Best College Major for International Students: Computer Science

welcome back to my channel where we talk about all things International students so I'm William and if you've watched any of my previous videos then you'll know that I'm actually an international student from South Africa so I came to America in 2013 as an international student and I basically got my associatees degree in mathematics at a community college and then I transferred on to a four-year school where I got my bachelor's degree in economics and then eventually later on I actually got my master's degree in computer science now the reason why I'm making this video is because I want to tell you guys the best major to major in as an international student so let's get started [Music] so what's the best major to major in as a international student well the answer in my opinion computer science and I actually want to give you guys the reasons as to why so there are three reasons why computer science is the best Major for you as an international student the first one is actually the opportunities so over the last 20 years computer science has been a very very scarce field and basically what I mean by that is it's been very hard for for employers to find people with computer science and programming skills so what has actually happened over the last 20 and 30 years is that companies have been more open to figuring out new ways to get Talent into their doors right so they want to get more software engineers and data scientists into their doors and the way they figured out how to do that is by having a little bit more flexibility when it comes to the people that they hire and basically what this means is that over the last 20 and 30 years you'll see that a lot of of companies are actually willing to sponsor International students so what has happened is because there's been such a high demand for software engineers and such a low supply of them companies have actually figured out that it's in their best interest to actually sponsor International students and by sponsor what I basically mean is giving them an opportunity to actually work at their company with the potential of them sponsoring their visa right so if you major in computer science as an international student you are more likely to get more opportunities for companies to sponsor you and this is very very big because when I was in my bachelor degree and I had finished it was very very hard for me to find a job and this is because companies would eliminate me based on the fact that I wasn't a US citizen or I wasn't a US permanent resident and what that basically means is that they would have to have sponsored me in order for me to continue working at that firm so I could only work at that firm for 3 years but they would have to sponsor me and the thing about it is because I had majored with a degree in economics they were able to like find people who can do the job that are Americans and US permanent residents so there wasn't really a need to like sponsor an individual right because they could always just find a US citizen or something like that which is way cheaper for them so what had happened is almost all the people in my graduating class who had majored in computer science they had offers by the time we graduated so they knew where they were going and I didn't and a lot of other International students who didn't major in computer science were just like me we didn't know where we're were going to go we didn't have the opportunities that the computer science individuals had and it was rough and looking back at this in hindsight it would have been much better to just major in computer science and actually have the opportunity to have a job by the time I graduate the reason why this is very big is because of the opt now the opt only allows you to be unemployed for 90 days so if you are unemployed for any longer then you would be in violation of your opt and they could resend it right so you would not be able to work in the United States anymore so there's this pressure on you to find a job but lots of people are not hiring you because you're in international student so it was very very rough for us non-computer science students to actually try and find those jobs especially knowing that if we didn't find those jobs within 90 days we would be in violation of our opt so in order to not go through any of that I would implore you to actually just look at computer science and major in computer science because it's one of those fields that will allow you to get sponsorship from employers so the second reason as to why I think computer science is the best major to major in as a international student is because of the op I actually made a video on opt and I'm going to put a link somewhere here where I talk all things opt and it's going to give you a lot of background on what I'm about to say so the post completion opt allows you to work in America for up to 12 months right but if you major in computer science it is a stem field so you'll be able to get a further 20 4 month extension on your opt and basically what that means is that if you major in computer science and graduate and you're going for your opt then you can work up to 36 months in America so that is three years instead of one so by majoring in computer science you'll have way more opportunities to work in America and a much longer duration of working in America and this is very good because a lot of times companies want to sponsor you for your H1 be visa and in order for them to do that they need some time so if you have 3 years of actually staying in America then it increases your probability that you will be able to get an H1B Visa because then you can like apply for it three times which is much better than trying to apply for it once right but yeah so having said that definitely one of the reasons why you should major in computer science is because of the opt extension now the third reason why you should major in computer science as an international student is because of of the money so there's no secret computer science students get paid the most and it's not even close when I was graduating with my bachelor's degree I was looking at companies that were paying me around $50,000 that was what I was looking at because those were the opportunities that were coming my way right and when I spoke with lots of other students around me it was very similar a lot of them were getting 45,000 55,000 60,000 so a lot of these not computer science students were making that much they were making 50,000 55 60,000 right and on occasion you'll see one person actually make 70,000 and we'd all look at them and say wow where are you going right how are you making 70,000 but this was the thing when it came to the computer science graduates they were making 80,000 plus so it was very rare for us to find a computer science graduate who was making less than 880,000 so as an international student if you major in Compu computer science then it's very likely that you're going to make at least 80,000 and right now actually most computer science graduates are actually making six figures on their first job so having said that you know that in order for you to make a lot of money in this country having a computer science degree will definitely benefit you in that regard and this is because a lot of companies are willing to pay six figures for computer science graduates so if you're thinking about maximizing the amount of money that you'll make once you graduate then majoring in computer science is definitely the best way to get there so those are the three reasons as to why you should major in computer science now I did create another video which Compares economics to computer science and basically I compared the two and said which one would be better for you now one thing I want to put out there is the fact that that video is more geared towards Americans so people who have like permanent residency or something along those lines it explains that AI is basically changing the computer science field and it's kind of better for you to actually understand how the world Works instead of how to code because you can just code using AI so that video is more geared towards American students so just putting that out there but in general as an international student in my opinion the best major you can actually pursue is computer science and as I mentioned it's because your opportunities are going to be much more the opt you'll be able to get an extension on that and then you'll be able to make a lot of money so those three things makes computer science very appealing for international students and it's what I think most International students should do once they come to America so even if you are interested in something else like business or Finance I would still say that you should double major so make sure that you double major so that you can have that computer science degree in order for you to get more opportunities in this work environment it will definitely help you out now having said that thank you so much for watching if you like this video definitely like And subscribe as it lets me know that these are the type of videos that you would like to see and it also helps out this channel tremendously so thank you so much for watching I hope I brought you some value and some insight on why you should be majoring in computer science and I shall be seeing you in the next video