I graduated with a Bachelor of Science from Harvey Mudd College in May 2015 with a double major in Computer Science and Enginerring and a 3.7 GPA.
In the fall of our sophomore year, Sean Messenger and I started discussing what we wanted to major in. We had both come into Mudd expecting to be engineers, but Mudd’s intro computer science course convinced us that CS was something we were very interested in. Taking the next course in the computer science sequence only increased that interest. We were officially hooked. This dual interest in engineering and CS made it difficult to decide which major to pursue.
In the end, it was our focus on robotics that enabled us to make our decision. Sean had come into Mudd already interested in robotics (and with a hefty FIRST Robotics background). Meanwhile, I became involved with robotics with Autonomous Vehicles (E11) during my freshman year. Both of us had been involved in robotics since (taking a number of courses in the subject, working in a robotics research lab, and pursuing robotics-related side projects). So we knew that whatever major we decided on, our coursework had to prepare us for a career in robotics.
To that end, we decided to figure out what courses would most benefit us, then revisit the major decision. Given that robotics draws heavily from both CS and engineering, we knew that we were going to end up taking a large number of courses from both departments. In order to figure out which courses in each major would be most relevant, we started talking to professors and other students. After many hours of meetings with professors (and discussions with older students), we realized that we were going to end up taking all but one or two courses in either major, regardless of which choice we selected.
Being us, we decided to take on those two extra courses and become full-fledged Engineering and Computer Science majors.
We’ve found our double major to be highly beneficial. There have been many occasions where our engineering background has allowed us to solve problems which were stumping our CS compatriots, and vice versa. Moreover, we’ve both found ourselves more at home on the Computer Science side of things. Given that we were only really considering Engineering or both, and how the Computer Science degree has been essential, the double has worked out well for us.
Despite the extra workload, we also remained on top of our studies and did extremely well in both majors. Most people (okay, everyone) said we were crazy for pursuing both degrees. But we learned more than we would have otherwise and loved what we were doing. If that’s crazy, then that’s fine by us.
That all said, the double major is not something we would recommend. If you’re in the same boat, take all the courses in each that interest you, then make a decision.
Below is a listing of the courses I took during my time at Mudd.
I ended up with 153 Credits at graduation (20% more than the required 128).