<p>could you briefly explain the colleges of UCB???
I'm sort of stuck in the application process(which is really sad)
but i have hard time, truly, understanding the pros and cons from the school's actual site because they only tell people general stuff... could anyone go in details and tell me from what they really know (preferably from experience???) thanks a lot in advance..
ps-med and <engineering, and="" yes="" i="" know="" it's="" hard="" to="" get="" into="" schools="" with="" these="" sort="" of="" majors="">?
pps. i know for UCB and UCLA, you have to put down a major, what if you change your mind later, could you change it or would they let you?</engineering,></p>
<p>Colleges are basically repositories of majors. You generally want to choose the college that has the major(s) that you are thinking of doing. For people who are interested in general sciences or humanities, choose L&S. Hardcore techies will often times choose the College of Engineering. Budding architects will choose the College of Environmental Design, etc.</p>
<p>As far as switching colleges is concerned, it depends on what kind of switch you're talking about. Certain colleges are heavily impacted meaning that it is far easier to get admitted directly than to try to switch into that college later. The College of Engineering is arguably the most difficult college to switch into. </p>
<p>As far as switching majors is concerned, once again, it has to do with what kind of switch you are anticipating. Most colleges just admit you by college (and don't care about major), the notable exception being the College of Engineering, which will admit you by major (and in which it is not automatic to be able to switch from one engineering major to another). For the other colleges, you can choose to say a major, but it won't affect your admissions decision, nor does it guarantee that you will get that major even if you are admitted. Certain majors are impacted, meaning far more people want to declare that major than there is available space. </p>
<p>For example, just because you say you want to major in Computer Science in L&S, and you get admitted into L&S, it doesn't mean that you will be allowed to declare the CS major. CS is one of the most heavily impacted majors at Berkeley. Basically, you have to do well in the CS coursework and then actually apply to declare the major, and depending on your coursework grades, you may or may not be allowed to declare. </p>
<p>I'm sure that somebody out there has a list of impacted majors and will post it.</p>
<p>However, for the purposes of your application to Berkeley, you should apply to the college (and, if you want to be an engineer, to the specific engineering major) that you feel has the coursework that interests you. I understand that you may not be able to know exactly what you want to study, but you should have some inkling. The default choice is simply to apply to L&S. </p>
<p>Just understand that how you choose to apply will affect your chances of getting in. For example, some people who apply to EECS and get rejected (and thus can't go to Berkeley at all) would have gotten into Berkeley if they had applied L&S. And even if you do get into Berkeley, just understand that you still may not be able to declare the major that you want, even if you had put that major down on your application as the one you want.</p>
<p>If you're a prospective EECS, but don't quite have the grades or scores, go for L&S. Once at L&S, take the required engineering courses. Then, with a strong academic record in the engineering department your chances of switching to EECS will improve. Also, take a Freshmen Seminar if you get here in the engineering department so you can get to know a professor there.</p>
<p>if you apply to L&S (where most kids apply), you don't have to put down a major bcos L&S does not care.</p>
<p>sakky is correct: not only is Engineering the "hardest", it's extremely difficult, since most of the transfer spots are targeted towards juco transfers. </p>
<p>I could not recommend applying to L&S as a back-door method to get into Eng....it usually does not work.</p>
<p>Thanks to all of you for the insightful info:
could someone who's pretty sure of his/her information advise me in this confusion? Like sakky said, I know that engineering is hard to get into no matter what college it's in. Most of the engineering that you guys put as example were electric and computer, what about bioengineering?
could someone give me how impacted the majors are for the freshmen?</p>
<p>-College of Engineering-
Bioengineering
Civil Engineering
Computational Engineering Science
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Computer Science - also offered in the College of Letters and Science
Engineering Mathematics and Statistics
Engineering Physics
Environmental Engineering Science
Engineering Undeclared: only available to freshmen
Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
Manufacturing Engineering
Materials Science and Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Nuclear Engineering</p>
<p>Also for those of you that attend or know a great deal of UCB, like many other freshmen, I can't say that I want to pursue "blank major" til death... If i'm not 100%sure that the major that I'm interested in is the one, what do you guys think i should do?
I really like UCB but am also somewhat interested in engineering <like stated="" above=""> , should i take my chance of applying to college of engineering or some other colleges so that my chance would be bigger?
