<p>So I was told to keep my units down to 13 my first semester at Berkeley, but I have decided to take 16/17 anyway. I will take Physics 7A (even though I got a 5 on AP), Math 53 (5 on AP), probably an American Cultures course, E98 (seminar), and I am debating whether to do CS3 or CS 61A. I've been told that to lighten my load a bit, CS3 would be easier since I don't really have that much programming experience other than TI-84/89 stuff.</p>
<p>I would do it no problem, but since I'm currently in the Engineering Physics major and want to transfer to EECS by the end of the year, I am wondering whether it will be competitive admission and if I should take the best courses possible.</p>
<p>Also, how difficult is Physics 7A because I CAN drop it and still take 7B second semester. I was comfortable with the material in high school, but am not quite sure how I'd be able to handle calculus-intensive Berkeley stuff.</p>
<p>So, should I take 61A and drop Physics or just take CS3 and Physics? Is 7A a weeder course and will it be useful to me in the future as an EECS major or will I do OK in 7B without the experience? If I do decide to take 61A, second semester would be Math 54, Physics 7B, CS 61B, and humanities course. I would like my GPA to be competitive for grad school, even though I haven't decided to go or not.</p>
<p>Sorry about all the details--an answer to any part of my question is appreciated.</p>
<p>If you’re confident, get out of 7A and just take 7B second semester. Just my two cents, but E98 is a royal waste of time. </p>
<p>As for 61A…If you can grasp the idea of recursion quickly, you have no need for CS3. Otherwise, if you’re trying to be safe, go ahead and take CS3 before 61A. It might be worthwhile for you to sign up for both CS61A and CS3, see how you do in 61A, and drop either 61A or CS3 in a couple weeks.</p>
<p>7A is a weeder course and you will do fine in 7B without it. The two courses are pretty unrelated. Since you got a 5 on AP, it probably wouldn’t be extremely challenging for you, but it’s still a hard class. It’s not that calculus-intensive, though; you don’t use much calculus and it’s not much different from algebra-based physics anyway. If you really wanted to, you could try and enroll in 7B at this point, but you’d have to aggressively monitor the online schedule, especially in the first two weeks of class.
7B is a hard class as well, and it may just be a good idea to get settled in Berkeley taking just 53 and CS (with the AC or other random breadth) your first semester.</p>
<p>I would be hesitant about E98 depending on how much work is involved. Even if it’s just a bit, it’s no fun to have extra pointless work during midterms and finals time. </p>
<p>CS: I’d say you should take 61A despite the fact that it’s gotten a little harder since last semester because there were way too many A+s. I consider 61A to be the one of the best CS courses I’ve taken and was able to appreciate a lot that the course had to offer. CS3 is ok, but it is much easier than 61A, and that’s saying a lot considering that 61A is one of the easiest CS classes (it’ll be challenging at the time, but you will later see the truth…), so CS3 might lower your guard for future semesters.</p>
<p>Physics: I’d take 7B if you can get out of 7A. Part of the reason is because 7B has a lot more to do with EE than 7A does. I’ve heard that when transferring into EECS, a good EECS history is a key component - this means that you want top grades in core courses (you don’t have to do upper divs or the Honors series, but 61A+61B after a year would be more favorably viewed than CS3+61A). You do need to be good with elementary calculus -just from looking at the curves, it seems that quite a few students flounder when they’re expected to know how to set up derivatives and integrals with the right variables and bounds. The benefit to taking 7A would be that you’d get to take 7B after you’re done with Math 53. I think that’s a good thing.</p>
<p>Physics + CS + Math + Humanities is a standard courseload that many first-semester freshmen take, so you’re on the right track.</p>
<p>Thanks for your input
Are there any resources for me to learn recursion myself before school starts and how long would it take a person of limited programming experience?</p>
<p>well, you could start by reviewing mathematical induction and proofs involving it. There are some parallels between that and recursion. Also, you could google for some recursion problems</p>
<p>if you got a 5 on mechanics C, 7A should be a cakewalk to get an A (that is not to say that it won’t require a decent amount of work / studying… but it would be fairly surprising if you didn’t get an A if you studied a few hours a week outside of just doing homework).</p>
<p>you can probably skip out of E98 if you have upper division engineering friends or if you plan on joining an engineering club where you can meet some. but if you want to / need the units, from what I hear it’s not too time consuming. math 53 will probably be fairly difficult even with a 5 on BC.</p>
<p>if you take an easy AC like ESPM 50AC with spreyer, you could probably do math 53, cs61a, espm 50ac, and physics 7a. it’d be harder than the (imo) overly easy 13 units they tell you to do at calso, but if you’re willing to study hard it’s doable. most engineers who decide to take a “real” courseload their freshman year take something like that. that’s not to say that it would be easy - 3 technicals, 2 of them being true weeder classes, is never a joke, but a schedule like that shouldn’t be impossible.</p>
<p>personally I try to recommend 2 “real” classes and 2 fluffier classes (e.g. espm 50ac, e10, etc) to freshman. so I guess it comes down to how well you think you’d do in those classes.</p>
<p>Alright, so I’ve heard (perhaps bull) that Prof. Harvey is going to stop teaching CS61A sometime in the near future, so if that’s the case, take 61A asap. Else, I’d definitely suggest going for CS3.</p>
<p>math 53 + cs61a. I call them that because people who have taken and did well in physics in high school usually do well in 7a, but that tends to hold true less for 61a and math 53/54.</p>
<p>You definitely do not need to read about mathematical induction and proofs to start learning about recursion in programming. I’m sure there are relevant parallels that can be drawn, but none that will help a novice programmer understand an already tricky topic. The most commonly taught introductions to recursion are recursive versions of algorithms that calculate the nth number of the Fibonacci sequence or n’s factorial. If you tackle those easily, check out the recursive solution to the Towers of Hanoi problem.</p>
<p>If you find recursion to be tricky, don’t be discouraged about programming; I’ve been programming for many years and it’s still hard for me (and a lot of other programmers) to wrap my head around sometimes. It’s mostly used as an educational tool and is rarely used in actual software development.</p>
