First Things #
- Check your grades on Canvas. Everything on there should be correct.
- Note the Redo-A-Lab lab and Redo-A-Homework HW.
- Practice exam is up. We’ll go over it on Friday. Attempting it before then is strongly recommended.
- If you have exam accommodations like quiet location or extended time, contact the CAS office to schedule that now.
Majors and Careers #
Unless I missed someone, 4 majors are required to take this course:
- CS
- IT
- Robotics
- Math
- Cybersecurity
The syllabus says we’d talk about courses and careers, so let’s do that.
These are pretty similar, so let’s look at major differences, specifically required 4th year courses. Cybersecurity is currently 3 years, so we’ll skip them for now.
Majors #
CS #
- Software Engineering
- Computer Architecture
- Operating Systems
How do you write computer programs? How do computer programs run on actual computers?
IT #
- Computer Networks and Protocols
- Computer Security
- Systems Administration
How do you set up multiple computers? How do you get programs running on them and then keep them running in a way that’s manageable?
This is the course in the group with the fewest math requirements.
Robotics #
- Engineering Design
- Industrial Robotics
- Mobility, Autonomy, and Teleoperation
What if you put arms, legs, or wheels on your computer?
Notably, robotics courses require Physics. So if you’re interested in taking later robotics courses as electives, you’ll need to take (calculus-based) physics as your lab science.
Math #
- Abstract Algebra
- Intro to Analysis
- Math Expositions
Careers #
This is based on data that Google Gemini pulled from various surveys, focusing on big state schools in the US that collect and publish the data.
To start with, the bad news:
- For any of these majors, nearly half of all graduates won’t immediately get
a job related to the major.
- Most of those will end up underemployed, in a job that didn’t require a college degree at all.
- Some (about 15%) will end up with some non-technical “any 4 year degree” job.
- About 5% will be actively looking but unable to find a job six months after graduation.
- That means just getting a degree isn’t good enough. You also want to learn stuff and demonstrate that you can do stuff.
CS #
- 70%: Software developer
- Internal software dev.
- Public web dev.
- Commercial software dev (including games)
- Other common jobs:
- Data analyst
- Sysadmin
- IT Support
- QA
Recommendation:
- Spend some out of school time on personal programming projects.
- Make sure you really can read and write code without AI assistance.
IT #
- 20%: Sysadmin / DB Admin / Network Admin
- 20%: Tech Support / Help Desk
- 15%: Business Analyst / System Analysts
- Much more likely to get these jobs with more business courses.
- Other common jobs:
- Software developer
- Cybersecurity Analyst
- Technical Sales
Recommendations:
- Extra business classes, and especially extra business-applicable math.
- Consider extra programming.
- Build a homelab.
Robotics #
- 20%: Software developer, not robotics
- 20%: Software developer, robotics
- 20%: Robotics Engineer / Tech
- Other common jobs:
- Mechanical engineer / tech
- Automation engineer / tech
- Test engineer
Recommendation:
- Make sure you’re getting enough programming courses.
- Spend extra time making sure you’ve built cool projects.
- Explicitly consider grad school.
Math #
Numbers are a little different here:
- Fewer underemployed, more unemployed.
- More grad school: Maybe even 25%
For those who end up with a job:
- 25%: Software developer
- 15%: Data analyst
- 15%: High school math teacher
- Other common jobs:
- Actuarial analyst
- Financial analyst
- Business / systems / operations analyst
Recommendation:
- Explicitly consider grad school.
- Consider taking some extra programming classes.
