I agree. Traditional engineering has the appeal of robots and rockets, while comp-sci has the Facebooks and Googles. Even chemistry has the mad scientist images

I agree. Traditional engineering has the appeal of robots and rockets, while comp-sci has the Facebooks and Googles. Even chemistry has the mad scientist images. The closest I can think of for Math is A Beautiful Mind, which doesn't have the same glam as the above. This phenomenon was observed during the DotCom boom with engineering classes surging with wannabe millionaires who found out how hard this stuff can be. For a couple years after that bubble burst, there was a real scare that the drought of incoming comp-sci freshmen would stagnate the industry. In a way, I wouldn't be surprised if this was happening again as we are entering into another tech boom.