My son has been admitted to Berkeley for Energy Engineering. Yay! But he now wants to switch to L&S undeclared and then declare Computer Science (assuming he has the necessary GPA and coursework completed). How hard is it do this type of transfer? He knows he would have to do a year first in Engineering before he would switch, but his Berkeley advisor says do not come if this is your plan! Any advise greatly appreciated!
I am pretty sure that there is a computer science major available for students attending UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering. If he transfer to the College of Letters and Science, he will have to compete with other students to acquire a 3.3 GPA for the pre-major classes required to major in Computer Science in L&S. I am almost certain that the CS major in the College of Engineering is guaranteed for C&E students.
No, it’s not guaranteed for C&E students by all means.
My kid was admitted as ME major.
When he declared EECS as second major, the advisor told him to get GPA 3.3 on two CS classes.
Late to the party, but some thoughts…
a) PM me with the advisor’s name if this is still applicable… I’m curious. They generally have good advice.
b) In general: Switching from CoE to L&S is easy. It’s just paperwork. However getting into L&S CS isn’t guaranteed and definitely does require a 3.3 GPA.
Switching into EECS from within CoE isn’t as hard / much paperwork as switching into EECS from L&S, but the GPA requirements for the major are the same–so in that sense there’s very little difference. L&S and CoE have different general ed requirements, but those are usually minor in the scheme of 4 years. Switching to other engineering majors from within CoE generally isn’t so crazy as long as it’s not EECS, so if there are other engineering interests, it might not be so bad to stay in CoE for a little while.
There is also the EE/CS minor. You can get a perfectly excellent software engineering job and even research positions by simply taking CS courses. My former roommate was a stats major and never even finished the minor, but ended up at Microsoft doing data science. Getting into upper division courses while trying to complete the minor is difficult because you get lowest priority, but it’s not impossible, especially if he’s willing to explore the larger / less popular /more difficult upper division courses.