Lucrative career options for current/new college students

[timeless]

@johnm4

CS prof here.

I suggest having her try out the first level CS course to see what she thinks. While it won’t be a perfect representation of the rest of the major, it should give her an idea if it’s something she actually wants to pursue. CS is really about analytical problem solving, and programming is the language we use to solve those problems. Therefore, an early undergraduate program usually has a focus on teaching some programming and the major concepts in solving problems (e.g. divide and conquer, abstraction). Good intro CS courses should make it interesting by engaging the students in some real-world problems. Higher level undergrad CS courses will provide some depth and breadth in the various areas and provide more time to solidify skills.

A few things to note:

• A student has to really love CS to become a top CS student. Generally, that means doing a decent amount of CS related things outside of the classroom. Students who generally take CS because they think it will lead to a high paying career often do poorly in some of the tougher courses, or may not even be able to finish the major.
• Many programs have vertical structure. Intro level courses, intermediate courses, and advanced courses. So you want to try to start early to make sure you have the time to do all the courses, and/or decide CS is not for you so you have time to pick another major. Some liberal arts majors let you take almost any of their courses with few or no prerequisites.

Now the good news:

• Liberal arts and CS are a good mix. Today, companies are looking for well-rounded candidates with good communication, speaking, writing, and collaboration skills. There are many people-facing positions that don’t involve programming, but require someone to generally understand what the programmers need to do. Software Engineers with these skills are much better candidates than the stereotypical “loner tech nerd”.
• Consider looking for a school with a Human-Computer Interaction, User Experience, or Interactive Design program/minor/concentration. Those are all more people-centered trajectories.
• I mentioned CS is about problem solving. Those problems come from all disciplines, so it’s natural to find some interdisciplinary problems where you can apply some CS skills and make an impact across things you are interested in.

I was mostly a B student in math and science courses in high school and I did manage to survive. As a CS graduate from a school that has a top 25 CS graduate program, this is advice I would follow. I just want to say you don’t need to be a top CS student to get a decent salary and a job in tech at a fortune 500. I’m a below average CS student with weak algorithm problem solving abilities (a lot of people in my program found algorithms a piece of cake) and was able to get a job. I do wish to explore algorithms on my spare time but I just do not have the logical mindset to go through research papers. I do regret not proactively being in contact with professors as well. To get into the top tech companies (Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.) that requires a lot of interview preparation or at least a strong technical mind and somewhat decent soft skills. There are also bootcamps that can get you jobs in the industry without a degree! I don’t really know many who have gone through it though.