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You made great points. If he does one major, he probably can graduate in 3 years, since he has about 10 AP courses that can be applied for college credit, plus he has some college courses he took during high school that might be able to transfer.
Since he has been accepted by the CS dept, I am not sure how easy it is to change to EE as his major. But he certainly can consider grad school if he can not find a job out of college - that is something that we didn't think about.
Thank you so much for the suggestion. Now he can look at his options from new perspective.
The issue with being torn between EE and ChemE, is that after the first semester (or maybe in the case of your son's college maybe even in the first semester), the paths are very different. There's more physics classes for EEs and more chemistry, thermodynamics, etc for ChemE.
Its hard to say what he should do. As others have said, that's up to him. All I can offer is:
If he is thinking EE and Computer Science, he should consider computer engineering instead. Its a good mix of both. You take core computer science classes and core EE classes. At my college, the only difference between EE and ComputerE was a couple of Fields classes. It might as well have been EE with a computer science minor.
If a double major is going to result in it taking more than 4 years to graduate, take the extra time and spend it on grad school instead.
First, I have never heard of a school that requires a firm selection of major at freshman orientation. They may want him to pick one for the time being, but the first semester of courses should be pretty similar for both, so switching probably wouldn't be that hard if he does well academically.
Second, the salary difference between these disciplines is not large enough to be a good deciding factor. The only possible exception is if he is attending school in an area with major oil industry presence, in which case ChE would track better into that field.
Third, double majors in engineering are usually a waste of time and money. CS + EE would be a possible exception because the fields overlap a great deal, but even then it's IMO a little questionable.
Fourth, how much does he know about a CS major? Engineering majors can work with computers and program a lot too. CS is essentially a branch of discrete mathematics and has a lot in common with a math major. Is that what interests him?
Fifth, a good thesis-based graduate program in STEM fields will admit students based on research potential. Mastery and research experience in one field will outweigh superficial coverage of two.
I am a computer engineer and agree with the previous poster that EE + CS = computer engineering. At my school, the cpe curriculum was indistinguishable from EE with a minor in CS. So if he is interested in EE and CS, just do computer engineering. I tend to think that double engineering majors are a waste of time. Why not put the effort into an accelerated M.S. program? If he is intent on double majoring, choose something that will round him out, such as business, economics, or a foreign language such as Chinese, Japanese, or German.
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