<p>Hello. </p>
<p>How difficult is it to double major in Computer Science and Cognitive Science at Berkeley? Will it leave me with a very heavy workload and hence very little/no time for a social life or to sleep? Are there people at Cal who do this/have done this or is it unheard of? </p>
<p>Thank you!</p>
<p>You will probably take about 32 courses in 8 semesters.</p>
<p>Cognitive science = 5 lower division and 9 upper division courses, for a total of 14 courses.</p>
<p>Computer science = 8 lower division and 7 upper division courses, for a total of 15 courses.</p>
<p>Overlap = 3 lower division and 0 to 2 upper division courses, for a total of 3 to 5 courses.</p>
<p>So that means that you will have to take 27 courses for your majors.</p>
<p>L&S requirements will include 2 for R&C, plus whatever 7-course breadth is not fulfilled by your majors. Given the interdisciplinary nature of cognitive science, you may be able to cover most of them with courses in that major.</p>
<p>However, some of the courses for the cognitive science major may require additional unlisted (in the cognitive science requirements) prerequisites, so you would have to go through the course list to figure out how many such courses you need.</p>
<p>AP credit in English or calculus may eliminate the need to take one or more courses.</p>
<p><a href=“http://ugis.ls.berkeley.edu/cogsci/major.php?page=requirements”>http://ugis.ls.berkeley.edu/cogsci/major.php?page=requirements</a>
<a href=“CS Major Information | EECS at UC Berkeley”>CS Major Information | EECS at UC Berkeley;
<a href=“http://ls-advise.berkeley.edu/requirement/breadth7/al.html”>http://ls-advise.berkeley.edu/requirement/breadth7/al.html</a></p>
<p>Thank you, ucbalumnus. Is it advisable to carry out this double major? Is 32 courses (possibly more due to the CogSci requirements) too much to handle along with a social life, given that a lot of them are CS courses which are time intensive? </p>
<p>32 courses would be the normal number of courses a student would take over 8 semesters (most courses are 4 units, some are 3, and some are other numbers of units; you need to average 15 units per semester to reach 120 units to graduate).</p>
<p>(Actually, miscounted the number of courses above for the majors – should be 24 to 26, not 27. That leaves 6 to 8 for unlisted prerequisites and L&S requirements, which should not be that difficult to fit in.)</p>
<p>Thanks, ucbalumnus! Do people at Cal do this double major or is it unheard of? And, will the double major make it impossible for me to do undergraduate research in CS?</p>
<p>No idea how common the double major is.</p>
<p>Why would doing it prevent you from doing undergraduate research? You’ll need about 32 courses anyway, so it wouldn’t matter whether they were a second major or a random collection of electives, unless the random collection of electives were additional computer science courses needed to prepare you for the undergraduate research topic (but many undergraduate research opportunities should be doable with just a normal number of computer science courses for background knowledge).</p>
<p>That really helped me, ucbalumnus. Is a double major worse than a single major for graduate school admissions? Would they look at me as a person who does not know what he wants to do if I double major? It may sound stupid, but I saw this somewhere else on the Internet.</p>
<p>For graduate study or employment relating to your first major, having a second major would not usually be advantageous compared to just taking courses in the second subject that you are interested in or find useful without worrying about covering all of the second major’s requirements. It would be disadvantageous if covering all of the second major’s requirements with courses that you are not highly interested in crowds out additional first major courses that you are interested in or find useful.</p>
<p>There may be some niche areas where having a particular combination of majors may be helpful.</p>
<p>+1. Let’s say you are interested in graduate research in X. A major in X will be useful for getting research in X. An additional major in Y (in of itself, not talking about the learning you get from classes) is not going to help you do research in X</p>
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<p>So if we double major in CogSci+CS, we’d probably be taking a lot less upper div courses in CS, right? So… if we really want to focus on CS (but also like another subject a lot), would it be better to just major in one and minor/take-a-few-classes in the other as opposed to majoring in both?</p>
<ol>
<li>How many upper division courses does a single major in CS normally take? </li>
<li>And, what are the benefits of double majoring over minoring / taking a few classes in the secondary major?</li>
<li>Is a Computer Science - Cognitive Science double major significantly better than minoring or taking a few classes in Cognitive Science if one wants to work in the AI field after graduation?</li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li> <a href=“CS Major Information | EECS at UC Berkeley”>http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/csugrad/#upperdiv</a> . Most courses are 4 units, so 27 units will take about 7 courses (1 EE or CS design course, 2 additional CS courses, 2 additional EE or CS courses, 2 technical electives). Note also that L&S requires a student to complete at least 36 upper division units, including 6 outside of one’s major department (i.e. not EE or CS).</li>
</ol>
<p>2., 3. Taking selected cognitive science courses may be helpful; adding an entire second major may be less helpful, and may consume schedule space with second major requirements that are less helpful or interesting (although if the courses you are interested in happen to make up a second major, it is perfectly fine to add the second major).</p>
<p>So I won’t be taking lesser upper division courses than a regular CS major? Will I have to compromise on the choice of upper divs?</p>
<p>Without the constraints of a second major, you have the option of taking more computer science courses than the minimum needed for the computer science major. You might even have the option of taking more cognitive science courses of interest without needing to take less interesting ones that happen to be required for that major.</p>
<p>So a single major in CS takes at least 7 upper division courses, right? Maximum how many upper division CS courses can be taken by a CS major, assuming he/she completes around 120 units over the four years? </p>
<p>There are 17 upper division technical CS courses (not including special topics, independent study, group study, etc.). In theory, taking all 17 would be 68 units (CS 150 is 5 units, CS C191 is 3 units, and all of the others are 4 units).</p>
<p>In practice, students generally do not try to take all 17 of them (or anything close to that).</p>
<p>In practice, how many do students generally take? 10-12?</p>
<p>In practice, how many do students generally take? 10-12?</p>
<p>Another option is to major in Cognitive Science and minor in CS. It will reduce your workload.</p>