<p>Hi.
I am interested in pursuing a simultaneous degree in Anthropology and Urban Studies. I was admitted to L&S for Anthropology and was wondering how difficult it would be to submit a Simultaneous Degree Packet to the School of Environmental Design and be granted the opportunity to pursue degrees from both schools.
Please let me know if you know anyone pursuing a double major/simultaneous degree and the level of difficulty it would be to do this. I have enough ap credits to test out of some of the breadth requirements from L&S(in foreign language, quantitative reasoning, and American history) and earn credits from School of Environmental Design(from Calculus, Spanish, Euro, US, Stat).
If someone could guide me through the process and tell me how long it would take for a proposal to be complete that would be helpful. I will be starting Fall 2009.
Also would it be helpful to enroll in the Summer Session to get a head start? Thanks!</p>
<p>I’m doing simultaneous degrees in English (L&S) and Society & Environment (CNR), so I should be able to give you a little insight into the petition process. It’s not as hard as it seems at first; you’ll just need to fill out the petition, get both major advisors to review it and sign it, and then submit it to L&S for them to approve it and pass it on to the Dean’s office to get it officially approved. Your status will change on Bearfacts in about 3-6 weeks, just be sure to make a copy of your petition after you get the signatures because L&S is notorious for losing petitions and you don’t want to have to go through the process of obtaining signatures twice.</p>
<p>Incidentally, this is a great way for you to explore two significantly different fields and I really believe that it can enhance your undergraduate experience in ways that a single major cannot. The different colleges within the university have different “feels” and promote different ideas and ways of thinking, and it’s nice to be privy to two different methods of learning. As long as you go into it with a real passion for both areas of study you should do fine. I took a few courses over a few summers to help keep my workload manageable, but then I decided to go the simultaneous degrees route relatively late (my petition was accepted during the spring of my junior year) so if you’re starting as a first-year you should have no trouble fulfilling all of your requirements.</p>
<p>As a friendly word of caution, pursuing simultaneous degrees does limit your flexibility in terms of taking elective courses purely for fun and requires you to be very proactive in determining class schedules several semesters in advance because breadth courses and core requirements do not always align perfectly between different colleges. I would also suggest perhaps waiting for a few semesters before you actually submit your petition. This will allow you to actually take some courses in both fields and feel more confident that this is what you want to do before you actually commit yourself. It’s rare to know exactly what you want to do before even stepping into your first class, especially when you’re focusing on such specific and disparate fields of study. After all, the point of a liberal arts undergraduate education isn’t to fill you with knowledge so much as it is to train you to think.</p>
<p>I hope this helped a bit, and I wish you luck in whatever you decide to do!</p>
<p>Thanks for the insights Wooly and Leftist!
Leftist-I am not completely set on pursing anthropology, but it is just the closest thing they have to a history of science or science technology society(STS) major at Berkeley. Are you majoring in anthropology/archaeology? How are your lectures and how big are your classes generally.
Wooly- Thank you for the advice. I am actually also looking at the society and environment and environment, economics and politics majors too because I love interdisciplinary study. However, I do not quite understand the interdisciplinary major program at Berkeley so I assumed that pursuing a simultaneous degree would give me more experiences at the different schools like you said.
How is your workload/stress level in trying to pursue two degrees? I am not in a hurry to graduate so I am willing to attend school for 5 yrs.
English and Society and Environment sound like a really great combo! How is the college of natural resources compared to L&S? I am a little intimidated by the large size of classes in L&S and was wondering if Natural Resources provided a more intimate environment.
