<p>DD is interested in majoring in either Computer Science, Business, or potentially both. </p>
<p>Since candidates are not allowed to apply to the business college until they are students, should she apply to the Engineering College for Computer Science and then investigate either a double major or possibly switching to business at some point, or is it better to just apply generally?</p>
<p>If someone who is more knowledgeable could provide some insight on issues around this question, I would appreciate it. </p>
<p>I tried to call admissions to discuss this issue, and they are closed all of this week for training.</p>
<p>CS can be done as either EECS in the College of Engineering or CS in the College of Letters and Science (L&S CS).</p>
<p>L&S is generally thought to be slightly less difficult for frosh admissions than Engineering, but L&S students enter undeclared, and must take the prerequisites before declaring the major. L&S CS is at capacity, so students need a 3.0 GPA in the prerequisites to declare it.</p>
<p>For business, students complete the prerequisites and then apply to the business school in their second year. The admissions process is competitive; a high GPA is needed, but there are also subjective considerations.</p>
<p>I would recommend applying to the college of L&S because L&S Computer Science offers much more flexibility than its College of Engineering counterpart. EECS (CoE major) has many more prerequisites for the major and would limit your student’s change to explore other majors while still working towards declaring one. Also, it would be kind of a waste to go through the more rigorous selection of EECS only to move out of the College of Engineering into Business. L&S also only accepts people with the Undeclared status, so there is no pressure on your student to choose immediately.</p>
<p>She would prefer the more challenging route. She is interested in a double major with CS and Operations Research/Finance. She is bored with soft, basic, general requirements classes and anxious for some challenge, substance and math, which she is good at.</p>
<p>Can she start in engineering majoring in CS and then add a business major later? Or is that not possible?</p>
<p>EECS + business would likely require about 19 units per semester (instead of the more usual 15-16 units per semester) of courses. The business major is not heavily mathematical.</p>
<p>For someone interested in CS and OR, there are two L&S majors of interest: L&S CS and ORMS. ORMS is sponsored by the IEOR (Industrial Engineering and Operations Research) department. Another major that may be of interest is economics, choosing the math-heavy economics courses (Economics 101A, 101B, C103, 104, 136, 138, 141).</p>
<p>However, note that L&S CS, ORMS, and Economics are all capped due to capacity limitations. Prerequisite course GPA minimums are 3.0, 3.2, and 3.0 respectively to declare these majors, though they may change.</p>
<p>Math (pure or applied) is another potential major of interest, and is not capped. Due to the relatively small number of requirements in the Math major, a student would have lots of elective space to take additional courses in CS, Economics, IEOR, Statistics, etc…</p>
<p>I agree with the posts in that the L&S department would offer her the best flexibility. She should also take a look at the course catalog for different majors (EECS, CS, Business, IEOR, ORMS, Econ all come to mind) to figure out which upper-division classes majors most interest her. That will help narrow down her interests a little bit in terms of specifically what the majors can offer. If she wanted to pursue a combination of CS, Business and ORMS, should could spend her first semester/year taking pre-requisites of each and then determine her combination of majors/minors.</p>
<p>Yes, considering that everyone must wait 2 years before applying to Haas Business school, applying to College of L&S for now appears to be the best option.</p>
<p>Before applying to Haas, it is required to take several courses by the College of L&S such as 7-breadth requirement. Most of all, one can major in CS while being in L&S.</p>
<p>If your daughter has strong high school stats (GPA, test scores), I recommend applying to the College of Engineering. Once she is accepted to Cal, it is easy to transfer from College of Eng to L&S if she doesn’t like comp sci/engineering, but not so easy the other way around. Over 200 of the 700 business students pursue double majors, so she can double in eecs and business. After taking six prerequisites (see [Prerequisites</a>, Undergraduate Program, Berkeley-Haas](<a href=“Application Process - Undergraduate Program - Berkeley Haas”>Application Process - Undergraduate Program - Berkeley Haas)), students apply to the business program in their second year. If your daughter scored well on AP exams, she can satisfy some of the biz application prereqs and free up her schedule for other classes. A score of 5 on Calc BC satisfies a semester of math. A score of 5 on AP Lit satisfies a year of English.</p>