UCLA's Linguistics and Computer Science Major Question

College Majors Math/Computer Science Majors
1

Does anyone know anything about this major? I’m currently a community college student (linguistic anthropology major) hoping to transfer to UCLA, USC, or CSULB (I really want to stay in the same general area). Anyway, this major has really caught my attention if I were to be admitted to UCLA, but I just keep thinking I may not be able to find a tech-related job with it. I’d love to work for some place like Amazon, yet I’ve read articles that say companies (such as Microsoft) feel that linguists really ruin the quality of the company (I’m fairly certain that this was even the exact quote).

Would this be a bad major choice? I really love both language and computers, but I don’t have the science background for a full CS program. I have taken a number of programming classes that apparently would cover some of the lower division requirements for the major, so it’s really calling out to me, but again, I can’t help but think about job prospects. Is there any chance I could find a computational linguist job with this major? Thanks for any help/advice - even if it is brutally honest.

2

From my admittedly limited experience, having a joint major in Linguistics-Computer Science should be fine as long as you take a look at the full CS program and make sure that you are getting enough core CS courses. You could even check a couple of other university’s major requirement and job listings to see which courses they focus on; just make sure you get a solid grounding in CS and you won’t have a problem whatsoever. University is also about doing what you love, which appears to be linguistics. Actually, the joint major will make you a great candidate for positions in natural language processing.