Thanks. :)</p>
<p>is there a unit cap to decide if u want to obtain a simultaneous degree? for example maybe midway into 3rd year i want to double up on motox and english?</p>
<p>88888888,</p>
<p>CNR doesn’t have a unit cap (is this where MolTox is? I don’t know…), but L&S does. If you’re doing simultaneous degrees, you’re allowed to stay for a 9th semester; you can take as many units as you want within those nine semesters.</p>
<p>Pink,</p>
<p>S&E is probably Cal’s closest approximation to what an STS program would look like. Several of the newer professors in ESPM are trained in STS (Winickoff and Tallbear, to name a few that I know deal with science and technology) and Merchant also deals with these issues. They teach Bioethics, Society & Environment, and Environmental Philosophy and Ethics, respectively; each of these courses would probably fall under STS at a different university.</p>
<p>S&E is partially interdisciplinary in the sense that you can take courses in other departments like Sociology and and City Planning, but it isn’t truly an interdisciplinary major like Conservation and Resource Studies (in which you would design your own major and choose each class for that major).</p>
<p>CNR is definitely a much more intimate environment than L&S. Upper- and lower-division classes are about the same size in my two majors (I can’t speak for the rest of the majors in the two colleges), but the atmosphere in CNR is significantly more laid-back and seems more conducive to fostering more personal relationships with other students and faculty members. I was amazed when I found out that every student in CNR has to have their faculty advisor sign off on a Tele-bears form before they can register for classes (this is probably logistically impossible in L&S). Then again, the more impersonal atmosphere fostered by L&S can be a benefit toward developing your ability to be proactive and self-sufficient. :)</p>
<p>My workload strictly in terms of courses is entirely manageable, but I’ll be the first to admit that English and S&E are not very work-intensive majors. My stress level is pretty high but it doesn’t have a whole lot to do with classes. I work over twenty hours per week in both an administrative office on campus and a research lab in the ESPM department, so I keep pretty busy.</p>
<p>About taking five years to graduate, I don’t think this is necessary unless you really want to set a very relaxed pace. Even with work and not knowing what I wanted to do until the second semester of my sophomore year, I’m still on pace to graduate in four years. I even had room to take one “fun” class (didn’t fulfill any requirements, so purely for my own interest) during each of the past two semesters and plan to do the same next year as well.</p>
<p>So if I’m in CNR moltox and want to double up on english there’s no unit cap. and if im in l&s english and want to double up on cnr moltox. then there would be a unit cap? lol o.O?</p>
<p>Urban Studies is great! (Was not in CED, so I completed a City Planning minor instead)</p>
<p>There is not much of a roadblock in getting your petition to earn simultaneous degrees. There’s an additional application process that you will need to complete before the end of sophomore year, but that’s about it. </p>
<p>There are university requirements (American History, foreign language, etc.) that you can test out of with AP scores or standardized examinations, and there are individual college requirements that you must meet with courses on-campus. </p>
<p>Anthropology is a fairly straight forward major with no prerequisites and 12 total major courses requirement. That’s pretty standard for L&S.</p>
<p>The trouble is that Urban Studies has a lot of requirements, and so does CED. To fulfill the college breadth requirements for both L&S and CED, I would highly suggest looking at the required courses in CED, first. For example, in CED you are required to take two reading & comprehension courses, Math 16A or 1A, Stats 2, Economics 1, 2 OR 3; Evironmental Design 1, and Environmental Designs 11A and 11B; and all of that doesn’t include the six breadth requirements for the college. You can’t test out of these. On the plus side, in the process of fulfilling the breadth requirements for CED, you likely will have had completed all the breadth for L&S. As for the major, there are 12 required major courses, but then there’s something else that’s listed as part of the major requirement that is a little distubring:</p>
<p>“General Electives, 32-35 units: Students are required to take at least 32-35 units of electives, of which no more than 16-19 units beyond required courses can be from the listed Urban Studies courses within CED (Urban Studies and Planning core + CED Breath Requirements in Urban Studies).”</p>
<p>To be honest, I’m not sure what the above means. An additional 32-35 units means approximately eight or nine more courses, which would push the major total to over 20 courses! But what exactly does the statement “of which no more than 16-19 units beyond required classes”… entail? So, you can count some of your other required classes you have completed in the major towards that 32-35 total (in which case, wouldn’t the number 32-35 be irrelevant since every single student will have fulfilled it partially in the process of meeting the other requirements for the major)? </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.ced.berkeley.edu/downloads/advising/undergrad/dcrp_chg-of-coll-maj.pdf[/url]”>http://www.ced.berkeley.edu/downloads/advising/undergrad/dcrp_chg-of-coll-maj.pdf</a></p>
<p>As far as what you can expect, it’s going to take a lot of drop-ins with your major advisers to negotiate courses and progress-- what courses count, what courses don’t, when are classes offered, can I substitute Course X with Course Y. You will have to begin considering your schedule from the very first semester of school, because there are some courses you should complete early on before you apply for simultaneous degree (for admission to CED, you will need to have completed the majority of the college prerequisites). Also, depending on what the related electives provision actually means for urban studies, I don’t think it’s a reasonable expectation to graduate in four years without what I refer to as “additional effort,” which going above 15 units consisently, or taking summer school. </p>
<p>I would recommend summer school after your first year (but not before). Start working towards completing CED breath courses that also count for L&S your first semester. Your second semester, if you are comfortable with your academic progress, take one course in each of your intended majors (not more, so you can focus on each of these classes and really do well in them, as they will count towards your major GPA). If you feel like simultaneous degree is still in your plans after Year One, go for summer school and plan your schedule for Year Two accordingly in preparation for admission into CED.</p>
<p>88888888,</p>
<p>I don’t think it matters what your home college is. Once your petition for simultaneous degrees is approved, you’ll be in both colleges and the rules of one do not supercede the regulations of the other. In either case, I believe you will have no unit cap as long as you complete all of your required courses within the nine semesters allotted to you. After nine semesters, unit caps may apply.</p>