Double Major in L&S CS and Econ?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
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<p>How does a double major in L&S's Computer Science and Economics sound? I looked into the major handbooks and planned out a 4-year track. Seems like Econ has very few prereqs, and its math classes (math1a/1b) overlap with the CS degree's math prereq (although CS goes up to math 54).</p>

<p>There are only an additional 3 prereqs required in order to apply to the Econ major. Doesn't seem like a terrible difficulty-- even though the CS prereqs are quite difficult by themselves.</p>

<p>Im wondering about afterwards though... what about the upper division requirements? I planned out the schedules so that it's not difficult to graduate on time with all requirements factored in. Requires no more than 15-16 units every semester with a summer school session or two thrown in. But what about workload/difficulty? Will double majoring slaughter you in the upper-division?</p>

<p>Perhaps some econ or L&S CS majors can shed some light on how hard the upper division classes are.</p>

<p>As far as justifying the double major. I figured an econ degree may help in the future <em>IF</em> I decide to pursue an MBA down the road. Can knock some general MBA GE classes off that way. Plus, it can also open the doors to some business-related jobs-- oftentimes leading to valuable experience necessary when applying to good MBA programs.</p>

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<p>This sounds okay. You're right in that Economics has few prereqs so it's not terribly difficult. Econ + CS could be useful because technology and business often go hand in hand (that old story about how engineers produce great products but lack the business skills to get them out into the market). The thing is, first of all, double majors are generally discouraged because you have to take many courses and it leaves you very little breathing room in your schedule. Second, keep in mind that both majors are impacted (CS is supposed to be unimpacted soon but who knows when), so you may not be able to get into either major.</p>

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<p>
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As far as justifying the double major. I figured an econ degree may help in the future <em>IF</em> I decide to pursue an MBA down the road. Can knock some general MBA GE classes off that way.

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<p>Keep in mind that many MBA programs do not allow GE waivers of any kind. I know that HBS and MItSloan do not. You could have a PhD in economics, and STILL have to take the core Sloan micro-econ MBA course, for example. In fact, I know a guy who had to do that. </p>

<p>And besides, even if you could get a GE waiver, you may not want to anyway. The real value of the GE's is not really the education. Rather, it's the opportunity to bond and network with your core team. By getting out of GE's, you are excluding yourself from that opportunity. In general, the real value of an MBA is not really the coursework. It's the networking. </p>

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Plus, it can also open the doors to some business-related jobs-- oftentimes leading to valuable experience necessary when applying to good MBA programs.

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<p>Yeah, but not more so than would a CS degree. Plenty of banks and consulting firms hire CS graduates (as welll as English graduates and every other kind of graduate). </p>

<p>Personally, I would say that if you have extra time on your hands, get a part-time job/internship/co-op. Frankly, this is a far more effective way to establish a career than would a second major.</p>

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<p>I also am thinking of double majoring in econ and cs. Here's a link to a thread about this (towards bottom of page). I was talking about the subject and there might be some info that might help you.</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=275486%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=275486&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>They may discourage double majors, but double majors are pretty common, anyway.</p>

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<p>A BA in CS is useless compared to a BS unless you want CS as a supplement to another major (which looks like what you want). That said, if you're looking at grad school, don't double major - it appears that grad schools prefer that an applicant has focused (this means researched) and done very well in one area (kinda like EC's for undergrad - depth, not breadth). For the real world, I think it's a pretty good idea, since you learn more, but again, you could major in one subject and minor in the other.</p>

<p>Fortunately, both econ and cs are math intensive, and can get theoretical, so they may complement each other well</p>

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<p>
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A BA in CS is useless compared to a BS unless you want CS as a supplement to another major (which looks like what you want).

