<p>My kid and I made a strategic decision to apply for Cal College of L&S and not Engineering. His stats are iffy, so we decided to game for a larger Admit pool. Who knows, but it worked. He got admitted as Undeclared L&S. </p>
<p>He's pretty sure he wants Computer Science, but just doesn't know what's the difference between the Engineering "Computer Science" degrees (BS?), and the L&S "Computer Science" degrees (BA?). Does L&S offer BS? :-)</p>
<p>Are the Labs different between L&S and Engineering. </p>
<p>I guess we could wait till CalDay, but he's kinda' on edge, thinking we made a mistake. </p>
<p>FYI He got admitted to UCSD, UCSB, UC Davis, and UCSC Engineering. </p>
<p>L&S CS majors and engineering EECS majors take the exact same computer science classes. No difference whatsoever. The main difference is that L&S CS majors have the option to take more non-engineering electives while EECS majors need to take other engineering classes, such as the Physics 7 series.</p>
<p>I am an incoming freshman to Cal L&S and am planning on majoring in computer science as well. There are only three differences between L&S and CoE for CS:</p>
<ol>
<li>You get a BA in L&S (no way around this, but i don’t think it will really matter, especially if your son goes on to grad school)</li>
<li>You don’t enter declared (you need to take about 3 math classes and 4 CS classes before you can declare your major)</li>
<li>You must take the L&S general-ed, and not that of the CoE</li>
</ol>
<p>Thanks so much! I’m know your comments will ease my kid’s concerns. </p>
<p>We went to UCSD CSE AdmitDay activities. The labs there were pathetic.
3 cramped hot rooms in the basement of the CS building, with tiny jail like
windows. Running an aging Vista-esque Dell Farm and 17" Flat screens. Not a Mac or Ubuntu 8.10 box to be seen. The TA didn’t know much memory the graphics cards had. No 3D modeling here. I think we’ll pass.</p>
<p>If you want, you can take the extra science & math classes and end up identical to the EECS majors. Or you can drop the extra science classes but add more advance math classes or vice versa as a CS major. Even take more EE classes than EECS majors by dropping Biology, Chemistry, and later Physics courses.</p>
<p>Being accepted to LS as undeclared means exactly that: your son currently doesn’t have a major. In the first 2 years, your son will take lower division classes required for the CS major. Then at the end of the fourth semester, your son will need to apply to the EECS department for admission to the CS major (a second admission). Either he will get accepted or rejected. In the event of a rejection, you son will have to pursue a different major and most of the CS classes taken up to that point will likely be wasted.</p>
<p>Sorry! Going to take this thread out of obscurity. How come Cal Computer Science is not an impacted major? I thought it was one of the most popular and competitive majors out there.</p>
<p>Also, are you sure it is that easy to get into computer science? What do I need to do to get into the major?</p>
<p>I did check out the website. It basically said that you have to complete certain required courses and maintain above a 2.0 GPA. But they didn’t mention how difficult it was to get into the major. I find it hard to believe that it isn’t difficult… I would like someone who goes to Berkeley to answer this so that my anxiety is quelled. :)</p>
<p>It’s insanely easy to get into the major now that it is no longer capped. All you need is a 2.0 in the major prerequisites. It’s nothing to worry about.</p>
<p>If your son knows he wants to do computer science for sure and not electrical engineering then you can’t go wrong with CS. EECS and CS majors can both attain the same type of computer science opportunities after college. The only advantage EECS has is that they can also do stuff relating to EE while CS alone cannot. But, you can just minor in EECS or take EE courses and you would be on the same playing field as EECS.</p>
<p>It is possible to construct a program of study with essentially the same major course work for EECS and L&S CS majors if you are willing to include at least 6 upper division CS courses as required by the L&S CS major. So it is not a big deal unless you want to do EE with as little CS as possible.</p>
<p>EECS is more prestigious, the students are probably smarter (definitely more competitive), their alumni look to be a lot more successful (from going through Wikipedia alumni lists) and you don’t get an embarrassing Bachelor of Arts degree. But you’ll probably get the same jobs either way so it’s all good.</p>
<p>that’s a bit harsh on CS but it’s true that prestige does tilt towards a BS in EECS. As for how smart the students are, I have no idea. Statistically students in CS tend to do better on average but this for a few reasons:</p>
<ol>
<li>CS students have two years to decide if they like CS. EECS students are more likely to stay in the major. So even the not-so-good students stay in EECS and pull down the stats.</li>
<li>EECS students have to take three CS and two EE courses in the lower div. This means that the EE-focused students are stuck taking three CS courses they might not enjoy that much, and CS-focused students have to take two EE courses. Meanwhile L&S CS students take three CS courses they presumably enjoy and then usually EE42, an easier version of EECS’s EE40.</li>
<li>EECS students have to take Math 54 and Physics 7A/7B which usually have tougher curves than the breadth/humanities courses L&S students take.</li>
</ol>
<p>Starting salaries depend more on your job than your major. Software engineers do well either way, so L&S CS or CS focus in EECS is good. EE focus in EECS may pay lower or many go to grad school since an MS helps more for EE.</p>
<p>You think they have it bad? Let me put it this way:</p>
<p>Three cramped hot rooms in the basement of the CS building, with <em>no</em> windows at all. Running an <em>aged</em> Sun-esque virtual terminal farm and 17" flat screens displaying out-of-proportion video. Not a Mac or an Ubuntu 8.10 box to be seen. The TAs nor professors know how much memory the graphics card has. No 3D <em>or 2D</em> modeling here…</p>
<p>I’m not kidding about the above. However, the good news is that there is a lab full of eight-core (2x quad core) dual Xeon boxes with 16GB RAM and nVIDIA Tesla cards running Ubuntu 10.10 and using some 23" LCDs. There’s also a lab full of Mac Pros /w 2x quad-core Xeons and 12GB RAM in another building, though you need to be in the right classes to have access to it (luckily, it’s a required lower division course that both L&S CS and EECS have to take). There are also a few other more specific labs that are restricted to some courses: eg. Cory 125 for FPGA development.</p>
<p>Point of this: you don’t always need good equipment to have a solid, up-to-date program. To be honest, I find those window-less labs to be more practical than the Mac lab. Though, to be honest, my favorite one is still the “hive” of those nVIDIA Tesla equipped mini-supercomputers.</p>
<p>The courses are theoretical: instead of doing 3D modeling, you learn how to make the programs that do 3D modeling. Since you don’t need a full scale model to learn the concepts, you just output a small image and understand that it’s just a matter of money and power if you want something larger. Now, if you still want to learn 3D modeling, there are still courses for those (though they aren’t classified as CS courses – it’s more about the arts).</p>
<p>The difference between L&S CS and EECS is basically all in the prereqs and what your degree says. However, because of Cal’s reputation in the field, a B.A. or B.S. won’t matter unless you’re applying at a company that you really really don’t want to work for. Also, the EE side is only available in EECS.</p>
<p>My favorite part about the program is that it’s very strongly ingrained in the theoretical concepts, so you learn how to deal with all types of systems, new or old, common or obscure. Because of this, the equipment you need is minimal, and you almost never run into compatibility issues. In fact, if there was ever a time where I needed to install weird/custom software, it was for a humanities class: I needed to do a PowerPoint presentation and type up an essay in MLA format.</p>
<p>the windowless labs on the 2nd floor might be more “practical” but they still utterly suck. not that it matters anyway since you only need to be there 30-60min a week for your first year for labs and everything else you just do on your laptop.</p>
<p>if you need compute power, rent an EC2 instance or ssh into a hive machine or the mac lab. if you want graphics, again, ssh+X into the mac lab.</p>