Computer Science Major

A computer science education will give you a solid grounding in logic, strategic thinking and teamwork--skills you can use whether you choose a career in CS or go on to medical school, business school or another field. And of course, CS will enable you to do cool things with software! Through your elective choices, you can choose to specialize in databases/data mining, networking and systems, artificial intelligence, security or software engineering. Below is a list of some ways you can use a CS education in other career fields.

• Biology: sequencing the human genome
• Medicine: mining data to identify new drug treatments
• Entertainment: creating games, movies, music, etc.
• Business: analytics: understanding customers' habits
• Plus more: health care, manufacturing, aerospace, etc.

Worried about what you'll do after graduation? Good news! Computer science is one of the hottest fields in today's workforce. More information can be found at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Computer science presents an intellectual challenge. No task in computing is as simple as it seems at first. In the words of computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra, "Coming to grips with [computing] amounts to creating and learning a new foreign language that cannot be translated into one's mother tongue." Even when you master a piece of a project on which you're working, there are many more parts you don't yet understand. Plus, given the rate at which computers are becoming more complex, there will always be more pieces to study and improve. Computer Science is also constantly changing. Even since the 1990s, computers have evolved from PCs to PDAs, to laptops, to smart-phones, tablets and more. And this rate of evolution is increasing! Those who choose a career in computing will become life-long learners and will be on the cutting edge of new trends in technology.

A software engineer is consistently rated as one of the top jobs by Money magazine and Reuters. This isn't just because software engineers have good salaries; compared to other jobs, they also have great flexibility and only moderate stress. Some of the great positions you can earn with your degree are application developer, technical marketer, system analyst and project manager. Plus, there are many great jobs reliant on CS that have yet to be invented. Note that all of these jobs require strong interpersonal skills, so don't think that computer scientist doesn't get to interact with other people!