<p>Hi! I got into Berkeley and I'm trying to decide if I want to go. I have some random questions: </p>
<p>-I would like to double major in Media Studies(Mass Communications) and Poli Sci. Does this sound doable at Berkeley?
-How does class registration work? I'm not an athlete or a regent so do I get last picks? How hard is it to get the classes you want?
-I heard that AP credits help you get a better registration date, how does this work?
-As a Berkeley student, were you studying ALL the time?
-What is the social life like? (Are there parties often?)</p>
<p>i like your UN…good ass album</p>
<p>Media Studies major = 13 courses
Political Science major = 12 courses</p>
<p>But you can probably overlap 0-3 lower division and 0-2 upper division courses, so that the total number of courses for both majors is 20-25. Since you will probably take about 32 courses over eight semesters, that leaves about 7-12 courses for breadth requirements (some of which are already fulfilled by the majors, leaving probably 3-4), reading and composition (2 courses unless you have AP English credit), and American Cultures (which can overlap with a major or breadth course). So you’ll probably have about 1-7 free electives left over.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus: thanks! good to know where my potential credits stand.</p>
<p>The way that AP credits help is that the system for assigning time slots looks at several different measures of ‘seniority’, all of which are listed in Bearfacts. your actual standing, based on total units attained, your standing based on courses taken without the AP units, and your ‘future’ level which presumes that you pass all the courses you are currently taking this semester. Class standing is strictly by units - at the 30 units mark you move from Freshman to Sophomore, take a step at each 30 added so by 90 units you are entering Senior standing. If you had 30 units of credit from AP tests, then your actual standing is one year ahead of your non-AP units standing. </p>
<p>The system has some mystery, some random behavior, some evil, is probably possessed by malicious spirits from Stanfurd, but generally speaking the higher your non-AP standing, the earlier a group you fit into, and then the higher your actual units are within that group, the earlier you are allocated in that block of time. Roughly speaking, the first week after the priority slots (athlete/disabled student/freshmen regents scholars) are assigned to seniors, higher units get earlier in the week. The system is believed to also give preference to those with double or triple majors, FYI, placing them earlier in their week. The second week is for juniors, and so forth. The reality is that there is overlap, not a clean break, and we see weird illogical stuff where a senior double major might have a worse time than a sophomore, because both have atypical assignments, but very generally that is how it APPEARS to work. Nothing has been published given the exact mechanism, this is all imputed by observations, impelled by frustration if/when you get the unlucky timeslot (technically called ‘shafted’) by telebears, and informed by rumors, suppositions, shared delusions and lots of ranting here and on campus. </p>
<p>As to the credits you will gain, if you are incoming to College of Letters and Sciences, find a copy of the Earning Your Degree brochure (it can be found somewhere online with a bit of diligent searching and googling), it gives you the unit equivalents and the cutoff score for each. It also tells you the conditions under which your AP, SAT and ACT scores might waive the need to take certain classes like Reading and Composition.</p>