<p>Hello,</p>
<p>I am currently a first year at UC Berkeley, considering to major in CS. I'm concerned about not being able to major in CS though because of the 3.0 cap. I am currently taking CS 61A and am in possible range to get a B/B- in the class, which is the bare minimum grade to get in order to declare. The classes after CS 61A will only get harder.</p>
<p>I was curious to know what would be the best way to approach a different plan in case I do not get the GPA necessary to declare CS. If I completed all of the prerequisites for CS and ended up with a GPA lower than a 3.0, what would be other options? I realize that it is my first year and I do not know how I will do in the other required classes for CS, but I am just anxious about the cap.</p>
<p>Why is it that UC Berkeley decided to cap the major now? The last time it was capped was seven years ago. It feels a bit unfair that it used to be a 2.0 cap, but there are some things that are out of a student's control. </p>
<p>Thank you very much.</p>
<p>The cap is there because the major is overflowing. Last Spring students were getting forced out of classes. Upper divs were hitting 300+ students. Seniors couldn’t get into the classes they wanted during Phase 1. It was a really bad situation. The department can’t scale as quickly as students are flocking to CS.</p>
<p>I think another good reason for the cap is EECS… CoE’s requirements have been much higher than L&S, and even with the 3.0 cap it’s still much harder get into/transfer to EECS than it is to declare L&S CS. But the programs are more or less equivalent, so it’s weird that one would be easier than the other.</p>
<p>Basically, the major is too popular. They can’t let everyone in, so they put a GPA cap. They don’t have the resources to accommodate the number of interested students.</p>
<p>As for not meeting it… well, wait and see how the other classes go. If you find yourself really struggling in all the CS classes, uh, sorry to be blunt, but are you sure you’d want to be a CS major? Honestly I don’t know what routes students can take if they don’t meet the requirement. I think cog sci or a CS minor are popular options?</p>
<p>Also, “the classes after CS 61A will only get harder” isn’t necessarily the case. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of 61A, but I love 61B and 70. 61A also has the steepest learning curve, if you’ve never done programming before. The lower div classes are all pretty different… for the average student (not the ones who get A+ in everything) one grade usually isn’t a good predictor for the next.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry too much yet. These are difficult classes. You just need a couple B+'s to balance out any B-'s. However, there are a number of other majors where the majority of graduates accept positions similar to computer science majors, particularly cognitive science and applied math. Here’s more info on options. </p>
<p>[Undergraduate</a> L&S CS Students | EECS at UC Berkeley](<a href=“http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/csugrad/index.shtml]Undergraduate”>CS Major Information | EECS at UC Berkeley)</p>
<p>Majors are capped because there are more students who want to enter the major than there is capacity. In case you haven’t noticed, there are about 1,000 students in CS 61A, far more than in the past. Yes, a few hundred of them are pre-declared EECS majors in the College of Engineering, but that just means that the number of L&S students has increased by even more percentagewise. In recent past history, there have been about 200-300 EECS and about 100 L&S CS graduates per year.</p>
<p>Some popular upper division CS courses are huge this semester:</p>
<p>CS 170: 405
CS 188: 342
CS 186: 283
CS 169: 237
CS 195: 187 (+9 in H195)
CS 162: 162</p>
<p>[UCB</a> Online Schedule of Classes: Search Results](<a href=“http://osoc.berkeley.edu/OSOC/osoc?p_term=FL&x=6&p_classif=U&p_deptname=--+Choose+a+Department+Name+--&p_presuf=--+Choose+a+Course+Prefix%2FSuffix+--&y=7&p_dept=cs]UCB”>http://osoc.berkeley.edu/OSOC/osoc?p_term=FL&x=6&p_classif=U&p_deptname=--+Choose+a+Department+Name+--&p_presuf=--+Choose+a+Course+Prefix%2FSuffix+--&y=7&p_dept=cs)</p>