[MajorFilter] Computer Engineering or Computer Science Major? Help me decide please! (3rd sem already) and don't know what to be!

I don't think it matters enough if switching majors would delay your graduation. After a couple years, your experience will matter more than the specifics of your degree. As long as you are getting the algorithmic theoretical background in your classes, you should have no problem.

You sound a bit like me (: I'm a high school senior right now, entering a university next year, and I've been trying to decide this for a while now. My parents also pushed engineering down my throat because being "an engineer" seems so prestigious to them. I've known for a long time that I'm a CS guy at heart, though ;) I plan on pursuing majors in computer science and mathematics and a minor in computer engineering in college. I should graduate with two degrees (B.S. in Computer Science with minors in Computer Engineering and Mathematics, and a B.S. in Mathematics with minors in Computer Science and Computer Engineering). But that's only because I just really love math. The CS/CE split is very much so I can have more experience with every level of the computer. I don't plan on working in hardware, but knowing enough hardware to understand programming and efficiency and such is a valuable thing. I just want a foundation to build off of in my CS work. Even if your school doesn't allow minors like mine does, take enough CE to know your way around the hardware, then major straight CS. It seems the best way to go about getting the job you want at MS/Google/whatever.

ah cool callmejay. Much better knowing from UMCP 2!

I got a BS in CS from UMCP and employers (for programming jobs) seemed quite impressed with that. Maryland's got a great reputation in CS, at least locally. I'd say do CE if you want to do hardware, but otherwise stick to CS. I think the CS degree is impressive enough that you won't have trouble finding a good job. One thing you might consider is cozying up to some of the professors, who often work closely with private companies and sometimes even work at private companies themselves.

Comp E has b.s classes (at least in my opinion) like physics and chem and like technical writing. (maybe not b.s but bleh) You don't need a huge amount chem to write code, but there's a fair bit of physics in game design. Not as much as you'd need for chip design, but still. But please, please, please do your best to extract as much skill as you can out of the technical writing classes. Until you've worked in programming, you have no idea of the sheer amount of time and effort pissed up against the wall due to misunderstandings caused by poorly written technical documents. The ability to write a good, clear spec is absolutely saleable, and the orderly thought processes required to make that possible will absolutely make you a better coder and especially a better software designer.

I agree with TheOnlyCoolTim. I did EE and came out of college doing development... Perl/ java/ webapp development and project management. I didn't learn much java in college, but I learned how to learn with an EE degree. Seems like it's a bit more prestigious degree and people will hire people with the degree to do things that they may not know. My manager is, however, a CS major. He and I share a lot of the same knowledge, so they're probably pretty interchangeable. I liked EE more than I would have liked CS, but you're probably very different than I.

Thanks guys! Yeah I might be leaning more towards CS now i guess one of the things really that was stopping me was the fact that it seemed kind of a "less or easier" major than CE which it really is and that recruiters would wonder. I guess for the places im shooting for they care more about your coding experience instead of your major anyway.

Btw i cannot get a minor or a double major in CE/CS since they are similar and my school will not allow it. Don't worry about having an official minor status. If you can take the classes and learn the stuff, you can just put it as skills on your resume and talk at interviews about how while you weren't allowed to claim a minor you possess skills from both sides.

I've a bachelor's in EE and am currently going for a PhD in a way that's sort of in between the EE and CSE departments (of course at some places they put them all in one department as EECS, which seems like the best thing to me though I've never experienced it myself). My advisor is primarily in the CSE dep't but holds joint professorship with the EE dep't., though I forget if that's the correct bureaucratic term. He too came from an EE background. While we're EE I think the experiences apply as your CE is in an ECE department - meaning, and the course listing suggests this to me, that you'd pretty much be doing a computer flavor of EE. The pro of the ECE: If you take the CE track at an ECE dep't. you are quite likely to be able to pick up any CS stuff later. I can jump in and take most grad-level CS courses and the ones I'd be wary of taking aren't because of anything that was unavailable to me as an EE. If you get a job coming from an ECE dep't they should be able to train you in whatever CS stuff you're lacking. Vice versa it frankly doesn't work. You're pretty unlikely to be able to jump into the ECE-type stuff from a CS dep't. So there is that limitation, though it may not matter to you. The cons of the ECE: while you'll have the ability to pick up more of the CS-type stuff, you probably won't have the chance to do as much of it during college. You're likely to come out with somewhat less practical programming experience, for example, and what you have will be most likely lower-level. Most of my programming for school has been a little Assembly, a lot of C, and MATLAB, with a little C++ and Java. While I could pick up your fancy Pythons and so on if necessary I didn't get exposed to any of that in EE, though that's somewhat by choice as I rather prefer the lower-level. It's also probably going to be more grueling, a plus or a minus depending on you. I would like to work at a place like Microsoft (and have been given interviews with them with no luck) and do companies like them really care if you are a computer engineer or scientist? I have straight-up EE friends at Microsoft - also, Microsoft and Google do research so don't disregard that as a path. To a great extent your college career gives you a background that lets you learn how to do the job; it doesn't teach you how to do the job. This is where the ability to pick up CS from an ECE background is a plus - to some extent they care more that you can learn it than that you know it already. To some extent reading your post I feel you would like CS better - but one thing to keep in mind is that whatever your major is you get to shape your curriculum somewhat and could probably manage to be in-between the CS and ECE dep'ts from either end.