Dr.Mobius said:
Yes, I'd love to hear about your experiences if you're willing to divulge them.
In my case it isn't an official "track." I've hand selected a series of computer science + math classes that I'm interested in/think will be useful. What I'm trying to do will essentially amount to a major in physics and a minor in computer science. A math double major as well if I have the time. This basically amounts to:
(very similar to the computational track at your university)
computer science 1&2 (programming)
discrete mathematics
algorithms
numerical analysis 1&2
At this point I've only had the two programming classes and discrete math. Both of my programming classes have been in the Java language. The first semester of programming was very basic. We wrote small programs like leader boards and programs that could estimate pi and do standard deviation, etc. The second semester focuses on data structures such as stacks, queues, binary search trees, and graphs. All theoretical underpinnings of databases and even the internet.
I must add that what we have been learning in these classes is very general and abstract. We haven't written any practical programs that someone would want to download and use, at least not IMO. Granted they are very early classes. However, I visited a local lab recently that is hiring a couple of interns. They want students with knowledge of Access, SQL, Visual Basic, etc. Things that applied programming students are learning but computer science students aren't (at least at this point). Although I do have a much better understanding of the actual data structures that our applied programming students are merely blindly implementing.
Probably the most practically useful class I've taken so far in this area is a game programming class I'm in this semester (in C#). We ended up implementing most of the data structures I've been learning in the Java class. Game programming is also a great way to get introduced to large-scale, object-oriented programming as well as software engineering, graphics, animation, AI, etc. As an aside, physics knowledge comes in quite handy here.
I know that algorithms will deal with designing efficient algorithms to search, add, and delete in those data structures learned in the second semester of programming, as well as doing math proofs to represent the time-complexity of those structures. Will most likely also be very abstract, but I think will make one a wiser, more conscious programmer in the long-run.
I've selected numerical analysis because I think it's essential for any physics major to learn the computational modeling. I'm sure just about everyone on these boards will agree with me here. Being able to use MATLAB or Octave to do matrix computations and solve PDEs comes in handy anywhere from physics to computational biology to machine learning.
I'm wanting to take graph theory and combinatorics as well, but this is purely out of interest.
To be honest, I'm not entirely sure if what I'm doing will help with job prospects at all. If you're going into a science such as math,physics, chem, etc. and want to have enough programming skills to be hired in a programming position, I think it takes more than just tracks and classes to gain the necessary knowledge. It requires a considerable amount of self study and practice as well. Not to mention interest. I do think that this stuff will help in graduate school if you're planning on doing anything computational.
Just my $0.03. Hope my ramblings are at least a little bit helpful.