16 units of CS/math: too much to take? (also "transaction cancelled" on TeleBears)

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
1

<p>Junior transfer studying CompSci BA in the College of Letters and Sciences here. This is my tentative schedule:</p>

<p>Phase I enrollement:
CS 70
EE 20</p>

<p>Phase 2 enrollment: any two of these:
CS 61A + 61C (preferred)
Math 104 / American Cultures / Physics 137 Quantum Mechanics (alternate)</p>

<ol>
<li><p>If I took 61A and 104, I'd have total 4 courses CS/Math. Is this too stressful? I'm good at math.</p></li>
<li><p>Currently there are 111 and 203 waitlisted students for 61C and 61A respectively. I'm not on the waitlists yet due to TeleBears issues, but assuming I get on right now, is there a good chance of getting into the classes?</p></li>
<li><p>For my American Cultures class does it have to be upper div or is that a condition only for engineering students? I didn't see any such restriction in L&S webpage but I want to make sure.</p></li>
</ol>

2

<p>Oh and one more question:</p>

<ol>
<li>If I don’t get 61A and 61C it will be a while - next year - until I get into the CS Major. This means I can’t take upper div CS until next year. So will I have to take filler courses this year to meet the min unit requirement and then rush through upper div CS next year?</li>
</ol>

3

<p>Math 104 is often considered to be one of the more difficult upper division math courses from an intellectual rigor standpoint (although workload is not necessarily high). If you have not taken a math course with proofs before, you may wish to take a different math course or wait until after CS 70.</p>

<p>Math 113, 115, and 116 may be of interest if you are interested in cryptography.</p>

<p>CS 61A and 61C will both have programming assignments, which can give them a higher workload than math courses (even if they are not as intellectually difficult). You may want to consider how quickly you finished programming assignments in past CS courses.</p>

<p><a href=“http://telebearsoracle.com”>http://telebearsoracle.com</a> can give you some information about capacity changes and enrollment patterns in historical offerings (e.g. check last fall CS 61A and CS 61C).</p>

<p>American cultures courses do not have to be upper division. Most have the AC suffix to the course number, although there are some which do not.</p>

4

<p>Doesn’t look fun, honestly. I would suggest swapping out something for a humanities, if you can. I did 61A and 61BL my first summer, and 61C, EE20N, CS70, and upper div AC during fall… those were probably the two worst schedules I ever did.</p>

<p>CS61A - Very fast class, with shallow coverage on most topics. Chances are it won’t look like any CS classes you’ve done in the past. It usually gives weekly problem sets, with 4 projects (most not too bad) throughout the semester.</p>

<p>CS61C - Architecture. Conceptually I’d say it’s not too bad, but the projects and homeworks can take a lot of time. There’s either a homework or a project (some really really long) due each week. If you do A and C together, you’ll get the Scheme project and the Logisim project on top of each other (bad).</p>

<p>EE20 - Super mathy, impossible exams, and lots of proofs. I really hated this class. There’s a lot of labs and lab write-ups (weekly, I think?), and it comes with surprise problem sets… I remember one problem set ended up being 50+ problems, it was due in a week, and we had no warning ahead of time.</p>

<p>CS70 - Discrete math and probability. Hope you like proofs. :stuck_out_tongue: Next semester’s professor is supposed to be a lot of work, some claim it’s 20 hours/week for the weekly problem sets. But no projects, at least!</p>

<p>That said, you’re a transfer. Sometimes scheduling sucks and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it… and if that’s the only way classes will fit, then that’s what you’ve gotta do. But try and put something off if you can.</p>

<hr>

<ol>
<li><p>For getting into CS, they’re usually pretty good at expanding to get everyone in. If the class lets you pick a section through telebears and some have empty seats, pick that one to add yourself to so you can get in. But even then, they’ll probably do their best to get you in.</p></li>
<li><p>Even CoE doesn’t have that requirement… but CoE transfers need to take at least 2 upper div humanities.</p></li>
<li><p>Pre-reqs aren’t enforced. If you know the material, you can probably get away with taking upper divs sooner or concurrently. Some classes you will need the pre-reqs for (ie, don’t take security until you’ve got 70 and 61C) or you won’t pass… but others you can get by okay. You won’t have priority for CS classes, so you might not get your first choices (things like 188 and 169 are super popular, something like 184 is much easier to get). But if you want to take them you should be able to.</p></li>
</ol>

5

<p>You can preview EE and CS courses here: <a href=“CAS - Central Authentication Service”>http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/classes-eecs.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;