Keilexandra

How easy/difficult/impossible is it to double-major at Bryn Mawr in two unrelated areas? I am thinking along the lines of English and Computer Science, so a combined thesis is rather unlikely.

NJ113

My daughter has friends or knows someone who was a double major in: math/french, math/chemistry. I would think an English and CS major shouldn't be a problem.

bklyndad

My daughter just graduated from Bryn Mawr in May. The Commencement Program listed thirty eight separate double majors for which bachelors of arts degrees were awarded.

b@r!um

Practically speaking, a double major in English and computer science would require 31 courses, including all of the general education requirements (23 courses in English and CS, a Balch Seminar, 1 lab, 2 social sciences and 4 courses for the language requirement). The total number of courses required for graduation is 32.

An English and computer science combination is technically possible and comparatively easy because both majors are very flexible. English lets you take most courses in any order, and after a 3-course intro sequence computer science classes can be taken in any order as well. However, few students choose to double-major due to "comfort" concerns. A double-major requires two concurrent theses, both of which would be very time consuming, and probably a fair number of courses that you may not be interested in. (Let's face it, every major requires a course that even the most dedicated student is not that interested in.)

A nice way to bypass these disadvantages is a major/minor combination. This way you would get to cherry-pick the interesting classes for your second field of concentration and not bother with annoying requirements. (For example, if you are interested in programming, you may not care so much about Theory of Computation or Computer Architecture; but you might be really interested in electives like Game Design, Computer Graphics or Web Programming.) Minors are much more popular than double-majors for those reasons.

Keilexandra

^ Yes, I'm worried about the comfort level, especially the concurrent theses. I have thought about major/minor, but CS is supposed to be my "practical" second major (and I'm not willing to give up English or another humanities major). A conundrum.

b@r!um

I think a strong minor in computer science would give you most of the advantages of a computer science major without the drawbacks. I have heard that many people in the software industry don't actually have a degree in computer science but rather just some practical training (e.g. a certificate from a community college or a number of programming courses in college). For example, we have had several math majors going into software engineering in recent years who have only taken two or three computer science courses in college.

If you are interested in a non-programming tech job, much more important than a computer science major itself is tech experience or so I have heard. Our information services department hires a lot of students for various jobs (e.g. maintaining the college website, setting up and maintaining the computer networks on campus, helping students with their computer problems, etc). For many students these positions gave them the background for their first tech job after college.

Many students have misconceptions about the nature of a computer science major. Unlike majors like Information Technology or Software Engineering, most computer science courses are not targeted at applications and do not prepare students directly for a job. Instead you would study computability theory (there are computational problems whose answer is uncomputable - even in theory!), the implementation details of a programming language, what happens on the hardware level when a computer adds two numbers, etc. Computer science is very mathy at times and very physicsy/engineering-like at others. These courses form a background that a well-educated programmer should have, but they are not meant to train you to be a programmer. Nor will they teach you how to maintain a database system, set up a computer network or install a new motherboard.

Or in the words of one of our computer science professors: "Computer science is to computers as astronomy is to telescopes. We use computers to aid us in the study of computation, but computer science is not about computers."

Keilexandra

Thanks for the detail. I'm not sure yet what I'd do with a CS degree; just that it's more marketable than English. I'm vaguely interested in computational linguistics and natural language processing, but that obviously is not a "practical" application.

jerseygirl14

K -
I am a software engineer with a CS degree. I can tell you that we need engineers who can write. It drives me absolutely bonkers to read engineering papers where the writer clearly does not appreciate grammer/spelling tools.

We hire a lot of folks with CS, Math, EE degrees purely because we are a technical company, but the most successful folks are those who can communicate well verbally and in writing.

Good luck to you.