I know that choosing major will be difficult for me to change later, but do they (school) really expect us to decide on a certain major with this degree of strictness??? What do you think I should do?...I'm not really confident(like some people) that I could get into college engineering, plus UCB is really hard to get into in the first place...</like></p>
<p>Pre-med is not a major, really. You basically have to take certain classes for med school admissions. As for your situation, if you are just somewhat interested in engineering, you should probably think about it for a while. If you come to no strong conclusion, applying to L & S and taking classes in engineering (is this possible?) and other subjects to see what grabs you. Given you get in, and do well in classes, you will still have a chance of studying engineering. If you want to take a larger risk, you could just apply to the college of engineering, and see what happens. Maybe you'll get in, maybe you won't. The same is true for L & S, but engineering probably requires a bit more of their admits. If you get in, and decide you don't like engineering, then you can relatively easily transfer out to a different (and yes, probably more interesting) subject.</p>
<p>Apply to engineering and take a larger chance of not being admitted, or L&S with the chance of perhaps never being able to major in engineering (if you get into L&S). You have to think about how important engineering is to you, or how important coming to Berkeley is. I'm sure sakky will gladly tell you horror stories of Berkeley's engineering department, if you want more information about it.</p>
<p>In terms of impacted majors, BioE, EECS, and (I think--I'm not as sure about this one) Engineering-Undeclared are the most difficult to get into for new student admissions. Among these, I imagine that BioE would be the hardest to get into, but that's purely conjectural. </p>
<p>And Sakky's warnings about it being hard to change into certain majors are very true. L&S CS has a cutoff GPA of around 3.4, which is a pretty steep cutoff considering that the average grade in lower division CS and math classes is around 2.7-3.0. I suspect (again, purely conjecturally) that the proportion of pre-CS students who don't get into the major is near 50%. To put that into perspective, Haas has an admission rate of around 50%. I imagine that transferring into BioE or EECS from within the CoE would be comparably difficult (and much moreso if you're coming from L&S, though it would still be doable).</p>
<p>That said, it's possible to get a very strong education in popular fields even if you aren't in the impacted departments. If you're in the CoE, you can pick a different engineering major and focus your technical electives in your area of interest. This is particularly true of the engineering science majors, which are much more flexible than the traditional departmental majors. For example, you can focus on genomics/computational biology in the Computational Engineering Science program, or study algorithms in Engineering Math & Stat. It's possible to get within one course of matching the EECS major with Engineering Physics.</p>
<p>If you're in not in engineering, every engineering field (I think) has a corollary non- or less- impacted science major that is easier to transfer into. I think (you should check with Berkeley about this before making any decisions) that you're allowed to take technical courses in the engineering school if you're in L&S, and if that's the case it's very possible to get close to a theoretical-leaning engineering program even if you're in L&S. For example, you could major in chemistry or physics, take a lot of electives--in L&S, the major and GE requirements take up maybe 90 semester units--in the materials science department, and end up with a program that looks similar in coursework to a MSE student's, with certain classes in Chem/L&S instead of Engineering (e.g., statistical mechanics in Physics vs. thermodynamics in Engineering, kinetics in Chemistry instead of in MSE, etc.).</p>
<p>
[quote]
If you're a prospective EECS, but don't quite have the grades or scores, go for L&S. Once at L&S, take the required engineering courses. Then, with a strong academic record in the engineering department your chances of switching to EECS will improve.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It is true that if you don't have the HS grades/scores, this is probably the only way you'll get into EECS. The major problem, as has been pointed out here, is that there is a strong probability that you won't be allowed to switch into EECS, and so you'll be stuck in L&S majoring in something you don't really want to major in. Either that, or transferring to an entirely different university. I know some guys who tried out this backdoor and found that they were not allowed to switch over and so had to transfer to another university (like UCDavis) in order to do EE. </p>
<p>
[quote]
And Sakky's warnings about it being hard to change into certain majors are very true. L&S CS has a cutoff GPA of around 3.4,
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, actually, there is no hard cutoff per se. There used to be, but not anymore. The admissions policy is now more comprehensive. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, it is still extremely difficult to get in. Consider the following links.</p>
<p>hey everyone... wow thanks so much for helpful explanations yet I'm still sort of in a morbid stage... :(... many of you are talking about the EECS(I assume you are talking about electric engineering and computer science) but I was more interested in bioengineering.<br>
Quentin, you said that <bioe and="" undeclared="" engineering=""> is probably hardest to get into, could anyone confirm that? Sakky???
Like you guys said,(If i get in through LS) I don't want to be stuck with some random major that I never really wanted to take, and later change to other school. According to the sites sakky put on, many people with about 3.6-8 were admitted the most? Well, I thought you had to have at least 4.0 (most likely) to get in?
Also, like the LS backway to EECS, is there one to BioE? I'm not much of a risk taker...so this is all really overwhelming.
Thanks so much everyone :)</bioe></p>
<p>Indeed. BioE and engineering-undeclared are HIGHLY impacted.</p>
<p>I have a question... if I say, undecided (just as in general) would this be impacted too? And say if I do get in, could i choose whatever i want to easily?</p>
<p>If you mean undecided-engineering then yes, you can choose any engineering major (according to my undeclared-engineering friend who chose mechanical engineering). And it is highly impacted.</p>
<p>
[quote]
According to the sites sakky put on, many people with about 3.6-8 were admitted the most? Well, I thought you had to have at least 4.0 (most likely) to get in?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Careful here. Look carefully at the sites that I showed you. Those are COLLEGE gpa's that you are looking at, not high school GPA's. Your high school GPA will let you get into Berkeley. But it doesn't mean that you will then get the major you want. </p>
<p>To get that, you have to take initial Berkeley coursework in that major, get a bunch of grades, and then apply to that major, usually by your college soph or junior year. It is THOSE grades that those links show, not your high school grades.</p>
<p>Hence, you could have a 4.0 in high school, get admitted to Berkeley as a CS major in L&S, get a 3.5 in your computer science coursework, apply to formally declare CS as a major, and get rejected. You're a Berkeley student, you just wouldn't be allowed to graduate with a CS degree. It doesn't matter that you got 'admitted' as a L&S CS major, because it only matters what you end up being formally allowed to declare. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Quentin, you said that <bioe and="" undeclared="" engineering=""> is probably hardest to get into, could anyone confirm that? Sakky???
