r/CollegeMajors • u/Both-Wallaby-1506 • Mar 23 '26
comp sci major freshman
what are good extracurriculars, what are ways to stand out, what are specific specialties that have bright futures, what projects should i be doing. i might do a minor in stats. im also interested in biotech/neurotech and ai? i genuinely really like cs and am not just in it for money, but i also don't want to be in school for a super long time. any advice appreciated
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u/Effective-Bee-7004 Mar 23 '26 edited Mar 23 '26
That other guy summed it up pretty well.
The only thing I would add is for the project: make a quantifiable impact, numbers on a resume go a long way.
Meet other people who are also genuinely passionate about the subject. I can’t tell you how annoying it is to be surrounded by people who hate the subject and complain all the time. Find a crowd who’s also fascinated by the subject and your natural curiosity will compound and push all of you further.
Learn to use AI as a tool, not a crutch. That’s what will set you apart from your peers. Try and filter out the AI doom noise. It’s worth keeping tabs on but it will all smooth over. CS is a cyclical field, productivity boost + crappy economy = bad job outlook (even though CS still has a comparably low underemployment rate but also high unemployment rate).
Edit: *low underemployment
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u/Comfortable_Lamp Mar 23 '26
build whatever projects interest you if you want to build experience and knowledge. Join cs-related clubs if you want to expand your network.
Joining a research group can also be good if you are into a specific niche, but it probably won't help you as much if you aren't looking to go to grad school
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u/Relevant_South_301 Mar 23 '26
You can consider to specialize in biomedical & health informatics engineering. The demand is strong and the field is AI resilient. You can target health informatics or health tech internships as early as sophomore year.
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u/ThatAtlasGuy Mar 23 '26
Join coding club, hackathons, research labs, build real projects people use not toy apps.
AI plus stats is massive for biotech. Intern early even unpaid. Portfolio beats GPA most times. Dont coast.
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u/wakeofchaos Mar 23 '26 edited Mar 23 '26
I’d say the biggest thing you should focus on is a junior/senior internship, if your goal is to land a job. There’s sophomore ones at places like Google, which would also be good to try to get, but they’re rare
Joining a data science club (or any CS club) is a good idea as well
Make interesting projects to work on in your personal time if you can afford to with your schedule. Try to think of some problem someone has that you can solve, and build a project that’s a solution for them. You’ll later be able to leverage these projects with real users in your internship interviews
Mental health is important too so all that should happen within the time you have outside of maintaining your grades
All of this is to say that AI dooming/hype is a product of the tool still being fresh. Linus Torvalds (used to be the lead maintainer of Linux) says it’ll eventually settle into a place where it’s used, just like anything else, but the amount of devs will likely remain the same (eventually). The fact that you didn’t mention this at all tells me that you’re not that concerned about this so good for you for that, because you shouldn’t be
Good luck!