It seems to me that there’s a disconnect between what the OP’s son wants to do and his interest in “joint business/CS programs”, which always emphasize the business side over the CS side, because they’re meant to produce graduates in business with some broad (but not deep) technical/CS knowledge. Some financial knowledge will certainly be helpful in building trading systems, etc., but it isn’t required and can be picked up easily when needed, unlike CS/math skills. He should concentrate on CS in college (and perhaps take a few courses in finance/business along the way).
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Definitely check out WPI. You can put those two majors together in a meaningful way through their project based learning.
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This is not my area of expertise, but I wonder if the programming at Olin & Babson would work for this student. The student could pursue the ABET-accredited Electrical & Computer Engineering track at Olin, or do the Engineering Computing Concentration as the “E:C concentration offers significant flexibility, particularly with courses taken off-campus” (i.e. at Babson or Wellesley, but for this student, Babson’s business courses seem like key opportunity). Or if OP’s son is more into the business side, then Babson has optional concentrations in Business Analytics, Computational and Mathematical Finance, Quantitative Methods, and Technology Entrepreneurship, among other areas.
If the goal is trading or quantitative finance I’d agree with those advising to emphasize the CS and math side. He can take a few finance or Econ classes but honestly business courses aren’t the route to what it sounds like he wants. (Now, if business analytics is the area of interest that’s a different story).
Thank you to all of you for the many wonderful, thoughtful replies. You have given us much to think about, including whether S24 might be best suited for an area of studies that emphasizes CS and math. Again, thank you!
Maybe something like this?
Maybe this with very high stats?
https://www.eecs.mit.edu/academics/undergraduate-programs/curriculum/6-14-computer-science-economics-and-data-science/
If you are thinking about CS and math combinations, College Navigator might be a good source of brainstorming for colleges with a range of selectivities. Some of the majors that sound as though they could be of interest are Computational Mathematics, Computational and Applied Mathematics, Computational Science, and Mathematics and Computer Science. There are 163 colleges with one of those majors if you are looking for particular regions, student body sizes, etc.
If you are looking for CS with Math, you pick as good of a CS school you can get into and if it is a top 50 or flagship state school, it will have a pretty decent math department. You don’t need a custom major. That is just marketing on the part of the school. Most large schools will have all the math courses you want and more.
If you are very strong in math to begin with, then you’ll have nuanced views on which math department is better, and then you will pick the math department first and make sure the adjacent CS department is acceptable. Which it will be, if you pick a sufficiently strong math department.
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University of Washington has an excellent CS program, and often gives scholarships (called Purple and Gold I think) to strong OOS students. It is quite difficult to win admissions to CS, as CS is a separate application group and punches way above the ranking of the overall university.
I used to work on trading systems on Wall Street and in San Francisco. Finance classes will be more applicable than business classes, but a straight CS degree is all you really need. That’s what I have.
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