<p>I know that a lot of Berkeley students (especially in STEM) are incredibly insecure and like to proclaim that their major is more difficult than everyone else's. But does anyone actually think this is objectively true? It seems to me that different majors simply require different skill sets; a humanities major would probably struggle to complete an upper division mathematics problem set, but at the same time an EECS major would probably struggle to read 100+ pages weekly and write coherently and concisely about it. However, most other Berkeley students I have talked to have no reservations about proclaiming that "major x is a joke and major y is much harder."</p>
<p>Some majors are definitely harder. </p>
<p>Compare IB and MCB for example. MCB requires Math 1A and 1B for pre-reqs which is much harder than Math 16A. The upper division are also harder in general. </p>
<p>IB is definitely no pushover, but there are ways to get through the program without taking anything too ridiculous.</p>
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<p>MCB and IB both now require either Math 1A-1B or 10A-10B. Math 10A-10B is a new course in mathematical methods for biology (including calculus and statistics).</p>
<p>And then there’s the curve – comparing my two majors (one STEM, one social science), there’s a huge disparity in grading practices. The STEM one tends to have strict curving to a B or B-. The social science classes peak around B+/A-. (This has been my experience; might not be generalizable.) Sooo…</p>
<p>Is Economics at UC Berkeley a challenging major? I would prefer that it would be.</p>
<p>“Easy” or “hard” can have several dimensions.</p>
<ul>
<li>Is it “easy” or “hard” in terms of intellectual effort?</li>
<li>Is it “easy” or “hard” in terms of workload?</li>
<li>Is it “easy” or “hard” in terms of grading?</li>
</ul>
<p>I’d say my question about ECON at UCB defers to all these dimensions</p>
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<p>For intermediate economics and econometrics courses, you can choose between light math (100A-100B-140) and heavy math (101A-101B-141) versions. Most people are not that good at math, so they choose the light math versions, but people who like math and are good at it will likely prefer the heavy math versions. Students intending to go to graduate school in economics are also recommended to take upper division math and statistics courses (e.g. Math 104 and 110 and Statistics 134).</p>
<p>Workload does not appear to be particularly high in economics courses (unlike science lab courses, CS courses with programming or design projects, art studio courses, music performance courses, etc.) unless there are some with large term projects.</p>
<p>Economics is a capped major, so one has to apply to declare it. This requires a higher GPA than the minimum needed to stay in good academic standing generally.</p>
<p>Okay, thanks for the info!</p>
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Not really. Safety majors may just be those majors that don’t require any “talent”, but may still be “hard” in terms of the dimensions ucbalumnus mentioned. For example, no amount of intellectual effort or class picking will get you through a Math major if you don’t have a certain kind of mathematical aptitude, which arguably cannot be obtained in a short period of time, if at all. On the other hand, the vast majority of people on this country could probably complete a “XX studies” major if they just put in enough intellectual effort and chose their classes correctly. Still, the XX sutdies major may be hard by ucbalumnus’ metrics.</p>
<p>“Safety major” may have a different meaning in the context of capped majors where there is a competitive admission process to declare the major.</p>
<p>For example, L&S CS may be a “safety major” for someone who wants to major in EECS. Back when L&S CS was capped, applied math was often the “safety major” for those who could not get into L&S CS.</p>
<p>Economics may be a “safety major” for those applying to the business major, but since economics is also capped, such students may have some other “safety major” behind that.</p>
<p>However, while the “safety major” in this context may be easier to get into, it may not necessarily be easier in other metrics (intellectual challenge, workload, or grading).</p>
<p>But note also that one reason that few students switch into majors like CS, physics, or engineering late is that sequenced prerequisities must be started early. A student who does not start the prerequisites early may not be able to graduate in 8 semesters due to the long sequence being longer than the number of remaining semesters s/he has. In contrast, the prerequisite sequences in most humanities and social studies majors are short (e.g. see history courses), so late switching into such majors is relatively easy to do (even if the courses may be not necessarily be easy).</p>
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<p>But not necessarily because of the prerequisite sequencing or not, even though it may be coincidentally true that some majors with short prerequisite chains are “easy” by some other metrics.</p>
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You are contradicting my definition by saying that a student “cannot” put in the effort to complete a safety major. By my definition, a safety major is a major where a certain amount of effort (however much that may be = difficult by ucbalumnus metrics) will guarantee successful completion. For every person, there exists an amount of effort that would lead to successful completion. That’s what makes such a major “safe”. For some majors, particularly technical ones, this cannot be guaranteed, because the effort you put in may not matter if you don’t have the right aptitude. These majors are “unsafe”, because many people really don’t know beforehand if they have the right aptitude or not.</p>
<p>By your definition, all people switching out of a “difficult” major would be concentrated in a subset of a few safety majors. I don’t think that’s the case. People who are switching are usually choosing a new major based on their interests, while keeping the “difficulty” or “safeness” as secondary consideration in mind.</p>
<p>Just to be clear, while you think there are some majors that are “true” safety majors I believe that there are possibly 2-3 “tiers” of majors, safe to non-safe, based on how certain it is that you complete them given a certain amount of effort only. However, switching between those majors happens mainly based on interest, as long as you keep the “tier” in mind.</p>
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I actually implied that, I was meaning to say “people who switch out of a major due to difficulty”, not “all people who switch out of a major”. Still, even for those people I would argue that they choose the new major mainly based on interest, while keeping difficulty in mind (i.e. choosing the correct tier). They don’t say “hey, what’s the easiest major I could finish that I may have some interest in”, but rather “Hm, what am I interested in? X! Is X hard? If yes, what else is there? …”</p>
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Good, because that’s the main point on which I disagree with you. I think there are something like 3-4 tiers within which it really doesn’t make much sense to switch majors (due to difficulty), because the difficulties are rather similar (and depending on the actual classes). By that logic people wouldn’t switch more than 2-3 times due to difficulty, which I think makes sense.</p>
<p>Note that, at Berkeley, 80% of freshmen in the College of Engineering eventually graduate from the College of Engineering, indicating that the attrition rate out of the College of Engineering is not that high (it may be different for chemical engineering in the College of Chemistry). This is likely due to Berkeley being highly selective; attrition out of engineering is much higher at less selective schools.</p>
<p>Note also that changing into the College of Engineering requires going through a highly competitive admission process, presumably due to capacity limitations. So that puts a cap on the inbound changes to College of Engineering majors that is lower than the number of students who want to change into the College of Engineering.</p>