Is it worth the risk to go undeclared and try to switch into computer science?

fragbot
Sun, 25 Mar 2018 18:22:08 +0000

I would imagine it will be difficult to transfer departments at a school level–arts and sciences to engineering. That said, you should look more closely at what’s offered in the school of arts and sciences. I hire tech staff and degrees in mathematics, applied computing and math sciences (a super-neat program that might be specific to UW Seattle), operations research and statistics all check an identical enough box as a CS degree does. Likewise, there are other interesting candidates–philosophy, economics, or linguistics majors who took some higher-level math courses.

In my experience, being articulate and quantitative are most critical for an initial job in technology. I don’t care what languages you’ve been taught nor do I care that much about algorithms (though I certainly care about those far more than I do language). From talking to friends/colleagues at other places, this is pretty common. Finally, perhaps earning the wrath of numerous parents, I’ve never even once glanced at a candidate’s GPA.