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<p>Actually, the gap can be simply explained twofold. Firstly, the Berkeley “CS BS” program is actually the integrated “EECS BS” and therefore includes numerous “pure-EE BS” students, and pure EE jobs tend to pay less than do pure CS jobs on the high end (which Berkeley engineering graduates tend to go). A comparison of the “pure-CS BS” students vs. the “CS BA” students would be more fair, but the Berkeley career office does not provide this information. </p>
<p>Secondly and probably more importantly, the BA CS program until only recently required that students apply specifically to the major as continuing students after having performed well on the lower-division prereqs, with no guarantee of being granted entry. Hence, those students who performed relatively weakly in the lower-division were not even permitted to enter the program at all and hence would never count in the official salary statistics. In contrast, the vast majority of CS BS (or more accurately, EECS BS students) were admitted into the program straight from high school to be dismissed only through the formal process of academic probation. Hence, those students who earned straight C’s in the lower-division are still part of the program and could still potentially survive to graduation. If those students were to be excluded from the salary calculation, the average BS EECS salary would look far better.</p>