Dual Major Math & CS -> Grad school in either?

[cjwalle]

Hey all,

I'm starting uni in 2010, and am still somewhat unsure of what I want to study. In Canada, I can dual major in Mathematics and Computer Science, my two main interests, which I can't do in Norway.

My question then, is.. If I dual major in Math & CS, will I be able to apply to grad school for any PhD within Mathematics or Computer Science?

Will I be penalized, for instance, if I apply to grad school for mathematics with a dual major as described above, and vice versa?

Thank you for replying.

 

[story645]

Will I be penalized, for instance, if I apply to grad school for mathematics with a dual major as described above, and vice versa?

No, so long as your grades are fine and you didn't skip out on research to do the double major.

 

[rasmhop]

I'm myself an undergraduate so the following is speculation. I suspect it won't penalize you directly, but you'll likely have less time for each degree than single-majors. If other people do some extra coursework they may be at an advantage, not because of their single-major, but because of their extra course work and possibly research. If you're able to keep up with students in both majors I suspect you'll be at a slight advantage as the degrees are complementary.

At my university the CS department say they will even accept math majors if they can document their foundational knowledge in CS (usually through coursework equivalent to minor, but interviews are not uncommon either). Personally I'm doing a math major, but use graduate CS courses for general requirements (our general requirements are basically that 1/6 of our coursework must be outside our major). This is a nice mix because despite my focus on math, I get to enjoy both math and CS and even get to do some interesting courses for general requirements (computational geometry, theory of computation and complexity, machine learning, randomized data structures and algorithms).