant in writing medium/large systems. So I contribute new programs, that help companies go around, but not new knowledge, and my new programs don’t require significant math. As I said, it’s been lucrative and satisfying. I find it extremely rewarding when someone says “thanks, your program made my job easier”, and this has happened several times over my career. But it isn’t “cool”.</p>
<p>I would recommend a CS degree even if the end goal is to become an applications developer. You learn a lot more theory and structure than you do in the other degrees, and this additional knowledge has served me amazingly well over many many years - I’m more than just a web developer because I understand the guts of what I’m doing and why. This knowledge transcends whatever computer programming language is currently in style.</p>