Thread: Computer Science student, but really confused about my degree.

Hello, I'm currently studying in a 2-year college and I thought I'd major in Computer science and when I transfer, I'd have the option of basically picking any of the sub-categories of Computer Science. But, I was really for no-reason looking around the college website and I noticed another Computer major called Computer & Information Systems that can also transfer.

Now, the question is,

I want to study things that have to do with Security like for example work in a company that makes software to protect home users from being hacked, build firewalls, that kind of things. Also for my surprise, I found that CIS requires me to learn way more programming languages but much less mathematics unlike CS which is totally the opposite at least in my college. So, If I want to work in keeping computer secure or basically become what's called "Ethical hacker" which degree of those 2 should I pick? I'm currently in Computer Science, is the CIS basically what I should major in according to what I want to be after I graduate? Or am I already studying the right major for me?


Another thing if I may, I do understand that I need to learn how to program but the thing is, in the CIS degree course catalogs, the CIS degree actually has more programming courses than CS while CS basically has like a whole lot of maths. So, with my limited knowledge but, I can see that CS is basically more maths than computer courses while CIS is basically computer courses without that much maths.

To get the CS degree, these are basically the Computer courses:
1) Intro to Computer Science using JAVA.
2) Object Oriented Programming using JAVA.
3) Data structures in JAVA.
4) Computer Architecture 1 and 2.
5) Computer Architecture and Assembly Lang 1 and 2.

**With like 8 Maths courses.**


To get the CIS degree, those are the computer courses:
1) Intro to Computer Science using JAVA.
2) Microcomputers Sys & Arch.
3) Object Oriented programming using JAVA.
4) Visual BASIC programming.
5) Data structures in JAVA.
6) Networking Technologies.
7) UNIX and Shell programming

Any help from you guys especially professionals is truly appreciated.

Probably the best people to advise you would be the staff at the college.

I recently did an online course in cryptography and found that a reasonable amount of maths (probability, mathematical analysis and number theory) was needed even to *understand* what was involved in securely communicating. But I imagine computer architecture, networking and shell programming would also be useful for what you are planning. So my answer would be "both of the above", which isn't really that helpful...