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<p>I would hardly go so far as to say that a BA in CS is 'useless'. More importantly, the grad schools and employers certainly don't think it's useless. Here is the career profile of the BA CS guys. Seems to me that plenty of them get very high-paying jobs or go to top-line graduate schools. So evidently these employers/grad-schools didn't think that the BA CS was useless, for otherwise, why did they give these 'useless' people such good offers? Were they being stupid? </p>

<p><a href="http://career.berkeley.edu/Major/CompSci.stm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://career.berkeley.edu/Major/CompSci.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Here is the profile for the BS guys. Notice how the BA guys actually make * more * than the BS guys do.</p>

<p><a href="http://career.berkeley.edu/Major/EECS.stm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://career.berkeley.edu/Major/EECS.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Now, of course, you have to keep in mind that the BA program (pending possible future changes) is not a program you can get into as a freshman, whereas the BS program is. To get into the BA program, you have to get strong grades in your lower-division CS prereq work, and then apply to the major, with no guarantee that will get in. The upshot is that relatively few people with terrible CS grades will graduate with a BA in CS, simply because those people with terrible grades would probably have never gotten into the major in the first place (because if you did well enough in your lower-division work to get into the major, you will probably also do well in your upper-division work). Contrast that with the BS program that admits most of its students as freshman, and plenty of them will end up getting mediocre grades. But that doesn't matter, because once they have been admitted into the program, all they need is a 2.0 GPA to graduate. I personally know some BS guys who graduated with a GPA just barely above a 2.0. </p>

<p>Hence, the reason why the BA students seem to make more than the BS students is simply because the BS cohort included a bunch of people who were not that good, and just barely made it.</p>

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<p>Isn't the admissions process a pretty strong filter for EECS, though? My school counselor (who's been doing this for quite some time) said that it's "considerably " more difficult to get into CoE and more specifically EECS (which is the most competitive major along with Chem. Eng., no?) than it is to get into L&S.</p>

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Isn't the admissions process a pretty strong filter for EECS, though? My school counselor (who's been doing this for quite some time) said that it's "considerably " more difficult to get into CoE and more specifically EECS (which is the most competitive major along with Chem. Eng., no?) than it is to get into L&S.

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<p>Sure, it's a strong filter, arguably (along with 'Engineering Undeclared') the strongest admissions filter that Berkeley uses. </p>

<p>But it's evidently still not strong enough. Some admitted EECS students flunk out. Even of those that do manage to graduate, many of them do so only barely. Trust me. There are * plenty * of EECS students with mediocre GPA's. </p>

<p>Contrast that with the BA CS major. Up until a possible pending rule change, to even get into this major, you had to do well in your lower-division CS prereqs and then petition to enter the major, with no guarantee that it would happen. Hence, like I said, a 'mediocre' BA CS students is something of an oxymoron because somebody who doesn't do well isn't even going to get into the major in the first place. Hence, every single BA CS graduate had to have done fairly well by definition. </p>

<p>But that's neither here nor there. The issue is whether the BA CS program is 'useless'. The Berkeley career website pages clearly show that the BA CS degree is far from useless. If it really was so useless, then why would employers be paying them 72.5k as a median starting salary in 2005, which is the highest median starting salary of any major at Berkeley? Ask yourself, why would employers be 'wasting' so much money in paying so much for these people with 'useless' degrees, when they could just hire somebody else from Berkeley with a 'useful' degree for less money? Are these employers being stupid? </p>

<p><a href="http://career.berkeley.edu/CarDest/2005Majors.stm#salary%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://career.berkeley.edu/CarDest/2005Majors.stm#salary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>I would say bioE/EECS/undeclared engineering are the most competitive. For chemical engineering you could get into L&S and the transfer process is really quick and easy...the price is chemical engineering is really really hard.</p>

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<p>Just to let you guys know.. continuing from the other discussion about EECS and CS and how sakky and some others were talkin about how theres similar courses that are under different departments (for example physics 7 series and 8 series and EE 40 / 42/ 100)... well this semester theyve decided to mold EE 40, 42, 100 into one class, with each one differing only slightly in material (a couple lectures and labs will be different among 40,42, and 100 but otherwise everything else is the same) and grading scale... The professor explained that the material between all the courses had been gettin increasingly similar during the years so they decided to put em all together</p>

<p>o, and also, I talked to a CS advisor and she said that she is not completely sure about unimpaction of the major... but she said that standards for admission have been dropping over the past few years and that just getting over a 3.0 in the prereqs would get u a good shot of getting in.. also, she said if unimpaction were to happen, it will most likely not happen until fall 07</p>

