<p>You should be fine, but your lack of a compsci background is probably going to handicap you initially in your major. Take some time out of your lax second semester and summer to prep.</p>
<p>Yeah, I plan to teach myself some programming over second semester. My school doesn't offer a computer science course so I never had the opportunity to take it. I do have a few friends who taught it to themselves so I'll probably take that path.</p>
<p>btw, can anyone currently attending the college of engineering give me some insight. From what I heard from some friends it's a really rigorous workload and people barely get sleep. I also heard there's like a 90% major change/drop out rate for an engineering major in their sophmore year. Is any of this true?</p>
<p>Is your name Wesley? :)</p>
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From what I heard from some friends it's a really rigorous workload and people barely get sleep.
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Based on your time management.</p>
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I also heard there's like a 90% major change/drop out rate for an engineering major in their sophmore year. Is any of this true?
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I don't think any UC school would be prestigious if it only graduated less than 100 students a year from the engineering department.</p>
<p>In other words, not that high.</p>
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Yeah, I plan to teach myself some programming over second semester. My school doesn't offer a computer science course so I never had the opportunity to take it. I do have a few friends who taught it to themselves so I'll probably take that path.
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</p>
<p>Programming is not as easy as you think it is for self teaching. Teaching yourself in one semester and over the summer will only be sufficient for 1 semester at UCB.</p>
<p>Assuming you follow through with EECS, you will be still be a bit handicapped.</p>
<p>yes that is my name haha. Also, thanks for the info.</p>
<p>I know you. You know me. :)</p>
<p>Wow this is kind of weird that I found you off CC. Anyways who are you lol?</p>
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btw, can anyone currently attending the college of engineering give me some insight. From what I heard from some friends it's a really rigorous workload and people barely get sleep. I also heard there's like a 90% major change/drop out rate for an engineering major in their sophmore year. Is any of this true?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Umm, I don't know about that 90% statistics. Seems pretty questionable to me. As for the workload, it depends on your courses. I can only speak for EECS, but since most people (somehow) think it's a pretty hard major, it can serve as a representative for the rest of engineering.</p>
<p>There are certain courses you'll have to watch out for that are hard. For example, in EECS, CS150, CS152, and CS162 have notoriously long, hard projects. You do not want to take two of those together. In general, you don't want to take any remotely hard set of courses plus any of those three. These things you'll learn from word of mouth or straight from your department.</p>
<p>In terms of workload, I can tell you CS162 resulted in probably a dozen (approximate) all-nighters for the project. Not too bad when taken alone, but very, very bad when taken with other hard courses.</p>
<p>As for learning programming yourself, I'd say don't worry about it too much. If possible, I'd say get some UNIX experience first (e.g. try installing Linux and figuring out how to use things like Emacs, understand what Bash is and basic commands, etc.). Scheme is a foreign thing to almost everyone coming in (even those with programming experience, since most people don't do purely functional programming in Scheme, so you'll be in the same boat as everyone else). Having a leg up on UNIX is useful in general.</p>
<p>appreciate the insight eudean. :)</p>
<p>Also, do you think EECS is something that requires natural abilities or is it something I could accomplish with just hard work. I would hate to pay for college but end up producing no results because I overestimated myself.</p>
<p>probably both? I mean, aside from all the hard work that the rigorous program requires, you should have some interest in engineering/sciences.</p>
<p>EECS is interesting in that there are quite a few very successful individuals that are exceptional seemingly through sheer talent, and then there is everyone else that just works hard. I know of a few individuals that are simply amazing programmers. For example, a freshman that took his first Berkeley CS course last semester placed first in the Berkeley Programming Competition. Obviously he had prior experience, but really, I'm sure there are individuals that have programmed twice as long that couldn't do as well as he did in that competition.</p>
<p>Having said that, you definitely do not need to be a genius programmer to do well in EECS (I'm definitely not a genius coder). Working hard actually pays off much more than just being a good coder (and really, no one comes in being good at any of the EE stuff, so don't worry about that). If you're not a genius coder, though, then a good gauge of how you'll like EECS is how well you did in math in high school. If you took Calculus and got a D, then EECS probably isn't for you. If you got an A, then you'll probably feel fine.</p>
<p>Most importantly, you should be (or become, over the course of your college career) a fast learner. That's of paramount importance. College forces you to learn fast, though, so most people pick it up their first or second year (e.g. CS61A will dump Scheme and UNIX on you, CS61B Java, 61C C and MIPS Assembly, EE20 will dump Matlab, EE40/105 PSPICE, EE140 HSPICE, 141 HSPICE and Cadence, 150 Verilog).</p>
<p>So yeah, learning will happen fast. It's okay if it takes you a little while to pick things up at first, but if by your second or third year it still is taking you a long time to pick up skills, then I'd worry (IMO, this is the most important thing to get out of college).</p>
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Wow this is kind of weird that I found you off CC. Anyways who are you lol?
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I went to your school.</p>