<p>Hey guys,</p>
<p>I was accepted into the Letters and Science College at Berkeley for their CS program but then realized that it would earn me a BA and not a BS. I am a little worried that employers will discriminate against the BA and will only accept BS degrees since traditionally, CS has an engineering basis. I'm talking about programming jobs at companies like Apple or Google. Is this a big deal? Is the BA worth all the work? Thanks in advance :)</p>
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<p>I don’t know anybody who transferred.
Here is the info for EECS: <a href=“http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Programs/Notes/Content/Chapter2.pdf[/url]”>http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Programs/Notes/Content/Chapter2.pdf</a>
Here is the info for LS CS: [Undergraduate</a> L&S CS Students | EECS at UC Berkeley](<a href=“http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/csugrad/]Undergraduate”>http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/csugrad/)</p>
<p>Although I have not explored the EECS requirements, it looks like CS70,CS150,CS162,CS170,CS164,CS184,etc. are all shared.</p>
<p>EECS and L&S CS majors take their major courses from the same set of CS and EE courses offered. So introductory CS courses like 61A, 61B, 61C, 70 will contain a mix of EECS and L&S undeclared students (L&S students do not declare majors until sophomore or junior year). Upper division CS courses will contain a mix of EECS and L&S CS students; there are no courses specific to either major, although many EE courses require more physics preparation required for EECS majors but optional for L&S CS majors.</p>
<p>EECS has no specific junior/senior level course requirement (it has “take N units of courses from …” type of requirements), while L&S CS names only two required CS courses, two others required from a list of nine or so more, any two other CS courses, and two more courses from either CS or technical electives.</p>
<p>Yes, you can apply to change from L&S to the College of Engineering’s EECS major, but it is selective. A student interested mainly in CS can declare the L&S CS major more easily. It would be students mainly interested in EE and who do not want to take at least six CS courses who would benefit most from trying to switch into EECS as opposed to declaring L&S CS.</p>
<p>Based on the career survey, most employers hiring CS graduates from Berkeley won’t care whether you have a [Bachelor</a> of Science in EECS](<a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/EECS.stm]Bachelor”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/EECS.stm) or a [Bachelor</a> of Arts in CS](<a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/CompSci.stm]Bachelor”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/CompSci.stm).</p>
<p>I’m a current EECS major at Berkeley. I can tell you right now that employers don’t care whether you have a BA in CS or a BS in EECS. And you take the same classes as EECS majors (minus the physics and EE classes).</p>
<p>So essentially, the LS route is more focused on the theoretical aspects of CS while EECS is more focused on the EE? I love the options provided in the LS College but I also have an interest in the hard sciences provided with EECS. I guess I can straighten that out after I take some classes at Cal. It just doesn’t seem fair to have to figure out your entire life when you’re 17! haha :)</p>
<p>Chairman Meow - Do the same employers conduct on campus interviews with students from both colleges? </p>
<p>Thank you for all your help everybody!</p>
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<p>For L&S CS, you do not have to take the Physics 7A,B, EE 20N, EE 40 (instead of EE 42), which are required for EECS. However, there is nothing preventing you from doing so if you want to later take EE courses requiring EE 20N and/or EE 40.</p>
<p>L&S CS also doesn’t require Math 53 (multivariable & vector calc). Essentially, instead of taking those classes, you can take other non-technical classes that fulfill the L&S requirements (which will probably be better for your GPA).</p>
<p>For campus interviews, they don’t care whether you are CS or EECS. If you’re applying for something like a software engineering position, the fact that you took EE classes has very little impact (probably none at all) on your resume. The other things on your resume, your skills/experience, will matter infinitely more than a BA in CS or a BS in EECS.</p>
<p>At some some schools, the only difference between BA & BS degrees of the CS major is that the BA may not require the Physics but requires more foreign language or something. As long as you have the core of Algorithms, Data Structures, Theory/Organization of Programming Languages and Operating Systems, you are OK.</p>
<p>Yeah, my dad works at a software firm and would laugh anyone with BA in CS out of the interview room.</p>
<p>@ meteman Then your father is an extremely ignorant man because there aren’t many significant differences between the two other than the EE courses, which tend to apply more towards hardware design.</p>
<p>@meteman, Purely because the applicant has a BA? That sounds very questionable, because it’s entirely possible to have a BA in CS and still be top notch at CS. If he were not considering any applicants from Berkeley, then he would be missing out on some good candidates.</p>
<p>I’m interning at Google this summer and I know several CS and EECS majors going there for the summer as well. There is literally no difference to employers because you take the EXACT same CS classes.</p>
<p>CS majors at Berkeley have no trouble finding employment judging by the career center statistics.</p>
<p>I won’t criticize anyone’s father but I will say that when I am called upon to interview software candidates, I could care less if they had a B.A. or a B.S. </p>
<p>Not that rankings mean everything, but UCLA has a Top-5 Applied Math program which has a few cross-listed CS courses that allow majors to go into software and their applied math program gives an M.A. degree.</p>
<p>Eliminating a potential candidate because of basically a degree saying “Arts” than “Science” would not be the wisest thing to do.</p>
<p>That’s really good to hear. I want to go into an MBA program either right after graduation or after some work experience. But to do that, I need a very good starting job, and to do that I need the right degree. I also noticed that the CS BA program is significantly smaller than the EECS prgram - is there a certain reason for that? Thanks :)</p>
<p>For any Computer Science education, stay away from universities. A two year technical college is enough. That will get you a job like Systems Engineer or Network Engineer or maybe Software Developer. Universities won’t give you anything practical or useful. In fact, many people in computer science fields are self-taught or were trained internally, having no educational background in computers. I know several people in that category.</p>
<p>Getting a position higher than entry-level will be pretty hard without a college degree… and a computer science degree isn’t the same thing as just learning programming languages. So that’s not very good advice.</p>
<p>Personally, I will be combining other subjects with CS and will not just be learning programs and languages so I think the university scene would benefit me.</p>