Picking a Major (and wrangling interests)

College Majors
1

Salutations to all of you

I’m an incoming freshman at Texas A&M (College Station), and am having a bit of a dilemma. I have for sure decided I want to major in Computer Science. I intend on concentrating in artificial intelligence / human-computer interaction, but feel the desire to expand my learning beyond that, and as such have run into a stumbling point.

Simply put, my personal options are all over the map.

I had first considered many, MANY different fields (potential double-major or minor), but narrowed this a bit by looking at the types of courses offered as well as asking myself if I would be satisfied doing a major project/research in the field. As such, I’ve narrowed it down to the following things (in addition to CS):

Psychology
Statistics
Visualization
Urban and Regional Planning
Business*
Russian*

I’ll attempt to explain my reasoning as well as potential qualms about each option.

Psychology: I’m very interested in the workings of the mind, and aside from the intellectual (stimulus? satisfaction? I’m not terribly sure what word I would use here), I feel it would be beneficial to have an in-depth knowledge of the human mind and intelligence in order to better understand artificial intelligence / human-computer interaction (and provide a different perspective).
Qualms: Would a major’s worth of knowledge really be that valuable in the aforementioned field? Or would a minor or even a few electives suffice? Or, as a third option, is this knowledge I could simply learn myself (through books, etc.)?

Statistics: I have heard that CS (and especially my field of interest) is heavily reliant on statistics, and as such I feel a strong background in stats would be incredibly beneficial. I have read several CS grads talking about how they wished they had taken more stats classes in college.
Qualms: (Similar to psych, and most of my other options) Is a major overkill? Would a minor or a few electives suffice? Or am I misguided in thinking stats is that crucial in CS?

Visualization: I am very much into creative arts, and feel a visualization major would be a perfect compliment to a CS major (CS giving me the more scientific/analytical side and Visualization being the more artistic side). Further, I feel this would provide a different perspective to CS.
Qualms: Is all of the studio work too much work in addition to the already work-intensive CS major?

Urban and Regional Planning: This one is completely different than the others, but I am considering it mostly because it takes several of my non-CS interests (politics, sociology, geography, some architecture, some history) and combines them into one major. I could envision combining CS and U&RP in the future as well.
Qualms: Like I said, it’s relatively unrelated. Although a major (or even a minor? I don’t know) might be considered a bit much for something that is an interest, I don’t know if this is a field in which I can just pick up a book or two and become versed in (if I’m wrong, please correct me).

Business: This is something I’m only considering as a minor. From some people, I’ve heard this provides a nice little bonus if I ever wanted to start my own business, but I’ve also heard (from other people) it’s pretty much useless. I was just wondering if anyone here could speak to one or the other (or provide a different opinion entirely).

Russian: This is also something I’m only considering as a minor. I would like to minor in a foreign language (to get a background in a language other than English), and I have a particular interest in Russian history (as well as a particular dislike for learning Romance languages), so I figured this would be an intellectually stimulating choice. Can anyone speak on behalf of minoring in a language (or Russian specifically)?

I apologize for my lengthy post, but I’m fairly confused/concerned about what to do. I’m told that once I start college I’ll be able to take classes and find my real interests, but given the suggested course plan I received, I don’t see where I would take these. Any help/advice/commentary on my listed options/other options I hadn’t considered would be extremely appreciated. Thank you all very much.

(Also, I’m not sure if it helps but I’ve seen others post similar information so…
-I’d like to graduate in four years if possible, and am willing to take classes over the summer
-I intend on getting my Masters degree once I obtain my Bachelors
-I have about 30 credit hours already going into college from AP Tests. These are not counting either of the calculus tests since I will be repeating those despite earning the credit)

2

Thoughts:

First, I want to tackle the idea of ‘picking up a book or two’. You can theoretically teach yourself anything. And some people are better in certain things than others - some people would easily and readily be able to teach themselves to code and computer architecture and stuff, while they struggle teaching themselves philosophical concepts or social science research methods; others might thrive by reading voraciously about anthropology and archaeology and struggle teaching themselves statistics. There aren’t any topics that are just universally “harder” to pick up on your own, IMO; it’s all relative.

That said, let’s understand for a moment that focused, guided study into something is very different from picking up a book. You could borrow library books on all of the topics here, and read and practice on your own. But that’s different from taking a psychology lab class and actually doing research methods right there in the lab, or doing a regional planning practicum for that major, or doing studio art classes and having your work critiqued by a trained artist and your talented peers. It’s really about choices - which experiences do you want to have in a more guided, structured fashion and which ones are you okay with picking up independently?

  1. Psychology is very useful in human-computer interaction; this is the field I work in, and my background (undergrad and grad) is in psychology. Whether or not you should minor or double major really depends on how much you want to delve into the topic. Taking some classes or minoring in it will likely be enough, particularly if you want to be a software developer or designer who simply uses psychological principles in your work; if you want to focus on UX/UI design or HCI research work or something, a major would be more useful.

