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Choose Maths or Computer Science degree at university?

Hi everyone,

I am choosing between studying Mathematics at Bristol Uni or Computer Science at UCL.

I have always liked and been good (achieving high grades) at maths since is was a kid. I did not take Further maths at A-level, however I did get an A* in A-level Maths and I am now on a gap year.

I also liked to play a lot of video games on Computers and consoles. I have never designed software or any computer project (involving coding) therefore I cannot say whether I will enjoy this or not.

I want to choose a degree that I will enjoy and open many doors for me to a variety of jobs (so I can choose which job I will enjoy) and earn me £££.

I believe the need for Computer science is constantly growing in the world so I cannot see being unable to get a job with a degree in it, however I can see myself being limited to a boring office job coding all day (nightmare). Unless of course I design an app like Whatsapp and become a billionaire 3 years later. I also understand most degree courses lead to office jobs, however I just want the option say - I wanted to work in mechanical engineering.

People tell me maths is harder (I'm up for the challenge) but leaves more doors open to you... Is this true? Could you just pick up a programming book and learn it?

Thank you any experiences or advice will be greatly appreciated.

[There's loads of good movies on Mathematicians: 'Good Will Hunting', 'A Beautiful Mind', 'Proof' etc but few on CS, why??] + why do most uni courses have like x3 more Maths students and CS students?
(edited 9 years ago)
Original post by soider8
Hi everyone,

I am choosing between studying Mathematics at Bristol Uni or Computer Science at UCL.

I have always liked and been good (achieving high grades) at maths since is was a kid. I did not take Further maths at A-level, I did get an A* in A-level Maths however and I am now on a gap year.

I also liked to play a lot of video games on Computers and consoles. I have never designed software or any computer project (involving coding) therefore I cannot say whether I will enjoy this or not.

I want to choose a degree that I will enjoy and open many doors for me to a variety of jobs (so I can choose which job I will enjoy) and earn me £££.

I believe the need for Computer science is constantly growing in the world so I cannot see being unable to get a job with a degree in it, however I can see myself being limited to a boring office job coding all day (nightmare). Unless of course I design an app like Whatsapp and become a billionaire 3 years later. I also understand most degree courses lead to office jobs, however I just want options if say I wanted to work in mechanical engineering.

People tell me maths is harder (I'm up for the challenge) but yet leaves more doors open to you... Is this true? Could you just pick up a programming book and learn it?

Thank you any experiences or advice will be greatly appreciated.

[There's loads of good movies on Mathematicians: 'Good Will Hunting', 'A Beautiful Mind', 'Proof' etc but few on CS, why??] + why do most uni courses have like x3 more Maths students and CS students?


Computer Science involves a heck of a lot of Further Maths modules, including Matrices for Game Theory. I think you should perhaps find a Decision Mathematics 2 textbook and look at the chapter about Matrixes. Try to self teach yourself and see if you can do the questions. There is also quite a lot of physics incorporated in CompSci. However, teaching yourself code languages such as C++ and HTML is apparently quite fast and easy. Someone with the intellectual capabilities of yourself is probably a piece of cake.

Maths on the other side is very very demanding, you need to know a lot of maths and know that you can keep up with a bunch of courses. However I don't know a lot about the course for maths.

In my opinion, no matter which course you take, if you do a good job and get 2:1, then a job will be avaliable for you, no matter what - Like you said, Technology is growing steadily but also Maths is needed in almost every job.

Hope I helped a little bit :smile:
Reply 2
Original post by lilypear
Computer Science involves a heck of a lot of Further Maths modules, including Matrices for Game Theory. I think you should perhaps find a Decision Mathematics 2 textbook and look at the chapter about Matrixes. Try to self teach yourself and see if you can do the questions. There is also quite a lot of physics incorporated in CompSci. However, teaching yourself code languages such as C++ and HTML is apparently quite fast and easy. Someone with the intellectual capabilities of yourself is probably a piece of cake.

Maths on the other side is very very demanding, you need to know a lot of maths and know that you can keep up with a bunch of courses. However I don't know a lot about the course for maths.

In my opinion, no matter which course you take, if you do a good job and get 2:1, then a job will be avaliable for you, no matter what - Like you said, Technology is growing steadily but also Maths is needed in almost every job.

Hope I helped a little bit :smile:


Thank you it did help. I did not do any Decision maths modules at A-level but I have a drift of what it is like. I do also understand A-level maths is a requirement for CS at most Uni's.

I have not done Physics since GCSE and did not like it much back then, I did do Chemistry at A-level though with Economics.

I assume you are studying CS yourself, do you know why Maths departments are so much bigger at university?
Original post by soider8
Thank you it did help. I did not do any Decision maths modules at A-level but I have a drift of what it is like. I do also understand A-level maths is a requirement for CS at most Uni's.

I have not done Physics since GCSE and did not like it much back then, I did do Chemistry at A-level though with Economics.

I assume you are studying CS yourself, do you know why Maths departments are so much bigger at university?


Decision Maths is truly the spawn of Satan, I swear it. It's so so easy but it's just incredibly long, say, 4 pages to a question?!

Physics is evil. I mean, it's okay. But you need to be able to get the fundamentals of Physics, it's not like GCSE.

I'm actually not studying CS myself, I've done a lot of research though and my cousins do CompSci at Uni. I can only guess why Maths is bigger as a department is because it's more traditional, so to speak, and that people probably prefer it that way because Maths can get you into maybe 20+ professions alone where as CompSci only has a few really, and it's fairly new :smile:

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