<p>It’s hard to say. Different people are good at different things.</p>
<p>The math department tends to give out the lowest grades. Many math classes are curved to a class mean of 2.5 or lower, which is even lower than EECS. The math material may not be impossibly hard, but the harsh grading distributions tend to screw students over.</p>
<p>I’d recommend taking two out of the three classes you listed. Hilfinger is hard and hands out very few A’s, so you may want to postpone that if you can. Prof. Shewchuk is scheduled to teach 61B in spring 2009, and he is much more generous in terms of grading. In fall 2006, he gave over half the class A’s. EE 20N with Ayazifar was okay for me, but some people found it really hard. It really depends on your strengths and weaknesses. EE 20 is more of a conceptual class, while EE 40 is more of a number-crunching class.</p>
<p>[EE</a> 2008-2009 Draft Schedule | EECS at UC Berkeley](<a href=“http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Scheduling/EE/schedule-draft.html]EE”>http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Scheduling/EE/schedule-draft.html)
[CS</a> 2008-2009 Draft Schedule | EECS at UC Berkeley](<a href=“http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Scheduling/CS/schedule-draft.html]CS”>http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Scheduling/CS/schedule-draft.html)
[url=<a href=“http://hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu/]Eta”>http://hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu/]Eta</a> Kappa Nu (HKN), Mu Chapter: Main Page<a href=“Ratings%20on%20teaching%20effectiveness%20and%20workload”>/url</a>
[url=<a href=“http://cal.pickaprof.com%5DPick-A-Prof%5B/url”>http://cal.pickaprof.com]Pick-A-Prof[/url</a>] (Grade distributions)</p>