Hi! I was recently admitted as a transfer student for Fall 2019 as a junior for Econ L&S. I was wondering how many courses a student should take their first semester? I was planning on ECON100B/101B (pre-enrolled in 100B after attending webinar), STAT20, an American cultures course and 1 unit DeCal course for my first semester! I plan to double major stats with Econ since I have most of the requirements done for Stats and Econ already, but looking at the major requirements at both majors; I would need to do at least 4-5 courses per semester to graduate within 2 years, so I might just minor in Stats instead. I am looking to become an actuary or financial analyst so I thought Stats might help with Econ, but I’m unsure which majors are good with Econ. I took Linear Algebra and DE at my CC, which is course equivalent to MATH53,54 at Berkeley. I can finish both the Stats and Econ major requirements in two years BUT 4-5 courses per semester seems impossible at least for me.I had a few questions about Econ 100B/101: what the difference between both these courses are and any benefits if I take 101B instead since 101B is optional? I don’t know much about the 101 series except that they are much harder than the 100 series, and require much more math.This will be my first semester at Berkeley so I’m unsure what classes are like and what to expect. Any feedback/tips from any fellow transfer or econ students would be appreciated. Thank you!
The 101A, 101B, and 141 courses use more math than the 100A, 100B, and 140 courses. Since you apparently like math/statistics, are considering math/statistics-heavy actuarial careers, and will also major or minor in statistics, you may like the 101A, 101B, and 141 courses more and not find them unreasonably hard (some who really like math prefer that more math is used).
A typical course load is 15-16 units, which is usually about four courses, since more courses are 4 units.
I am an Econ major.
That’s a pretty chill schedule.
I was wondering how many courses a student should take their first semester? You can probably take more than 13 units. On the other hand, half of my transfer econ friends had a lot of trouble their first year, so maybe a light schedule might work well for you or maybe, since you can pass no pass the AC and decal, and you’re fine at math, there’s not enough new material to motivate you enough to learn.
I took Econ 101A last semester and it’s a math class with a lot of Lagrangians masquerading as an Econ class. On the first day the GSI said if you want to actually learn and understand the material, take the 100 series. The only homework in the class is a 2-3 page problem set, with the answers already posted online, every two weeks. 50% of the class got an A- or higher, I was worried for a while that I wouldn’t get a B because unless you have a great teacher, there’s not enough practice problems other than a few problems in section notes every week, which makes it hard to learn. Also, on the tests they’re prone to doin that thing that teachers do where they’re like, we taught you about resistors in series and capacitors on series, but on the test we’re going to ask about batteries in series, and you aren’t happy with them.
Also, there’s not really a textbook, so there’s that. So if you take that set of classes, your AC will be the only one with a lot of reading/homework and most of the class won’t actually do the readings, so you shouldn’t have that much homework.
In summary:
101: 50% get As, math heavy, grad schools like it better.
100: 35% ish get As, concept heavy,
I think I’ll take 100B next semester. Whats the use of a phd.
Did you take a Stats class in CCC or took AP Stats in HS? If you did either you can take Stats 20, Econ will accept it as a prerequisite, but you won’t get credit for it. Which would put you under 13 credits.
Since the OP is also a statistics major, s/he presumably will be taking STAT 134 for that major, which also covers the statistics requirement for the economics major. STAT 134 will not result in removal of duplicate credit from any course taken in a community college or any credit from AP tests.
The poster said he was taking STAT 20 which to me is a waste if a Stats class was already taken in HS or CCC.
Stat 20 is a combination of Statistics and Calculus and Berkeley doesn’t let you use any transfer credits to cover it because of its special mixture, plus the addition of coding.
I like the Stat 134 idea but it’s probably filled up by now since it’s an upper division.