What kinds of jobs can you get with a computer science degree?

What jobs do you get with a computer science Bachelor's degree?

• If i majored in computer science what would i most likely be doing once i graduate career wise? what field do most people who major in computer science go in to once they are done? also is it a very time consuming major? is it harder than a physcians assistant or nursing curriculum?

• Answer:

  Computer Science is generally going to have a heavy emphasis on programming. This involves writing code for software and web applications, robotics and embedded systems. It will require a lot of advanced math and logic and probably over 1/2 of the people who attempt the major will dropout or switch majors before they are done. The other majors you listed are also difficult but they don't involve a natural gifting like a CS major would have to have to succeed. To give you the background - There are several main Computer majors and their associated career categories and you need to know these just to get the lay of the land. Now some of the titles colleges use may consist of different course curriculums. As an example one school may have more programming classes in the same major while another school has fewer. Schools may call their general IT program Computer Information Technology, Computer Information Systems or Computer Information Science. To really tell what the major is about you should look at the courses that a particular school offers in that major. Another point of confusion is job titles you will see. For example, I am called a Computer Systems Engineer but I don't do anything associated with Computer Engineering. One job I had I was Systems Programmer but I did not do any programming. So the titles for majors and for jobs in IT can be very confusing. Sometimes I will hear someone say they want to pursue Computer Science or Computer Engineering and once they find out what it involves they realize that is not what they want to do. If this is old info, that you already know, apologies. Here are the majors and some associated jobs: Computer Science (CS) - A technical degree which usually has a Programming emphasis - people with this major usually are developing application software, web development, embedded code and robotics. Sometimes depending on the college the degree may cover some more general topics as listed under CIS below. CS is a difficult area major. Many CS students find themselves not enjoying programming, not being gifted at it or not having the math and logic skills to be good at programming and they will switch out into CIS. CS majors that are able to graduate can also qualify for jobs listed below under CIS. Computer Information Systems (CIS) This may also be called a variety of other names like Information Technology (IT), Information Systems (IS), etc. This is a general technical degree and is the degree that I have. Holders of these degree work in a variety of technical jobs like these: Computer Technician, Service Center Coordinator, Help Desk Staff, Storage Administrator, Network Administrator, Systems Administrator, Systems Engineer, Enterprise Administrator, Active Directory Administrator, Exchange and Messaging Administrator, Backup Administrator, Disaster Recovery Specialist, Database Administrator, Computing Security Specialist, Corporate IT Acquisition Specialist and Data Center Administrator, just to name a few. Computer Engineering - This is a technical engineering and design degree. These degree holders get jobs related to designing and manufacturing computer related hardware. Obviously when you think of hardware you think of laptops and PCs but this might be all kinds of computer devices like tablets, processors, memory, storage, networking equipment and components of computers. Management Information Systems (MIS) - This is a business degree that prepares non-technically trained people to manage projects, budgets and people. Traditionally, senior IT technical pros would eventually be promoted into management positions after years of technical work. The good news is they understood technical challenges their people were working with but the bad news was that some were great tech people but poor people managers. The idea with the MIS degree is to provide business training that is slanted towards managing IT work. Business Colleges like to offer this degree because management principles change must less frequently that technical info where there is always a new operating system or new programming language. This means they can have the same classes, same books and same course titles year after year. In a technical major the technology changes very fast. I have had both types of managers and the new trend is definitely towards these non-technical managers. A lot of them are showing up in the large company I work for. Hope this helps. Best Wishes!