<p>I'm currently debating whether to take CS 61A or E7. Could those of you who've taken either/both of these classes offer any feedback as to how your experience was?</p>
<p>From what I can tell, these are the pros of taking 61A:
-61A is more challenging
-More interesting material
-Less busywork than E7</p>
<p>And the pros of taking E7:
-61A is more challenging
-E7 has only two midterms to 61A's three
-MATLAB is more useful to me than Scheme since I'm an engineering major</p>
<p>Any advice is appreciated. Also, what are the odds of me getting in at this point with 263 enrolled and 63 on the waitlist? I realize that this past semester had way more kids than this, but I'm thinking that the department might want to slash some lab sections due to budget cuts or something.</p>
<p>I doubt that you wouldn't be able to get into CS61A, although i couldn't say about E7.
If you're planning to take upper-division CS courses then maybe CS61A would be more helpful.
E7 might be a better bet for boosting your GPA, so there's that.
Also, CS61A might have less busywork but there's still quite a bit of work anyway, and it's pretty difficult, at least from my point of view.
I also had to choose between these two courses and I took CS61A, but I'm still not sure if that was the right decision.</p>
<p>That should be a con for E7, not a pro. 61A is not the difficult class that its reputation makes it out to be (it used to be MUCH harder many years ago when everybody was going into programming all of a sudden and it was a weeder course for a while; it is no longer a weeder course). There are 3 midterms and a final -- THIS IS A GOOD THING. If you don't do well on one midterm it doesn't kill your grade. The midterms are also relatively straight-forward and don't change much from practice/previous midterms. Harvey has said that he makes the midterms easy on purpose and that the grades that people get on them often times are much higher than their actual knowledge of the material should permit. Harvey even offers a couple points of extra credit toward the end of the semester.</p>
<p>I have not taken E7, so I can't comment on its difficulty directly. My roommate took it last semester though, and it sounded like it was a little more difficult than 61A.</p>