Boy am I glad I decided to study applied maths! Despite being bombarded with questions like "Why not study actuarial science, your starting pay will be good, it's rewarding etc etc", I was quite hellbent on doing applied maths because at least at some point, I would have the option of either majoring in pure maths, statistics or computing.

Currently studying in UTAR where there are at least 150 students per intake taking Actuarial Science. As for applied maths, the most for each intake is 15-20.
It's actually a bit unfortunate because I'd like to think that at least by doing AM, you get to equip yourself with nifty programming skills (I've studied C, C++, C#, Java, PHP, SQL and I'm only in year 2 lol.) and that enough will make pretty valuable to any future employer (Taking into account you have good PR skills and a sharp, non-robotic mind)

I don't deny that AS is a pretty tough course and I salute people who can study their arses off and succeed, but when you graduate, you're adding yourself into another glut of AS graduates. That alone makes the competition so fierce, it's almost impossible to start out well.

TL;DR: So freaking glad I'm doing AM and loving it!

I've studied about 3-4 languages per year and honestly, I only remember the ones that my simple mind can analyse easily. I've about 2 years more to go and I guess when I'm done, I'll have more than just basic knowledge in a few languages, provided I do my revision from time to time. As for overlap, yeah it does. But I guess applied maths is more wider in coverage whereas CS/IT is more deeper when it comes to computing

Good thing is this isn't a course with limited job scope. You can end up becoming a system admin, webmaster, cryptologist, market/system analyst, statistician, foreign exchange trader, portfolio analysts etc. It all depends in what you decide to major in.
I'm interested in cryptology and my final year project is gonna be based on that, so there's always a possibility that I end up a consultant for IT companies specializing in encryption software. Fingers crossed!

One thing I stress on is never to take this course (or any other) just for the sake of a fancy named degree or whatev. Do it for learning and you'll be surprised at how fun it really can be. Not saying job prospects aren't important, but you need to bring something to the table instead of just a transcript

Sorry for the wordiness!