Hi! Currently I’m a senior in high school, all apps submitted and such. As I start to hear back from more and more colleges, it forces me to think about what I want to declare my major as and what classes I should take my freshman year. I’m well aware on the cost of tuition, and knowing that, I don’t want to just drop nearly 20k a semester on classes “just to take”. If I was going to college just take classes, I might as well just go to CC and save me a couple bucks (which I’m actually considering). Anyway, lately I’ve been thinking a lot about Computer Science/Programming. I’m really in to the whole coding thing and I want to seriously look more in to Computer science and such. I’ve heard it’s a tough major though, and requires you to excel at math. Math has never really been my forte. I never got high marks and it never came easy to me. If I do decide to pursue CS as my major I will ask for help or get a tutor. I do love coding and techy stuff though,I think it’s really fun and interesting. Don’t get me wrong, I plan to prioritize my work well but with a balance of fun (because it is college). I just want to be well off and go in to a good career. I’m a girl by the way, so I know there’s a big bias with females in that field. Do you think I could do it? What do you recommend I do? Any opinions?
You can definitely do it! I would recommend that once you are at your university, join or start some groups for female students who study science and technology majors. That way you won’t feel so isolated as a female, surrounded by guys all the time in your classes.
People who do well as programmers learn how to program in a lot more languages than what is taught in their classes in a computer science major. You can get a head start by trying out https://www.codecademy.com/ or other online free coding classes and tutorials.
Throughout college, practice coding and create an online portfolio of your work with your own personal website, or load some samples on Github. Learn how to talk about coding so you can do well in technical interviews. Participate in coding competitions like Google Code Jam or Code Chef. If you think you might be interested in data science, then try out the tutorial on https://www.kaggle.com/ and start competing there as well. That site also creates an online portfolio of your skills as you participate in competitions.
Good luck!