  2. Statistics is also very useful in CS in general, and HCI in particular. Given the boom in big data/data science, a combo of CS and stats is very lucrative and in high demand. I have some expertise in statistics. My opinion is that learning the basics is best done in a guided fashion like in a class, but once you have a good foundation you can teach yourself new techniques and skills through books and the Internet (and statistics as a field is very big on self-teaching). Similarly, whether you double major or minor depends on what you want to do. If you’re interested in machine learning, data science, natural language processing, etc. a double major could be really useful! If you just want to kind of use some stats in your work then a minor would be okay.

  3. Is there a such thing as a visualization major? Wouldn’t the major just be art? Whether or not the work would be too much kind of depends on the school that you go to and how intense their program is.

  4. Having two seemingly unrelated majors is fine, although I think they are related (think building software or other technological tools for city planners/regional planners to use in their work, or integrating technology into the planned urban spaces, or understanding the influence of technology on urban/regional building and vice versa).

  5. You don’t need a business minor to start your own business.

  6. You can learn Russian without minoring in Russian, but if you have an interest in Russian culture, history, and/or literature in addition to language a minor in Russian would be good.

Basically, the point is any of these can be a good choice and it’s really up to you. Choices #1 and #2, and to a certain extent #3, have more direct relationships to the kind of work you currently envision yourself doing. #5 and to a certain extent #3 sound more like passion projects - things that you’re just interested in and want to learn more about. Both are equally valid ways to pick a minor (or a major, for that matter), so it really just depends on where your interests lie.

Because the urban/regional planning thing is a nice combo of your interests and potentially career-relevant I’d lean towards that, at least at first, but it also is the major you’re least likely to find at your average college.

3

I appreciate the information you provided at the beginning regarding “book learning” vs. “guided study”. This is something I feel like I had thought about but never quite really understood (for instance, I’ve always known I cannot make it through a book about astrophysics, but can enjoyably read about history), so thank you for translating it into words. The same applies to the majority of your response, in fact. I did some more research and after reflecting on that and your response, I was able to narrow it down a bit.

I think I can safely eliminate the business minor, as well as the visualization major (just to clarify, after reading up on it on the TAMU website, it seems very similar to art, although with a more digital focus). The business minor is not something I really need at the moment, and I feel like if I get to the point where I do need it, it would be a topic I would be fine studying independently rather than in a focused, guided class. As for the visualization major, though it would certainly be interesting, it is (from my understanding) intended to prepare you for grad school in something related to graphical art/animation/etc., and (seeing as how currently I don’t envision myself following a career in that) as such is something I may try as a hobby (some kind of art) rather than a formal education.

Seeing as you work in the field of human-computer interaction, I had a few questions (if you don’t mind, of course).
-Is the psychology you use in your line of work very in-depth psychology (to the point where a major would be extremely helpful)? Or is it some of the more basic concepts (to the point where a minor or a few classes would suffice)?
-What do you do in your field?
-(This is unrelated to the psychology aspect, but more of a general question) If I were to take a few classes in psychology (or any field for that matter) and wanted them to show in my search for employment, is it common practice to list them on resumes?

I also found the information regarding statistics interesting. Looking at my current suggested degree plan, it looks like I only take one statistics class, which I feel might not be enough and as such wonder if I should at least take a few introductory courses like you said. There is something regarding a 12-hour concentration in addition to the major (though, from my understanding, factored into the total hour requirement), so perhaps I could use this to take additional statistics classes (I would use it to take psychology or Russian courses, but it says it requires a connection to computing; what exactly that means I’m not sure. I’ve emailed the department with questions regarding that, however) if I decide against going for a minor or double major. As someone who works in HCI, do you find statistics or psychology to be more beneficial?

I hadn’t really thought about the connection between CS and Urban & Regional Planning, but it’s a very valid point. Especially seeing as it encapsulates a few different interests of mine, it would not be a bad choice to pursue. (Fortunately for me, if I stay at TAMU, they offer an URP major).

All in all, your feedback was very helpful and gave me some interesting things to think about, as well as helping me eliminate a couple things. I’ll certainly have to continue thinking about it (and definitely talk to an advisor about the scheduling part), but thank you nonetheless.

4

I can answer the first two together:

It’s definitely more in-depth. I’m a user experience researcher; my job is (as described in a recent ad in my company’s research organization) “to discover, describe and predict user behavior … and ensure these insights are activated as real product and process change. You’ll partner closely with Designers, Program Managers, Software Engineers and researchers across the company to be directly involved in creating compelling new experiences.” I work for Xbox; I use my psychological research training and background to design research studies of different kinds to help game designers and developers to make games more fun. The psychology I use 1) the social science research methods I learned and 2) is an understanding of human behavior, used to interpret the results and explain them to our developers/designers/engineers and others.

You couldn’t do this job with a few classes in psychology; most people with my job have a master’s or a PhD in psychology or a very closely related field. But there are other jobs in the field of HCI that could be done with a few classes - for example, if you were a UI designer instead of a researcher.

No, it’s not, but you could list your psychology-related skills in a skills section.