Has anyone completed or is in USC’s Physics/Computer Science.
How is it? What do graduates of this degree do after receiving their diplomas? Would I be able to get a job mainly in computer science like people who major in computer science do?
Graduates could do anything a Physics or Computer Science major does… sometimes their job opportunities overlap anyway as individual majors. Most employers will view Physics/Computer Science, Computer Science/Business, Mathematics/Economics etc. as double majors anyway. You can use “/” or “and” notation on your resume, it pretty much means the same thing to employers who generally focus on only the most relevant half of the degree. The only time employers discriminate against specific CS concentrations would be like UCLA’s Linguistics and Computer Science major, which is a B.A. and known to be easier to get into and has less maths requirements than their general CS degree. No such wrong turns exist at USC.
The Physics portion might benefit you in making you look more quantitatively capable, but don’t count on that too much. It would be safe to assume you’d have the exact same opportunities as a typical CS major as long as you maintain a comparable GPA. Physics is hard, so consider whether you can do great in it alongside CS which is also hard.
My son looked at that major when he was accepted as Undecided. It really isn’t like a double major. It is more like two minors merged together. If I remember correctly, on the CS side at least, potential employers may find you lacking in some core courses.
I don’t think the above is 100% accurate in referring to them as two minors stuck together. That would imply lack of depth into either subject matter, which I don’t think is the case. I just took a look at the degree requirements and they’re very respectable. Mainly what’s missing on the CS side is a couple of software engineering courses that may be relevant to a career as an engineer in teaching you best practices, but I would say it is totally fleshed out on the theory end. It looks almost like the Computer Engineering major but with the EE classes replaced with Physics. If you were to ever want to pursue a graduate degree in CS, you wouldn’t have to take a single class beyond the scope of these requirements. If you really did take no further CS classes, you would be missing A LOT in general breadth regarding CS topics like Networking, Graphics, AI, Web Dev, Security, Database Systems etc. but most of these are electives for the standard CS and CSBA majors anyway - so I will assume you will be going out of your way to take a few of these classes of interest as it looks like there are a lot of free units left over. Referring this page here if it’s still up to date: https://dornsife.usc.edu/assets/sites/1/docs/admission/Major_Flyers/Physics_Computer_Science.pdf)
Be advised, recruiters could care less about the individual classes you took, only what you have applied from your knowledge (whether gained from classes or self-learning) towards your projects. In fact, it’s inadvisable that you even have a “relevant coursework” section on your resume in applying for software engineering jobs - you can look up the reason why if you’re curious. They scan the first 3 lines of your resume for some variation of “BS Computer Science”, and then they would note your GPA and skip down to the projects section. Everyone respects a Physics degree, and it would never count against you unless, like I mentioned, you think the Physics portion might drag your GPA down a non-trivial amount.
USC doesn’t go around liberally allocating degree names to half-fleshed out curricula. There’s a level of prestige the school needs to uphold and joint degrees like CSBA and Physics/CS are no much easier to receive than if you were to stay back an additional semester to take the extra 5 classes or so and attain both degrees individually anyway.
You can’t generalize about what employers and recruiters are looking for on a resume from a new college grad. I’ve been at places where they are very interested in the specific classes you’ve taken, to the point they want a college transcript - and other places where they’re not.
Finding a software job with a Physics/CS degree isn’t going to be a problem.