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UCB MFE Computer Science Minor Worth It?

Would you take the CS minor if you were in my shoe?

  • Total voters
    9

FE_Starter

Joined
6/8/14
Messages
11
Points
11
I am going to UCB MFE next Spring. Before that I have the time to finish a computer science minor from my undergraduate university. I am debating fiercely these days whether to take the minor or spend the time on something else. The deadline is Monday. Any thoughts would be appreciated!

I need to take five half-year courses to get the minor: 2 programming courses (Jave and C/C++), 1 math course for CS, 1 software design course and 1 essay course (CS and society..). As a financial engineer, the software design and essay course might not be too much of a use. It costs me around 6k to complete the minor.

Is "CS Minor" a good add-on to MFE degree on resume? Will it enable me to pursue some CS jobs? Does it worth the time and money?

Thank you so much! :)
 
You realize that virtually everything a quant does is programming based, right?
 
Take the courses. Think about what you're interested in (and also what's useful) and maybe don't do the minor, and just take other CS courses to supplement your goals/skills. You can always list a CS concentration or the CS courses on your resume instead of the minor.
 
koupparis said:
Take the courses. Think about what you're interested in (and also what's useful) and maybe don't do the minor, and just take other CS courses to supplement your goals/skills. You can always list a CS concentration or the CS courses on your resume instead of the minor.
Click to expand...
Good point! I will just take those courses that are useful to me.
 
C S said:
That's what they *say*. But in reality, it's going to be a lot more VBA and Java than C++ and Python.
Click to expand...
Depends entirely on the job. Mine is heavy Python and some C++ and a tiny bit of C#. On balance, you're probably right that more jobs are going to involve VBA and Java. That said, if you're a good programmer, you should be able to pick up a new language quickly. I was able to make production changes to Java code having had zero Java experience.
 
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