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Re:Ask HN: Are irrelevant degrees at all useful? by byrneseyeview on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @06:58AM (#1534848)
Degrees are for signaling. If you want to signal that you're as smart as a typical CS or Business student, pick a program they would drop out of (Math instead of CS, Economics instead of Business). If you just pick music, it's not a strong indicator of your skills.

I used to work as a recruiter, and the candidate for whom I got the most interview requests ever had a triple-major: music, physics, and math. You don't have to go that far, but if you can minor in math at a minimum, it's a good idea.

Re:Ask HN: Are irrelevant degrees at all useful? by mechanical_fish on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @09:52AM (#1535163)
Yes. Music plus a minor or double major in X, where X is something hard.

Not business -- you can pick that up in grad school if absolutely necessary; they have special graduate programs just for it.

Physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, statistics, engineering.

Re:Ask HN: Are irrelevant degrees at all useful? by arethuza on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @11:37AM (#1535470)
But this is the UK we are talking about and the university in question is Oxford - so the rules are somewhat different.
Re:Ask HN: Are irrelevant degrees at all useful? by corin_ on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @10:33AM (#1535251)
Thanks for the advice (and others suggesting the same thing), I think minoring in Maths is definitely something I'd consider, happens to be another area I'm interested in (though no-where near as experienced, would have to do a fair bit of pre-university learning to be ready to study it I think, having forgotten most of what I knew when I was 16)
Re:Ask HN: Are irrelevant degrees at all useful? by donw on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @10:55AM (#1535329)
This made me smile a little bit; I majored in Math because I thought CS would be too easy.
Re:Ask HN: Are irrelevant degrees at all useful? by geebee on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @01:35PM (#1535864)
I was a math major too, but no way would I consider CS to be too easy.
Re:Ask HN: Are irrelevant degrees at all useful? by donw on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @04:07PM (#1536378)
Note the past tense.