<p>Now that the schedule is out, I wanted to see what peoples thoughts were on getting into CS upper divs as a minor. I was thinking of phase I-ing 170 and 161. They're taught by Demmel and Tygar with 261 and 222 seats respectively. I'm not familiar with which teachers are popular or not so I was wondering if you guys thought I'd be able to get in as a minor. Any other thoughts on recommended courses is appreciated too. 169 taught by Fox with 240 seats perhaps? I have to get into both the clases I phase-I as this is my last semester before I go over the unit cap.</p>
<p>I’d say you have a decent chance of getting into 170 and 161, as neither Demmel nor Tygar seem to be the most popular instructors teaching those courses (pretty sure those titles would go to Papadimitriou and Paxson, respectively). Although 170 is a requirement for L&S CS majors and is considered one of the most valuable courses for the purpose of landing an internship or job, so that one might be up in the air.</p>
<p>But as a CS minor you’ll at least have priority over all the L&S CS kids declaring their major this semester (myself included). And I have a Phase I on April 9… Haha, just ignore my whining and see how quickly those classes are filling up in the days leading up to your Phase I. You might also want to check out Telebears Oracle, which has some pretty useful info on enrollment.</p>
<p>True what caprizep says. But here’s the thing: Rao’s gonna teach 170 in the Spring, so people would want to avoid him by shooting for Demmel. So yeah, I think 170 is gonna be filled up pretty quickly. The opposite goes for 161, Tygar is a superb professor (he, Anthony Joseph, Vazirani, and Wagner invented the course, CS161, for undergraduates back in 2005-2006) I think. But he hasn’t taught the class for a while, and Wagner, who will be teaching in the Spring, is more well known. So people will shoot for Wagner, which means you can still phase 2 161 and get in.</p>
<p>Your chance of getting into 169 is pretty slim, but it doesn’t hurt to try. If you want to take a risk, sign up for 169 and 170. Otherwise, just go for the normal plan and sign up for 161 and 170. I’m 99% sure you will be able to get into 161, especially the department now knows what happens with 161 this semester (FYI ~150 people were dropped from the class this semester because there were not enough space).</p>
<p>@sparkyboy: Just want to say I’ve been on these forums for a while and I’ve always enjoyed reading your helpful/informative posts. Much appreciated, from a fellow CS person!</p>
<p>Mind if I bug you with some questions? As an undeclared student in L&S (declaring this semester but enrollment priority won’t kick until next semester), do you think there would be any chance of my getting into CS 170 or 186? I do have an early Telebears time (April 9), so I might have a slight scheduling advantage over most of my fellow as yet undeclared L&S peeps, but on the whole I’m not terribly optimistic. I read an earlier thread where people were saying that 186 will be impacted in the fall because it wasn’t offered this semester, and you’re right that 170 with Rao in the Spring might make 170 in the fall a bit crowded. </p>
<p>If not, what would you recommend? Since this’ll be my first semester taking upper div CS courses, I’m not sure if I want to jump right into 162 or 164, and you indicated in the previous post that 169 might be difficult for xfer123 to get into (and thus probably impossible for me). I know there’s virtually no chance of getting into 188 so I’m not even going to try, and I’m not particularly interested in graphics (184) at this point. I guess 160 and 161 are always options, but I was hoping to take those at a later point (although I do recognize that I can’t really be choosy). </p>
<p>Any thoughts? Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>Enrollment priority will kick in during phase 2, since Chris Hunn will add you to the major sometime around late June-early July D: . If they (by “they”, I mean THAT GUY, lol) decide to handle enrollment just like this spring, then I think you will be able to get into both 170 and 186 =D. This semester, after taking about 50-100, they automatically add everyone to the waitlist for most of the upper divs, then process by priority (Graduating senior -> EECS/CS Major -> Other Majors (Applied Math w/170, CogSci w/188) -> EECS/CS Minor -> Undeclared) I think. Which means you’ll get second best priority and will most likely make it into both classes.</p>
<p>That said, I do agree that CS186 will be pretty packed, since in the spring we have a visiting professor from Oxford for 186 :o , but no one knows how good he is and thus don’t want to settle for uncertainty and will probably take Franklin instead.</p>