[/quote]
</bioe></p>
<p>Historically, EECS and Engineering Undeclared were the 2 most difficult ways to get into Berkeley, significantly more difficult than BioE. However, that may have changed recently. BioE is certainly more difficult to get into than it was in the past, but whether it's more difficult than EECS or EU, I am not sure. I'm sure somebody will post a link. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Also, like the LS backway to EECS, is there one to BioE? I'm not much of a risk taker...so this is all really overwhelming.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It's the same backdoor, and it's also a road with a low chance of success. The fact is, it's very difficult to get into the College of Engineering from another college, no matter which engineering major you're talking about. </p>
<p>
[quote]
I have a question... if I say, undecided (just as in general) would this be impacted too? And say if I do get in, could i choose whatever i want to easily
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Note what unlimitedX said above. If you mean undecided in one of the other colleges, then it won't affect your chances of admission, as all the other colleges don't care about what major you list. You can list anything you want, including undecided, and it won't matter.</p>
<p>However, it also has no effect on what major you end up being allowed to declare. Put another way, a guy who gets into L&S saying that he wants to major in CS has the same chances of later being allowed to formally declare CS as a guy who gets into L&S as undecided. It has no impact, positive or negative. The impacted non-engineering majors don't care about what you said you wanted to major in when you were a high school senior, they only care about how you have performed while at Berkeley.</p>
<p>Wow.. I've talked to my parents about all these stuff.. of course no one could really help me with this decision...but my parents want me to just apply to school of engineering and see what happens... I'm scared that I won't even be admitted but oh well... From what I've read so far, the EECS, undeclared(engineering), and bioE are critically the hard major choices for incoming freshmen, could someone tell me the general,(prob upper half of incoming freshmen) stats [sat,gpa, and etc] that got accepted to school of engineering? Also, i know it's hard, but really, how hard is it for a person to get into the eng dept by choosing undeclared? I was going to choose bioE or undec, but i'm sort of being shaken, although i don't think it will affect the admission that much. Thank you so much for your input... I really X10^infinity am thankful :)</p>
<p>To clarifiy, does it mean students who applied as say, bioE still need to compete with others to get the major after completing the lower division courses?</p>
<p>well.. no, I thought people who would want to major in bioE would only compete with the people that are interested in Bio E right? (correct me if im wrong). Simply my question was that should I choose undeclared major in engineering or just choose a major (w/in engineering) to have a better shot at getting admitted...</p>
<p>That's actually a question I posed and want an answer to as well :)</p>
<p>haha.. okay.. ooops :) someone answer our questions???</p>
<p>Some general data on Berkeley's admitted class of 2004: <a href="http://osr2.berkeley.edu/Public/STUDENT.DATA/PUBLICATIONS/UG/ugf04.html%5B/url%5D">http://osr2.berkeley.edu/Public/STUDENT.DATA/PUBLICATIONS/UG/ugf04.html</a></p>
<p>It breaks things down by college but not by major. I'd say that if you're in the top 40% or so (top 20% if you want to be extra safe) of CoE admits it doesn't matter too much what major you put down as you'll probably get in. The reason I say this is that, by a back-of-the-envelope calculation, EECS + BioE + Undeclared compose a bit more than 50% of Berkeley's admitted freshmen, based on departmental enrollments and the size of the college. (<a href="http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/explore/facts.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/explore/facts.html</a>. I assumed that Undeclared was about 1/6 of the "Engineering Others" category.) </p>
<p>Oh and I should emphasize that my statement about BioE being the hardest to get into was purely conjectural--please don't make any decisions based on that. The CoE just singles out three--EECS, BioE, Undeclared--as being specially impacted. I wouldn't be surprised if they just lumped the three together into the "impacted majors" category during the admissions process. This, too, is purely conjectural.</p>
<p>And in reply to unlimited's and hopeful's questions: Once you're in a major, it's hard to get kicked out. If you do very badly (grade average of less than 2.0) they will bother you, but in general you won't get in trouble as long as your grades stay reasonable. There might be exceptions, however, and in any case if you're making low Cs consistently, particularly for BioE because many BioE jobs require grad school, you might want to consider changing majors.</p>
<p>In terms of differences between the colleges in things other than admissions, the main differences are bureaucracy and breadth requirements. In general, the bigger the college, the more bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is a bad thing.</p>