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<p>
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well this semester theyve decided to mold EE 40, 42, 100 into one class, with each one differing only slightly in material (a couple lectures and labs will be different among 40,42, and 100 but otherwise everything else is the same) and grading scale... The professor explained that the material between all the courses had been gettin increasingly similar during the years so they decided to put em all together

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<p>I hope eudean reads this. That's exactly what I've been saying for all these years. Other schools like MIT don't run multiple intro-electronics classes. They run a single class. So Berkeley doesn't need to run multiple electronics classes. Berkeley could consolidate them, and should do so if that would reduce impaction. It is all about optimizing resources.</p>

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<p>I'm getting confused here >_></p>

<p>Assuming that I'm accepted in to the EECS program, should I be ditching it to go do just CS? Also, why are kids failing? I hear that the average HSGPA is a 4.4x and the average SAT is ~2200 for an EECS student. Is EECS really that brutal that people are basically flunking, or are those stats inaccurate?</p>

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<p>EECS is brutal alright. The coursework and workload is considerably more challenging than many other majors. The required lower div courses for EECS/CS involve stuff like the CS61 series-- which is pretty tough stuff. That being said, it appears that EECS people also tend to be very hard working and therefore are able to survive the slaughter. still, it has to be recognized that many people to flunk out.</p>

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<p>
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Assuming that I'm accepted in to the EECS program, should I be ditching it to go do just CS?

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<p>That's up to you. Keep in mind that no official word regarding the unimpaction of the CS program has been announced, so it is possible that it may not happen. </p>

<p>
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Also, why are kids failing? I hear that the average HSGPA is a 4.4x and the average SAT is ~2200 for an EECS student. Is EECS really that brutal that people are basically flunking, or are those stats inaccurate?

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<p>It is indeed that brutal. It has to be recognized that Berkeley EECS is a big step up from the pace of high school. </p>

<p>The biggest policy change that new students have to quickly become used to is the notion of weeding - which means that, by definition, some students have to get less than a C (and hence flunk out because they don't maintain the necessary 2.0) . This stands in sharp contrast with high school classes in which everybody can get an A, and certainly everybody can pass. You are only competing against yourself in high school, and the performance of other students in your class doesn't affect you. At Berkeley, particularly in engineering weeders, you are actually competing head-to-head against the other students, because some people are ** required ** to get bad grades. So the question is, who is it going to be? Every single engineering student is therefore fighting to make sure that he isn't the one that gets tagged with the bad grade. It's like a game of frantic musical chairs where there are fewer chairs than there are people who need them. If you're one of the last guys to try to get a chair, that's it, you're expelled.</p>

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<p>"You are only competing against yourself in high school, and the performance of other students in your class doesn't affect you."</p>

<p>I don't understand how that's true.</p>

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<p>
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I don't understand how that's true.

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<p>Think of it this way. In high school, if a bunch of other students in the class know the material better than you, that doesn't affect your grade. With the minor exception of team-based projects, your grade is solely determined by what scores you got on your exams, your homeworks, your papers, and so forth. However, you know what score you need to get whatever grade. Most high school classes use a simple straight-scoring system, where getting an average of 90% on your graded work will get you an A. It doesn't matter if everybody else got a 100 on their work. You get a 90+, and you get an A.</p>

<p>That is entirely different in curved Berkeley courses, which comprise the Berkeley engineering weeder courses (among many other courses). In these courses, the performance of other students DOES affect your grade. That is because the grading is based on the grade curve, which inherently includes the performance of the other students as an endogenous variable. So if other students do better, you * actually do worse * because you get pushed down on the curve. </p>

<p>Let me give you an example. I know a guy who got around an 80-something on a weeder exam. Pretty good, right? Wrong. That because the average score of all of the students on that exam was around a 95. Hence, his grade actually translated into a grade of, at best, a D, and probably an F. Sure, he knew most of the material on the exam. But that didn't matter. What mattered is that he knew less than the average student in that class, and THAT is what ultimately determines your grade. You can know the material of a class extremely well, and flunk the class anyway, just because everybody else knows it even better. </p>