<p>I’d recommend 170, 188, 186, and 161 as first upper division classes. Particularly for this Fall, I think you’ll have a good chance with 161. If you like 61C, 161 is very similar in nature, and the load is pretty light (2-3 projects, 5-6 homework, most of the load is from reading and understanding security concepts, usually drawn out from research papers. I’m taking it with Paxson btw). As you mentioned, 188 with Klein is like always, lol, but I guess it doesn’t hurt to try 
</p>
<p>EE122 is another option, especially when they will double-expand the size of the usual class this Fall (I think it will be in Dwinnele, with about 450 seats, biggest of any upper EE-CS classes yet). </p>
<p>I think you should definitely phase 1 170 and 186. If 186 appears to be difficult to get in, phase 2 161 as a backup. With priority registration over other soon-to-be-declared students, I think you’ll have a good chance of getting into both by the time Phase 2 comes :)</p>
<p>Disclaimer: I’m a fellow CS major, and these are all my guesses. Take them with a grain of salt ;)</p>
<p>Wow, thanks so much for the detailed reply! I didn’t even know that enrollment priority would be in effect for Phase II; this whole time I thought I’d be stuck behind everyone else throughout the whole enrollment process, so that’s a huge relief! </p>
<p>Yeah, I’ve actually been looking at 161 as a backup in case 186 doesn’t pan out. Would you say it’s more similar to 61C than 70? I’m taking both right now and really prefer the former to the latter, so I’d definitely feel more confident about enrolling in 161 if it is closer in nature to 61C, as you seemed to indicate. Light workload is a plus, especially if I’m taking it with 170 (can’t say I’m expecting an easy time in 170, based on my current experiences in 70).</p>
<p>Huh, I’ve never even considered upper div courses on the EE side like 122, but I’ll take a look and see what’s up. </p>
<p>Your advice on what to add during Phase I and Phase II sounds good, so I’ll probably go with that. I might just Phase II 161 regardless in case I end up wanting to take that instead of 186. =D</p>
<p>Hey, thanks again for all your help! Can’t tell you how great it is to get some personal insight on this stuff.</p>
<p>161 has both 61C and 70 in it 
but it’s somewhat closer to the former, as we talk about memory issue, networking security, and all those cache thing. It does have some CS70 stuff like RSA, error correcting/detecting, and hashing/good hash function. </p>
<p>170 is basically CS70 with 61B material. The first half of the semester we did almost everything in CS70 and 61B (Euclid, Fermat’s Lil Theorem, DFS/BFS, etc.) again, or at least that’s what I saw when I was still enrolled in the class. I was kicked out as a newly-declared major - it’s pretty damn impacted this semester :o If you find CS70 a little bit hard, you will find CS170 around that same level, I guess 
But it’s a really good class to take early on your CS career, as preparation for tech algorithmic interview</p>
<p>EE122 in the Fall is basically a CS course, I think they cover computer networking concepts like TCP/IP, Packet Transmitting, and whatnot. I’ve heard it’s a pretty good class to take, and the professor was a graduate student at Berkeley a few years back.</p>
<p>In industry, almost every software project will involve:</p>
<ul>
<li>doing computations with data (170)</li>
<li>interacting with the operating system (162)</li>
<li>passing data to and from others (EE 122)</li>
<li>storing data efficiently (186)</li>
<li>and securing it (161)</li>
<li>while keeping your software maintainable for the long term (169)</li>
</ul>
<p>Of course, other courses may have specific application to various projects (e.g. a computer game will probably use concepts from 184, 188, and Physics 7A).</p>
<p>Thank you Sparkyboy for your always helpful and detail responses. </p>
<p>I’m trying to figure out which classes to phase 1 for fall. I’ll be taking 61C which is my last lower div class, but I’m not sure what else I can take. I was looking at taking CS 160 now, since the only requirement is 61B, and I’m interested in UI and HCI. It seems like a majority of upper div CS classes require 61C. I wanted to take 169 or 186, but I’m afraid of getting kicked out of the class for not having 61C done.</p>
<p>I’m planning to talk to Chris, so I can get my advisor code, but I’m not sure what else to phase1. My reg date is April 9th, and I’m already declared CS because of a special circumstance.</p>
<p>^ I guess you could try 188 D: since it’s one of the few CS upper divs that doesn’t require completion and mastery of 61C. 17x series is always another option to keep in mind.</p>
<p>I think you could safely phase2 61C and still get in, due to the fact that they expand to 800 seats in Wheeler next semester… But I guess if you want to avoid morning/late-night labs, then go for it D:</p>