<p>Hey guys, right now it's my second full semester at ARC, and I had a few questions about double majoring if you could answer them for me. </p>
<p>My main interest is Political Science, and I am currently completing the prerequisites for that major for UC Berkeley. Last year, I found out that a B.A. in Rhetoric was offered at Berkeley (without any prereqs required), so I toyed around with the fact that I might try to double-major in PoliSci and Rhetoric since neither are impacted. </p>
<p>I emailed one of the transfer advisors over at UC Berkeley; I asked her what the process was for a transfer student interested in double-majoring, and she told me that I would have to apply as if I were just interested in one primary major. Now I think that signing up as a double-major in Rhetoric and PoliSci after getting admitted to Berkeley would be not the most difficult thing to do because neither are impacted. </p>
<p>However, I've sort of given up on Rhetoric so I could double-major in PoliSci and Social Welfare. My family has been low-income pretty much my entire life, and we've received a lot of aid from the government, so I am really interested in how Social Welfare works. Unfortunately, Social Welfare is impacted! </p>
<p>So my question is... how difficult would it be to add Social Welfare on top of a PoliSci major after getting admitted? Would it be easier to apply as a Social Welfare major initially, and then attempt to add PoliSci?</p>
<p>the admission rate for social welfare for transfers is 42.5% so its probably easier to get in as social welfare first since poli sci is in the social sciences dept which has an 18.3% admission rate. Also its not very difficult to add a major after you get in. I got in as applied math and now i’m gonna double it with econ.</p>
<p>Woah really? I am guessing Econ is pretty competitive too! Do you think you can describe the process by which you go about adding a second major?</p>
<p>first of all you’ll need to get into social welfare which is capped. Different capped majors have different processes for capping the major. For econ transfer students you need to get 3.0+ in your first semester in the econ prereqs. After you get into the major you need to fill out a schedule that maps out your next 2 years at berkeley. You have a total of 5 semesters after transferring to finish a double major so you have to show that you can finish the requirements for both majors in that time. Afterwards, you get your planned out schedule approved and signed by advisors in both departments and submit it to L&S for them to declare you. It is very easy to double major, in fact i was contemplating triple majoring in math/stats/econ but i decided i would just do math/econ with a stats minor and take graduate courses in economics and probability theory. Double majoring is very common here; in fact,I know a girl that is triple majoring in haas/stats/math.</p>
<p>What does it mean when a major is capped? And do you mean the econ prereqs in your first semester at Berkeley? I will have prerequisites done for both majors before transfer. Wow, and your triple-major friend must be working pretty hard.</p>
<p>As for the econ prereqs, there are upper division prereqs that can’t be completed at CCC that must be taken at berkeley. These would be a calculus based statistics courses and an intermediate micro/macro course. Your grade in these classes determine whether or not you get in. The prereqs on assist are just the lower div requirements.</p>
<p>Thanks for that information Jet! I read on Assist.org that for Social Welfare majors, “transfer students have the opportunity to declare the major during the summer transfer orientations offered by Berkeley.” Would that imply that I would have to apply as a Social Welfare major in my application, rather than Political Science?</p>
<p>Do you think you could provide a source for that? Not that I don’t trust you, but my Berkeley Transfer Admission brochure says Political Science at 21% rate (for Social Sciences in overall) and Social Welfare specifically at a 15% rate for 2008.</p>
<p>^Of course, but I need to know which major to apply as on my application. If Social Welfare has a higher admission rate like Jet says, then I would increase my chances of getting in by applying as a Social Welfare major. And vice versa.</p>
<p>“the admission rate for social welfare for transfers is 42.5% so its probably easier to get in as social welfare first since poli sci is in the social sciences dept which has an 18.3% admission rate. Also its not very difficult to add a major after you get in. I got in as applied math and now i’m gonna double it with econ.”</p>
<p>Also, yes it was a backdoor to econ. I applied to UCLA and UCSD as math/econ and since berkeley didn’t have a math/econ major but an applied math program i decided to just apply to the math departments of all the schools and write about math in the personal statement. However, even if you get in as another major and try to switch to econ, only about 2/3 of the transfers that apply to the econ major after they get into berkeley actually get into the econ major. This includes people who were admitted as econ majors.</p>
<p>Interesting. I applied to UCLA math/econ; UCSB math/econ; UCSD math/econ; UCSC math/econ; and Cal Econ. Well, let us see! I wrote my essay about economics, not math.</p>