<p>To give you another example. I know another guy who got a 30 on his engineering exam. But he celebrated. Why? Because the average score was a 25. So his apparently terrible 30 was actually worth an A. It didn't matter that he knew almost nothing on the exam. The only thing that mattered was that he knew more than the average student (and the average student knew almost nothing too). </p>

<p>In other words, it is your * relative * score that actually determines what grade you get. Your grade is inherently affected by the performance of the other students. Hence, this is inherently a zero-sum game. The better that other students do, the worse that you do, and vice versa. This stands in sharp contrast to high school where grading is not a zero-sum game, and where everybody can (in theory) get a good grade. In Berkeley engineering weeders, some people have to get bad grades. You just don't want to be in that group. </p>

<p>What that also means is that you actually * want * the other students to do poorly. This is why they say that Berkeley is cutthroat - because the weeder curves actually induce students to want others to do badly, because they know that that the worse other students do, the better they will do. </p>

<p>And some students do more than just 'want' other students to do poorly, they will actually try to make it happen. For example, there are stories of students deliberately telling others the wrong information so they get questions wrong on the exam. There are stories of students tearing out pages of library books or course reserves so that other students can't read them. There are stories of students deliberately trying to ruin other students' lab experiments so that they get bad lab grades. These stories are most prevalent among the premeds (who are cutthroat by nature), but are also not unheard of among engineers, especially in the weeders. </p>

<p>Consider a situation where there are 10 starving men, and only 9 slices of bread handed out (and you can't share the bread). Each man is going to be desperately fighting to make sure that he's not the one that's left without any bread.</p>

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<p>I feel that the competition in certain engineering pre-reqs are so unhealthy.</p>

<p>If everyone does well, the professor will find a way to penalize a portion of the class by giving them lower grades. Professors keep saying that they'd be happy if he could give everyone A's, but I always laugh because he know's for a fact that it will <em>never</em> happen in such courses.</p>

<p>Yet, to create a curve, the material needs to be harder than what is expected from students, so the students are being challenged in such a bad way (in my own opinion).</p>

<p>but i guess such a big public university like berkeley this seemed to be the best way to them to weed out students.</p>

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<p>Hey, if you think the competition in certain engineering pre-reqs are unhealthy, consider the pre-haas or pre-meds. The comeptition in those fields are even more unhealthy. At least in engineering there is a certain amount of collaboration between students, because they're all in engineering and they are only trying to graduate. For classes like UGBA10 (classic weeder for those trying to get into Haas) and pre-med classes where a high GPA is all that matters, the cut-throat competition gets much higher.</p>

<p>Interestingly enough, the professors who have said that they wish they could give out all As were the ones who grade on a straight-scale.</p>

<p>It is a shame that Berkeley has to weed so many people because it simply admits too many students. This is a contentious point: is it better to admit more students, then weed some out, or admit fewer students? Some people like sakky and myself think it's better to admit fewer students, but others (many voters in the state, the administration) think it's better to admit more students. Part of it is politics: of course Berkeley looks better if it "provides a quality education to many Californians." Part of it is simply a different way of thinking. Some people would prefer to have a chance to attend Berkeley and do well, even if it means risking flunking out, rather than attend a lower UC like say...UC Riverside. Berkeley's admissions model seems to be "admit many potentially well-performing students, and weed out those who don't ultimately perform well."</p>

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<p>
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Hey, if you think the competition in certain engineering pre-reqs are unhealthy, consider the pre-haas or pre-meds. The comeptition in those fields are even more unhealthy. At least in engineering there is a certain amount of collaboration between students, because they're all in engineering and they are only trying to graduate

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<p>Well, they're not 'all in engineering'. Some people in those classes are trying to switch into engineering from L&S or one of the other Berkeley colleges. The weeders prevent a good fraction of them from successfully making that switch, and so those people end up having complete a backup major in something they don't really want. </p>

<p>Of course, the same is true of pre-Haas, in that plenty of people who try to get into Haas won't make it and will therefore be forced to complete a backup major in something they don't really want.</p>