Major in the humanities or social sciences and you will do well at cocktail parties. Use that skill to marry well.

That way you can live lavishly without working a job that stresses you out.

Or that plan could fall apart and you might end up unemployed without an in demand skill set.

Or find a somewhat lucrative industry to get into with only a small personal investment while you're in college. If it works and you find a suitable career or even profitable side option, you are a million miles ahead of the pack. If it doesn't, you're still in college and you'll turn out okay.

let my advise be the best online forums to ask questions like the one you opened this thread with.

for math:

http://mathoverflow.net/
http://math.stackexchange.com/

for programming:

http://stackoverflow.com/

Glad to see you choosed this area. Let me stick with my habit of reccomending one the last books I enjoyed (and which shouldn't be sooo hard for you to follow, but you should read calmly):

Topology of Numbers by Allen Hatcher, which is free online:

https://www.math.cornell.edu/~hatcher/TN/TNpage.html

Ooh I can be relevant here. I have a CS degree.

Focus on learning concepts, not syntax or languages.

Take a course in databases/SQL. It will help you out so much.

At least 50% of your freshman classmates will be gone by the 3rd year. Likely more.

Graduate students from China or India are idiots. Don't listen to them.

Another excellent math resource:

http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu

Racists are idiots. Don't listen to them.

As someone who is about to earn his Ph.D., may I offer the following: take as many electives and core classes as you can prior to selecting and pursuing a major. Those experiences will affect you and, hopefully, at some point you will literally feel a tug towards a certain discipline(s). That tug matters. Listen to it. If you are a reasonably intelligent and industrious fellow, you will find your way in life independent of what you studied during your four years at university. What moves you? About what do you daydream? What takes up your free time? The answers to those questions will guide you and your life will be richer as a result. Sure, money matters, but I truly can't imagine a scenario whereby one's life is more meaningful by valuing money over passion.

0.999999999999...-0.099999999999... = 0.9 = 1 - 0.1

Though not complete -
3-2=1=5-4
still a reasonable "I get it now"

"What moves you? About what do you daydream? What takes up your free time? The answers to those questions will guide you and your life will be richer as a result."

So I should be a porn star...

Majoring in Electrical Engineering. Worth checking out, it's also a lot of coding. I started my bachelor with no real knowledge of elektronics.

Enjoy your time as a student. I don't know how smart you are, but doing two majors at a time is very hard, you'll want to have some free time too. You can do always another master afterwards. Plus you've got 3 years to figure out your major.

Go to your exercise/labo lessons, that's were you learn the most, and you'll get the theory faster. I skipped most of my theory lessons to do other things or to sleep. You'll get the hang of it.

Party!
___

0.999.... = 0

"Racists are idiots. Don't listen to them."

It's not racist to think that Chinese/Indian schools produce extremely unknowledgeable and unprepared grad students, Demon. Stop being so damn sensitive.

Worth distinguishing between the pool of Chinese/Indian schools likely to produce graduate students studying in American schools and Chinese/Indian schools as a whole, mayhap. Also, between producing students who are knowledgeable/prepared in general and being knowledgeable/prepared in particular to be helpful grad students in American universities. And that's if the original assertion is true to begin with.

There's a difference between saying that schools from the regions have underprepared grad students and calling them as a whole "idiots".

What you said was racist, deal with it and stop being so sensitive Chaqa.

Chaqa, have you ever stopped to consider that your school just couldn't attract good students?

Hi. Went to pretty good schools. Chinese and Indian grad students were, as a whole, sub par compared to the quality of undergrads.

I only know my subject of study though.

The graduate students in our Software Engineering course (a 400 level) did not know how to properly code just a basic class in C++. This is something a first year student would learn. There were 4 of them working on this, and put together they couldn't do the most simple of tasks.

@ghug: we had plenty of people who knew what they were doing, but our grad students were particularly poor.

@Demon: only in semantics. If they don't know what they're doing in their supposed field, they're idiots.

See. For me it was that they could repeat the formulas and mathematical proofs very very well and work through the math just fine, probably better than the Americans or Europeans.

But when it came to explaining intuitively the theory behind the math, they were lost. When it came to doing any meaningful research, they were absolute deer in headlights. The shittiest American student in my grad program wrote better and more interesting papers than them. All they did was basically copy the example paper the professor gave out at the beginning of the semester.

Yes, they definitely were good at memorization. However, implementation/analysis of the stuff they had memorized... not so much.

I teach at grad courses here in Brasil (Database realated classes) and we have some study abroad programs so I would really be interested about how do you see our students.

So, do you have met any Brasilian students? What do you think of them?

No Chaqa. I'm fairly knowledgeable about how horrible the Indian education system is. It does not make a whole group of people collectively idiots. Get over yourself.

No Brazilians in my programs. The ones I've come across professionally have been great though. South American students, in general, have no one defining characteristic from my experience

We had one student from Argentina. He was pretty bright.

I really have no time to indulge into a long discussion, but here I go.

Speaking as an Indian who did undergrad in India and graduate studies in US from a top 10 uni in my field and now working at one of the most coveted companies for CS grads:

@Chaqa: You might have had bad experience with someone from India/China but that might just be dependent on where you teach (a lot of indians flock to low ranked schools), so stop stereotyping (I wouldn't call it racism).

Also, just take a look at the CEOs of two of the largest CS companies: Google and Microsoft. And don't tell me that they are exceptions, because I can give you a long list.

@Demon: While I agree that Indian education system is really horrible and weighs towards getting students to memorize stuff instead of teaching concepts, that scenario is rapidly changing especially at major institutions like IITs.

@goldfinger: Yes, the US education system definitely makes students think critically and that helps students to pen down thoughts articulately. But for students from other countries language can be a huge barrier. While it's pretty easy to carry on a daily conversation with a small vocab, you'd agree that same is not the case with writing stuff down for a paper.

When I was an undergraduate at Northeastern University, I was mentored by a super bright fellow; a graduate student from India. He's starting as a professor of biochemistry at Drexel University this semester. He's one of the reasons I'm at MIT today, where I work with people from India and China all the time as they are top professionals in our field.

If anyone wants to get in a mudslinging fight about institution dick size with me go ahead.

MIT, eh? http://bit.ly/1YpDayL

Here's to starting my second freshmen year...

All hail AP tests, because once I'm done with Freshman year I'll have enough credits to be halfway through my Junior year.